My old friend and colleague Andrea Gouze was among the clergy asked to serve on the Red Cross’ spiritual care team on November 1st, 1999. The day before, EgyptAir Flight 990 had crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off Nantucket Island, killing all aboard. In the following days, the families of those who died aboard the doomed jet began to gather in Newport, RI. Andrea felt strangely out of place, given the fact that most family members were Muslim.

Andrea is a Jew.

And a Rabbi besides.

All of Andrea’s misgivings were erased, however, when – one afternoon – she encountered a Muslim woman who had just viewed some of the recovered aircraft debris. The woman began to sob uncontrollably. Rabbi Andrea, wearing her kippa, took the Egyptian woman into her arms and they wept together.

She writes, “Not sharing a language, we didn’t speak, but there was no need for words…

 “…everyone cries in the same language.”