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For the past seven Christmases, I have led a caravan of people — Jews, and non-Jews, Blacks and whites — delivering toys to needy children around Chicago’s south and west sides.
Every year, I get the same question: How can a Jew lead a Christmas caravan? My answer is simple: I’m fulfilling the mitzvah of showing love to my neighbors. And I’m doing it in honor of an uncle I never met, and a grandmother I deeply loved, both of whom demonstrated the profound meaning of selflessly living out that value.
My uncle Terrell participated in the very first Toys for Tots in 1972. He did so by refurbishing toys from his hospital bed at a local rehabilitation facility. Terrell was a paraplegic, the result of getting shot in the back by a police officer when he was just 18 years old.
Terrell died a few years before I was born, but my mother and her siblings talked about him constantly as a way of keeping him alive to my family. They saw parts of him in their children, whom he never got to meet. One of us had hair like his; some others had his complexion. It was made clear that he would always be a part of our family because he was part of each one of us.