Daniel Kravitz was the owner of a secondhand furniture shop in Denver. One day a young man entered his store, with a shaved head and bare arms tattooed with the message “Kill Jews!” Fortunately, Daniel’s yarmulke was under a cap. He spent an hour assisting his customer, taking the young neo-Nazi on a tour of the shop, helping him choose, and helping to load the purchases into a waiting pickup truck. Then, after checking that the man was not armed, Daniel asked, “Do you really feel what those tattoos say?”
“You bet I do,” the man replied.
“Have you ever actually met a Jew?”
“No,” the customer said, “but I hate them anyway!” He launched into a tirade of anti-Semitic stereotypes. Daniel listened patiently, then lifted his cap to reveal his yarmulke. “You just spent an hour with a Jew. Wasn’t I honest, kind, and generous the whole time?” He motioned to the mezuzah on the door, the siddur on his desk. “I’m not like the image you have of Jews. I can’t believe your parents raised you with this hate. You must be estranged from them.” Daniel spent some time trying to convince the man to reconsider his ideology. Then he went to help another customer.
Six months later, the young man returned—with a full head of hair, decent clothes, and long sleeves to conceal his tattoos. He embraced Daniel. “I need to apologize and thank you,” he said. “You made me reassess everything I believed. Thanks to you, I now know what a Jew is. I’ve reconnected with my parents and decided to turn my life around.”
Reproduced from Living Kiddush Hashem by Rabbi Shraga Freedman with permission of the copyright holders, ArtScroll/Mesorah Publications, Ltd.
