It’s imperative we set aside hateful feelings

May the genius of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein be forever with us. Their memorable song from “South Pacific” — “You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught,” with the line “to hate all the people your relatives hate” — must have been inscribed in last month’s Pittsburgh shooter’s psyche.

Prejudice — prejudging with minimal information — is a terrible and disgusting way to view other people. One would think that with the overwhelming evidence we have about the Holocaust, anyone harboring hate against Jewish people should be overcome with shame.

But hate does abide. Lest many of us feel secure in that the shooter’s hate was directed solely at Jewish people, other groups, especially Christians, may also have targets on their backs. Christians know that Jesus was Jewish, his disciples were Jewish, the men who wrote the New Testament and his early followers, all Jewish.

Friends, as we enter the Thanksgiving season, all of us should put aside any hateful feelings we have toward others, permanently if possible, and concentrate instead on the blessings we all enjoy from living in this wonderful land.

Although things can always be better, our collective knowledge of history shows that things can and have been horribly worse. James Largay

Upper Saucon Township