To the editor:
After breakfast I walked over to the Church of the Ognissanti (all saints) to see the Sunday mass. Like all Florentine churches, it is beautiful, even after being redecorated a few times over the last 800 years. Its interior is baroque, with masterpieces such as a large Giotto cross and frescos by Ghirlandaio and Botticelli. Perhaps most interesting to many Americans is the tomb of Americo Vespucci with a fresco of the young Americo as he stands with his family being sheltered by the Virgin’s cloak.
The church was, if not packed, well filled with worshipers, probably more than 100. I am Jewish, but I spend a great deal of time in Italian churches because of my love of Italian art. Today, I felt it would be good to be uplifted by the beauty of the church and the hope that many of the attendees of the service were praying for peace and hoping to find solace in a world seen spinning out of control.
I think Job’s questions to God now seem even more applicable than ever to all of us. As there is more and more killing for sectarian, religious, and territorial rights, it is hard to accept a belief in an all-knowing divinity whom humans must rely on for governing our fate and that of the world.
We seem to forget that the most recent horrible death toll in the Middle East is a blip in the count of fatalities from a world at war. Each of the thousands of civilians killed in Israel and Gaza were real people. This slaughter of the innocents, biblical in nature and tragic to their loved ones, will not solve the issues which are the basis for the conflict.
When the ideological extremes of both sides dictate policy, the great majority of both populations who want a peaceful resolution are ignored and discounted for zealotry.
Terribly, there can be no resolution except a state of war with the present leadership. Hamas wants all the Jews dead from the river to the sea, and will not recognize a Jewish presence in the Holy Land. The far-right-wing government of Netanyahu and the settler movement want to seize the occupied territories and drive the Arab occupants from them, while for over 50 years they have treated non-Jews differently in the territory they illegally and legally control.
They are at war, and it will require international and national resolve and a change of governments to stop the killing. Where is God when we need him?
Stephen Cohen
South Egremont
