On One Foot: Joshua Hammerman's Blog

Author of "Embracing Auschwitz" and "Mensch•Marks: Life Lessons of a Human Rabbi - Wisdom for Untethered Times." Winner of the Rockower Award, the highest honor in Jewish journalism and 2019 Religion News Association Award for Excellence in Commentary. Musings of a rabbi, journalist, father, husband, poodle-owner, Red Sox fan and self-proclaimed mensch, taken from essays, columns, sermons and thin air. Writes regularly in the New York Jewish Week and Times of Israel.

Sunday, August 26, 2018

Children of the World

With all the strife that exists in our world, my recent travels have convinced me, more than ever, that beneath it all we're all the same. Over the past couple of years, abroad and at home, my camera’s eye tried to look at the world through the eyes of a child. And we see that most of all with children.

Today there are 2.2 billion children in the world. Nearly two billion of these live in developing countries. The vast majority are in desperate need of healthcare, water, food and education. Others need our protection from traffickers, drugs, violent neighborhoods, school shootings, abusive adults who betray a sacred trust, border patrols who rip them from their parents, corrupt autocrats who rip them from their villages, and abusive parents who breed desperation and hopelessness. But look at these faces, faces that I have seen with my camera's eye - these are the trusting, happy, loving, vulnerable faces of children.

Here is a photo essay: Children of the World