Nixon and Kissinger in Vietnam, 1969
Photo: Zenith Phuong.

I have two friends, both of them Chabad youth, named Mendle.

I mentioned Mendle #1 in my previous post Mendle and the Lebanese in Australia; Mendle #2 just recently became a Rabbi and is now in Litchfield, Connecticut visiting Jews, offering to put up mezuzahs and handing out challah for Shabbos.

Now western Connecticut is not heavily populated and Mendle and his group heard that Dr Henry Kissinger lived nearby in Kent and so decided to pay him a visit. They knew that Kissinger was a secular Jew but thought it was worth a longshot to bring him some challah. Mendle called me this morning and told me the road leading to his home is quite a winding one. They were told that he rarely used the road and normally left his home by helicopter instead of by car.

Before they could reach the home proper, they were greeted by a black security vehicle and were asked how they got here and how did they know which road to take to his home and what were they doing here. Well, Mendle explained, fellow local Jews gave them the directions and the purpose of the visit was to present Dr Kissinger with some challah for Shabbos. The guard was a gentile and had no clue what either a challah was or the meaning of the word Shabbos.

I wonder if the guard ever gave the challah to Dr Kissinger at all. It probably went into a bomb disposal container. But I told Mendle what was important was the effort. Who knows, perhaps the good Doctor actually got the challah, and enjoyed it on the Sabbath. But even if not, as long as a good deed was attempted - that's all that matters. There are people like Mendle who hope to reach out to fellow Jews, religious or not, and add a small blessing to their lives, and then there are Muslims who cannot get enough of killing, maiming, and bombing their fellow Muslims and to what end?