. . . there is also an economic price that we pay when empathy is largely absent a society or people group. That price means the suffering of some continues unabated. It means that some go uneducated or unhoused. It means we normalize large percentages of human beings behind bars irrespective of their crime or why they committed it. It also means that we continue to live as a divided nation where we intentionally look to build community with people who are just like us. More importantly, it means that we stop “seeing” others as worthy of our sacrifice or blessing. And not only are we paying that price here at home, places like Ukraine are paying an even dearer one as a result of a world order largely driven by a “me or us first” mentality.

. . . “the language called Esperanto was born of such considerations, and one more—the so-called Jewish question.” Esperanto’s creator, Ludovik Lazarus Zamenhof (1859-1917). . . was a Jew. One day he wrote to a friend, “My Jewishness has been the main reason why, from earliest childhood, I gave myself completely to one crucial idea . . . the dream of the unity of humankind.”