Our story is one of many who journey to a new land in the hope that our life will be better then the one we would have led if we stayed in our homelands. It is the story of the immigrant and the "American Dream" Only thing was that our American Dream was severely interrupted on August 5, 2012 when a white-supremacist neo-Nazi skinhead entered our most sacred spiritual center and killed 6 worshippers that day, one of them being my father and Temple President, Satwant Singh Kaleka.
While this attack at our most vulnerable devastated our small minority community, it also galvanized us and connected us to a broader spiritual community and taught us the importance of not letting this 'Dream’ die. This transformation however did not happen over night. We engaged in a process of communal healing in an effort to teach the world that we are more then what happens to us.
In collective grief, we realized that healing is both individual and communal. I also learned that in order to heal, we must be lovingly challenged to get to a better space. The man who challenged my personal trauma was the most unlikely ally, Arno Michaelis, the man who started the skinhead neo-Nazi organization that the shooter pledged allegiance to. The greatest lesson that I learned from Arno is that “hurt people, hurt people,” because pain that is not processed is either transferred or consumed. This understanding allowed for a forgiveness to settle in my heart which in turn allowed me to be free and regain power over my life.
Today, I am a husband, a father of 4 beautiful children, a community leader, trauma therapist, author, and Director of the Interfaith Conference of Greater Milwaukee. It is clear that the journey to post traumatic growth requires a process that we co-create with the world. And while I can not say what another person’s healing journey should look like; I can tell you that maybe we need to give genuine forgiveness a chance in our spiritual journeys as individuals and communities.
In a world that seems to be tearing itself at the seams, divided by identity, becoming more intolerant, xenophobic, and spiritually ill, it is essential that we need healers. This is done with the steadfast belief that the moral arc of the universe bends to the good, the light.
We must all embody that light and remain committed to betterment.