I just got back from the doctor. Nothing serious. Just a regular check-up. But I’ve come home feeling terrible. 

It’s not me. It’s what’s going on in Jerusalem, my city. In this country.

In the waiting room, I met a young Orthodox fellow whom I recognized but couldn’t quite place. He was there with his young, pregnant wife, and we struck up a conversation. Turns out he’s a butcher at a supermarket I frequent. We talked about the quality of the meat he sells. He asked if I’d heard what’s been happening at Rami Levi, another popular food chain in town: boycott demonstrations outside several stores because it employs Arabs. He’d heard of people outside one branch who’d been approached by others offering to pay for shopping carts full of groceries if they’d agree to shop at a supermarket not employing Arabs. Rumour has it some millionaire is footing the bill.

Acts of racism are becoming everyday occurrences here. In a hospital in Ashkelon, a patient refused to be treated by an Arab doctor. A group called Lehava prides itself on preventing assimilation. Its activists hit the streets evenings in Jerusalem, prowling for mixed Arab-Jewish couples and preventing people from taking rides in cabs driven by Arabs. 

Ten days ago, arsonists set a Grade 1 classroom ablaze in Jerusalem’s only bilingual Hebrew-Arabic school. Graffiti sprayed outside called for “Death to the Arabs.”

Early Friday morning a couple of weeks ago, I walked through one of my favourite places in Jerusalem, the Machane Yehuda food market, getting things we needed for Shabbat. At a stall selling fresh herbs and spices, a salesperson was wearing a T-shirt proudly adorned with the slogan “Kahane was right” and a picture of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, who, among other things, called for the forcible deportation of Arabs from Israel. 

I know these things don’t occur in a vacuum. Terror against Israelis is up, especially in Jerusalem. People have been killed in several attacks in which Arabs used their vehicles to kill and maim Israeli pedestrians at train stops and bus stations. Others have been stabbed as they walked through the Old City. 

In one particularly barbaric incident, two east Jerusalemites carried out an attack at a synagogue in Har Nof, a haredi neighbourhood in the western part of Jerusalem. Before being killed, they butchered early-morning worshippers, killing four of them, as well as a Druze police officer who came to their aid. They also injured many others, including Howie (Chaim) Rothman, a father of 10 who immigrated to Israel from Canada many years ago.  

As of this writing, Howie, a classmate of mine at Bialik Hebrew Day School and the Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto when we were growing up, is still in a medically induced coma. 

I pray for his recovery. 

And I pray for this country. 

We Jews won’t succumb to terror, but a law declaring Israel the nation state of the Jews is not smart right now, if ever, and will not bring tranquility. Nor will Jewish control of the Temple Mount. 

We need leaders, true leaders, on both sides. A Mandela, a de Klerk. People who’ve been through the worst as bitter enemies and are willing to forge a better future together. To be conciliatory. 

Neither PA President Mahmoud Abbas nor Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have it in them.  

Maybe our new president, Reuven Rivlin, will be our man. A true believer in Israel’s right to all of the Land of Israel, he has boldly made it clear he’ll strive to make Arab Israelis full partners in Israel’s future. Most recently, he cancelled a popular singer’s performance at his official residence when it became known he had just released a song with racist anti-Arab lyrics.

At present, I see no Palestinian leader willing or able to take a daring leap of faith. I keep praying.