Friends, today we face a moment of deep grief. The assassination of Charlie Kirk has taken from us a devoted husband, a loving father, and a passionate advocate for the truths we hold sacred.
For me this loss is also personal. Just two months ago I sat with Charlie in his studio. The meeting was supposed to be fifteen minutes, then reduced to ten because his schedule was so full. He came in five minutes late, clearly stressed, yet he stayed with me for an hour and a half. In that time Charlie and I spoke about the truths that bound our work together: the dignity of every person created in God’s image, the sacredness of life, and our shared responsibility to defend them.
We spoke also about Israel, about its place in our covenant, but most of all about the values we shared. And in that conversation we became friends.
Our Scriptures teach that God spoke the world into being with words. Words carry divine power, to bless or to curse, to build up or to tear down. When words of hatred are unleashed they do not remain words. They become actions. They become violence. They become blood.
The truths Charlie and I discussed, the very ones now under attack, reach beyond any single tragedy. Across our world forces of hatred are rising, seeking not to argue but to erase, not to differ but to destroy. We must be unequivocal: violence cannot and will not define our future.
At the Fellowship we speak often of covenant, between Jews and Christians, between all people of faith and the Almighty. Covenant endures only when we hold fast to the truths we share: that every life bears God’s imprint, and that human dignity cannot be violated without violating the very foundation of creation.
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As I mourn with Erika and their precious children, I carry our conversation as a sacred charge. In a world that is often divisive, Charlie and I spoke about the values that endure beyond division, the dignity of every person, the sanctity of life, the covenant that binds people of faith to God and to one another.
So in this moment of grief I will keep holding to those truths. And I pray we all will: that we will use words to build and not to break, that we will resist hatred wherever it rises, that we will guard life as the holy gift it is.
May the Almighty comfort Erika and their children, and may He give us the strength to live by these eternal truths, so that life and peace will endure.
Yael Eckstein is President and Global CEO of The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, one of the world's largest religious charitable organizations. The Jaffa Institute’s 2024 Woman of the Year and The Jerusalem Post's 2023 Humanitarian of the Year, Yael is a Chicago-area native based in Israel with her husband and their four children.
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