In his speech announcing victory over far-right opponent Marine Le Pen Sunday night, French President Emmanuel Macron assured the public that his next five years in office would spell a new chapter, with hopes of leading with respect while repairing the nation’s divisions.

“You’ve made the choice of an ambitious humanist project for the independence of our country and for Europe,” Mr. Macron said to a massive crowd beneath a glittering Eiffel Tower. “I’m not the candidate of one camp anymore, but the president of all of us.”

The course of the French presidency – not just in Mr. Macron’s second term, but beyond – may depend on how well he fulfills that promise.

Though the centrist Mr. Macron fended off Ms. Le Pen by what appears on its face to be a sizable margin – 58.5% to 41.4% – those figures belie the polarization of French society. Ms. Le Pen improved on her 2017 presidential bid by seven points. Both far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the extreme-right Eric Zemmour command significant blocs of support as well.

That leaves Mr. Macron facing a frustrated and polarized public. If he does not prove that he has concrete plans to address its concerns, like the escalating cost of living for the lower and middle classes, experts say, he risks not only hampering his own ability to govern, but also giving radical parties an advantage in future elections.

“If he doesn’t take charge of a real program where people’s lives will improve,” says Oleg Kobtzeff, a professor of history and politics at the American University of Paris, “five years from now Marine Le Pen or someone else on the extremes will be president.”

An end to “Jupiter”?

On Sunday night, Mr. Macron seemed to understand the position he finds himself in.

“I want to lead my [political] program with strength in the coming years as an agent who can unite the divisions and differences that have been expressed,” he reiterated in his victory speech. “No one will be left behind.”

To do this, Mr. Macron will need to show that he plans to govern differently. In his first term, he earned a reputation for governing in an insular, imperious fashion – what the French call a “Jupiter” style, in reference to the Roman king of the gods.

To continue to do so could earn a repeat of events like the yellow vest social protest movement, which launched in 2018. Already, his proposed pension reform – which would increase the retirement age from 62 to 65 – caused nationwide protests ahead of the elections.

“The way Macron has worked until now is to push his ideas in a very unilateral, vertical way, when it comes to how he interacts with other European leaders or on domestic policy,” says Tara Varma, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations in Paris.

“He will have to change his method, to work with opposition parties or with the people through referendums. There’s more work that needs to be done in terms of re-legitimizing democracy and the idea of representation, ensuring to citizens that their voice matters.”

Francois Mori/AP

Marine Le Pen speaks after early projections were announced for the presidential election runoff result in Paris, April 24, 2022. Though she lost again, her 41.4% of the vote was the strongest showing ever by a far-right French presidential candidate.

That could include fulfilling promises he made during the presidential campaign to far-right and far-left voters, including to hire more health-care professionals, increase teacher’s wages, and make France the first country to stop using coal and gas.

Already, Mr. Macron seemed willing to find a compromise on his pension reform plans, which have become particularly divisive. “If I want to unite people,” he told French television after the first round of elections, “I have to listen.”

A political obstacle

Key to Mr. Macron’s agenda will be the outcome of June’s parliamentary elections.

France has only experienced three “cohabitation” periods – where the presidency and parliamentary majority are held by different parties – since 1958. Mr. Macron’s presidential victory was highly dependent on anti-Le Pen voters, and this year’s presidential election saw the lowest voter turnout since 1969 at 71.8%. That makes the chance of Mr. Macron’s En Marche party winning a majority in parliament, as they did in 2017, seem questionable.

If En Marche fails to top the June elections, the winning party would instead get to name the prime minister, who would in turn be in charge of selecting the cabinet. Mr. Macron would lead the French army and much of foreign policy, but would be left without the ability to set the domestic policy agenda.

“Macron will probably have a strong position at the parliament but this is still an area where there is a great deal of uncertainty,” says Douglas Webber, professor emeritus of political science at INSEAD. “There will most likely be a high level of continuity in what Macron does going forward in terms of shaping the EU, the response to the war in Ukraine, and European defense.

“But in terms of what he can achieve on domestic issues, the outcome of the parliamentary elections will be very important when it comes to him implementing his agenda.”

That makes the next two months critical for Mr. Macron, as he assesses En Marche’s identity and the direction it must take. His party has always been attached to his persona – once a political outsider hoping optimistically to take the country in a new direction – but that is no longer the case.

The French public will be watching whether Mr. Macron backtracks on his campaign promises and jumps on pension reform at the start of his mandate, as well as if he will switch out some of his more controversial or ineffectual cabinet ministers when his new government is announced in the first week of May.

Not enough pressure to change?

The past suggests that Mr. Macron may not feel the need to cater to the broader swath of those who voted for him. After the 2002 presidential election, when the French turned out en masse to prevent Ms. Le Pen’s father, far-right National Front party leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, from winning the presidency, many expected center-right winner Jacques Chirac to reward liberal voters who had helped him win by a landslide of 82%.

But that didn’t happen. Though he had campaigned on healing social divisions, France saw some of its worst unrest in decades under his watch, when the Paris suburbs exploded in violence in 2005. That same year, he launched a national referendum to ratify the constitution for Europe, which France rejected, sending the country into political turmoil.

“There may be areas where Macron will try to do a little bit, like on environmental policy, but I’m not sure if the pressure on him after the election to move towards the left will be that strong once he’s gotten their votes,” says Dr. Webber. “If his proposed reforms are unpopular, there is a high potential for strong protests.”

But Mr. Macron’s situation is much less solid – and far-right politicians are much more popular – than the circumstances in which Mr. Chirac found himself. That may spur him to adapt.

“Mr. Macron is an intelligent politician,” says Dr. Kobtzeff, “so hopefully he’ll understand that he needs to think of new ideas on how to run the country.”

John Locher/AP/File

People wait in line for help with unemployment benefits at the One-Stop Career Center in Las Vegas on March 17, 2020, soon after the pandemic began. Two years later, state agencies are grappling with the aftermath of quickly distributing $653 billion in emergency unemployment assistance.

Crystal Farrington learned early on that hard work was her only option. Her parents, blue-collar workers raising nine children, took whatever odd jobs they could find. By the time she turned 15, she did the same, first at Burger King and later in retail and hotels. 

Now, a single mother in her mid-20s caring for a 7-year-old daughter, money is tight for Ms. Farrington. But she’s always managed to make ends meet. 

So when she woke up one morning in January to a message that she owed the state of North Carolina $15,056, her heart sank.

The “notice of overpayment,” as it’s called, explained that the pandemic unemployment benefits she’d received for six months in 2020 had been a mistake – and needed to be returned.

Ms. Farrington is one of millions of Americans who have received similar notices during the pandemic, demanding sums reaching beyond $30,000 in some cases. In North Carolina alone, around 117,000 people have been affected by overpayments totaling $350 million. In larger states the numbers are higher: California had sent 1.4 million overpayment notices by November of 2021.  

“If I had to make payments on this, it would put me under, and quickly,” says Ms. Farrington. 

And the unemployment money? Long gone. 

“It was my only source of income, so of course I spent it on bills,” she says. 

Two years into the pandemic, state agencies are grappling with the aftermath of a necessarily hasty rollout of an unprecedented $653 billion distributed in emergency unemployment assistance during the pandemic. The system wasn’t prepared to handle the onslaught of new claims, and mistakes abounded. Yes, there was fraud, but many of the errors were honest, caused for example by claimants’ confusion about eligibility and states’ not having enough time to verify information. Now, agencies are scrambling to recoup funds that should never have been approved.  

Underneath the mayhem lie questions about what constitutes “fairness” when it comes to the distribution – and clawback – of government benefits.

On the one hand, errors were bound to occur. “We were building the plane as we were flying, in terms of creating these brand-new, desperately needed pandemic relief programs,” says Alix Gould-Werth, director of family economic security policy at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. 

On the other, she adds, “There are people across the country who have been doing their best faith effort to access benefits and then made an unintentional error … and they’re facing these really disastrous consequences.” 

Courtesy of Crystal Farrington

Crystal Farrington received an overpayment notice telling her she owed the state of North Carolina $15,056, money she received in pandemic unemployment benefits during six months in 2020. Her appeal was approved, but so far online records show her debt reduced by only a few thousand dollars.

What went wrong?

Normally, states have about two years to comply with new federal programs, which lets them address the inevitable technical or logistical questions that arise, says Michele Evermore, deputy director for policy at the Department of Labor’s Office of Unemployment Insurance Modernization. But there wasn’t time for that.

When the pandemic began in March of 2020, unemployment claims skyrocketed from 211,000 to 6.6 million a week. Lawmakers jumped into action and designed the most extensive emergency unemployment safety net in history under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. Three new pandemic unemployment programs supported 53 million workers, before they ended less than two years later in September 2021.

Some level of improper payment is normal, generally hovering around 10% for regular unemployment insurance. It’s too soon to know what the overpayment rate was during the pandemic since states are still working through backlogs, but the Employment and Training Administration has estimated an improper payment rate of 18.1%, for a total of $163 billion potential payments made by mistake.

Fraud is an obvious reason to recoup funds from those, within the U.S. and abroad, who capitalized on systemic weaknesses in unemployment infrastructure. In one case, someone used a single Social Security number to apply for unemployment across the country, earning $222,532 from 29 states. 

These problems were most serious at the start of the pandemic; over time, state agencies figured out how to make the programs safer, says Ms. Evermore. 

The bigger issue is the large number of overpayments that occurred due to innocent mistakes. Those errors were caused by a number of issues, including outdated information systems, inadequate staffing, and unclear guidance from the Employment and Training Administration, according to the Department of Labor’s Office of Inspector General. 

In responding to those who were overpaid, the majority of state agencies are trying to act with compassion, says Ms. Evermore. In fact, unemployment offices across the country, represented by the National Association of State Workforce Agencies, urged the federal government in January to allow them to issue more waivers for nonfraudulent overpayments. In response, the Department of Labor updated its guidance, adding five new scenarios where blanket waivers can be granted, as long as the claimant was “without fault in the creation of the overpayment” and repayment would be “contrary to equity and good conscience.”

The latter is a concept Ms. Evermore admits is subjective, but still useful. “In general it means that recouping the overpayment would cause serious harm to someone,” she says. 

It’s reasonable and necessary to reclaim the money “if recovery of the overpayment isn’t going to hurt the claimant, and the claimant was legitimately overpaid,” she adds. “But what we’re seeing is the amounts that were overpaid are very frequently going to amount to a violation of ‘equity and good conscience.’ ... I personally don’t know anybody for whom a $20,000 bill is an easy thing.” 

Looking for help outside the system

The problem is trickiest when the source of the error isn’t clear.

When Kristi Rudisill began to receive an added sum of $600 per week in Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, she was grateful for the extra cash during a difficult time, but she had only applied for regular unemployment.

“They just automatically started giving it to me. They determined that I was eligible to receive it, but they determined it without even speaking to me or finding out any details,” she says. Now, she owes North Carolina more than $9,000. 

After many hours on the phone, Ms. Rudisill had her appeal denied and her case classified as fraudulent. She thinks it was because of the two days she accepted work making face masks before learning the salary was half of what she had been promised. She says she’d be happy to pay back benefits she received for that week, but that doesn’t explain why she received Pandemic Unemployment Assistance in the first place – and it doesn’t help that it’s so difficult to talk to a real human on the other end of the line. She continues to get payment requests in the mail and is at a loss as to what to do next.

Ms. Farrington also suspects her claim was judged fraudulent at first, most likely due to an error on her employer’s part. 

Both women turned to a Facebook group called “NC unemployment Overpayments” for help. Equilla Johnson Hawkins created the group back in 2020, her frustration mounting as she fought having to repay overpayments for herself and her 70-year-old mother. Their debt was eventually waived, and now she spends her free time counseling others facing the same problem, most of whom she says feel lost and scared. 

“No one knows where to go or what direction to take,” she says. She pushes people to be persistent in explaining their situation to the unemployment office. “I tell them to be honest. Be honest.”

Not everyone who comes to her manages to clear their overpayments, but she says the network offers a sense of solidarity. (Because of this experience, she hopes to start a nonprofit one day to help people navigate things like benefits, taxes, and job training.)  

Ms. Farrington hired a lawyer to help her appeal her overpayment, thanks to a recommendation from the Facebook group. In late March, she learned with relief that her appeal had been approved. But when she checked online, her overpayment had dropped only a few thousand dollars to $11,712. Perplexed and frustrated, she’s asked the group for help submitting a waiver request, and is even considering taking out a loan to clear the balance. 

There’s one thing she knows for sure: “I would rather go out and DoorDash, Instacart, deliver newspapers before I ever, ever think about applying for unemployment again.”   

For Dr. Gould-Werth, stories like that are “heartbreaking,” because the whole purpose of the unemployment system is to catch people when they fall, not kick them when they’re down. And that matters for everyone, she says, because when people don’t access needed benefits, unemployment insurance fails to act as a macroeconomic stabilizer to help buoy the economy.  

“When you have a program where there’s a lot of information and experiences that are negative, … then it can’t do its job and it harms all of us.”

When a mustachioed young lawyer named Nelson Mandela moved to a farm a few miles north of Johannesburg in late 1961, he was a wanted man. 

A warrant was out for his arrest for trying to topple South Africa’s white government. At the farm, called Liliesleaf, he slipped into workers’ overalls and spent the next few months posing as a gardener named David, using the cover to help organize anti-apartheid activities with the farm’s other residents.  

Less than a year later, however, the law caught up with Mr. Mandela, and he was arrested outside the town of Howick, 300 miles away. 

He spent the next 27 years in prison. And the rest, as they say, is history. 

But now, Mr. Mandela’s arrest warrant, and the farm where he once hid out, are making history a second time – with a 21st-century twist. Last month, a high-tech virtual copy of Mr. Mandela’s arrest warrant sold for $130,550 as a non-fungible token (NFT).

It was the first archival document in South Africa to be sold as an NFT, and the proceeds will benefit the struggling museum that now sits on the site of Liliesleaf Farm. 

On a continent whose historical artifacts have routinely been plundered by outsiders, the sale has been hailed as a savvy way for African countries to hold on to their heritage while also cashing in on the global elite’s new obsession with digital collectibles. But it also raises concerns about what could happen when the past – or a virtual copy of it – is auctioned off to the highest bidder. 

NFTs operate by storing a digital asset – like an image, video, or audio file – on a blockchain, a secure ledger that records whenever the item is bought or sold, and can be used to prove its origins. In recent years, the NFT market has boomed, reaching a market value of $41 billion by the end of 2021, in large part because of NFTs’ popularity as a way of buying and selling digital art. (The conventional art and antiques market, by comparison, was worth about $50 billion last year.) 

“It’s a double-edged sword,” says Themba Wakashe, a trustee of the Liliesleaf national heritage site, and former director-general of South Africa’s Department of Arts and Culture. “It could be an excellent tool to preserve our heritage. But a lot of people have also been asking, are we selling the family silver?” 

Mr. Mandela’s own family and associates have grappled with the question. In January, the New York auction house Guernsey’s said that it been contacted by one of Mr. Mandela’s daughters to sell off several valuable items associated with the anti-apartheid icon, including the key to the jail cell where he was detained for two decades. The auction house called off the sale after South Africa’s government intervened, saying the key “belongs to the people of South Africa.”

The answers are even less straightforward in the digital world.

Keeping the lights on

The original of Mr. Mandela’s arrest warrant will stay in the Liliesleaf archive. As part of their purchase, the anonymous owner of the NFT will have the right to view the paper copy – with its ragged-edged yellow paper and three-hole punch down the left side – but not to take it away. 

For those running Liliesleaf, that seemed like a great compromise, since the site announced last September it didn’t have the cash to keep the lights on or pay staff.

“Over the years, it’s become harder and harder to secure funding from traditional sources,” says Nicholas Wolpe, the son of human rights lawyer Harold Wolpe, who spent time at Liliesleaf organizing for the liberation movement. With the buzz around NFTs, he thought, Liliesleaf could fundraise without resorting to selling some of its most valuable possessions.

Themba Hadebe/AP/File

Nelson Mandela's room at Liliesleaf Farm in Rivonia, north of Johannesburg, on June 19, 2008. Liliesleaf became a center for anti-apartheid activists in the early 1960s, after the South African government heightened its brutal crackdown on anti-apartheid activists and forced the resistance movement underground.

The core of the purchase is a three-dimensional scan of the document – highlighting how the value of NFTs, like most collectors’ items, is in their rarity, not in their utility. 

“At some point we as a society decided this metal called gold has a value, and so it has a value. Now we’ve decided the same thing with NFTs,” says Nerushka Bowan, head of technology and innovation at the law firm Norton Rose Fulbright South Africa. That value is in part based on the fact that the technology behind NFTs makes them easy to verify and trace. 

But beyond that, things start to get fuzzy. 

“What you are actually purchasing is in the fine print,” Ms. Bowan points out. Sometimes it includes digital copyright, for instance, and sometimes it does not. 

When asked if Mr. Mandela’s arrest warrant could still be placed in a digital archive for public use, trustees of Liliesleaf were unsure. 

“I never thought about that,” says Nicolas Wolpe, the former CEO of Liliesleaf.

“The area is quite murky, to be honest,” Mr. Wakashe says. “There aren’t really established standards and norms.”

Owners’ rights

Ahren Posthumus, CEO of Momint, the digital auction house that brokered the sale with Virtual Nation Builders, a local NFT company, says the buyer has the full digital copyright to the arrest warrant.

“It’s not dissimilar to the situation with physical heritage items – you could display it in your house, you could lock it away in a cupboard, or you could put it in a museum where it could be shared with the public,” he says.  

That means, he says, that the owner can decide if members of the public can see the NFT and use it for research – or not. 

Meanwhile, for now the NFT exists in tandem with a real piece of paper, a fact that Liliesleaf has been careful to stress. But if the original were to be lost, stolen, or destroyed, that could also exponentially increase the value of the digital copy, Ms. Bowan notes.  

Still, for African museums like Liliesleaf, there are some immediate advantages to dabbling in NFTs.

“One of the things that’s been a challenge for a long time has been the illicit trafficking of African heritage,” says Mr. Wakashe. “So this digital authentication is a huge plus in terms of safeguarding our heritage.” It also allowed Liliesleaf to add a clause to the sale saying it gets a portion of the proceeds every time the NFT changes hands – which is easy to track because all transactions on the blockchain where NFTs live are public and verified. 

Beyond that, NFTs may simply prove too lucrative to avoid.

Liliesleaf had been a nerve center for the liberation movement in the early 1960s, with activists like Mr. Mandela frequently coming and going. In July 1963, police raided the farm, arresting 19 people for sabotage. Many were handed life sentences. Today, activists say Liliesleaf stands as a poignant physical reminder of the history of resistance that created modern South Africa. But the pandemic threatened that.   

“During the pandemic, Western institutions leveraged their ability to go digital and used that to stay alive,” Mr. Wakashe says. “But for many African museums, we were literally dead. It was extremely traumatic.” 

For now, the sale of the Mandela NFT won’t be enough to reopen the museum, Mr. Wakashe says. But its owners are hustling for new funding, including possible additional NFTs. 

“It has started a conversation at a broader level – how protected are our cultural institutions? What do we need to do to safeguard them for the future?”

Most governments have a way to identify citizens. In the United States, some argue Social Security numbers have become the de facto national ID. In China, citizens age 16 and up apply for a resident identity card. India has created the world’s largest biometric ID system.

The Unique Identification Authority of India announced in December that 1.3 billion people, or roughly 99% of Indian adults, were enrolled in Aadhaar, an ambitious digital ID program that is increasingly being utilized throughout all spheres of life. And as other nations consider implementing their own national digital ID systems, India may provide insights. 

What is Aadhaar and how does it work? 

The government introduced Aadhaar, meaning “foundation,” in 2009 as a centralized way to ensure every resident had the means to easily establish their identity. This was especially promising for India’s rural poor people, many of whom struggled to access social and financial services because they didn’t have the proper documents. 

To set up an Aadhaar profile, residents offer biometric data – specifically iris scans, fingerprints, and photographs – in exchange for a unique 12-digit identity number. The government stores that information in a database, which certain third-party services can access to confirm your identity when needed. Shortly after sign-up, users receive a physical Aadhaar card, though electronic versions are also available nowadays. 

In addition to making tasks like opening bank accounts and obtaining SIM cards more convenient for Aadhaar users, this system also helps the government prevent identity duplication and other forms of fraud. In 2019, some 49% of India’s citizens used the Aadhaar card to access services such as pensions and food rations for the first time, according to the State of Aadhaar report. Yet controversy has surrounded Aadhaar since its inception.

How are concerns being addressed? 

When the cards were introduced, there were few policy regulations to protect citizens’ data, leading to a 2018 data leak that made Aadhaar data on 200 official government websites public. The system has since implemented tighter security practices, according to former Aadhaar engineer Sanjay Jain, including automatically wiping authentication data after six months. 

Although enrollment is voluntary, critics say Aadhaar has become essential for participation in public and economic life. For all the ways it makes government services more efficient, the ambitious and experimental system is also vulnerable to glitching, creating major problems for those it aims to serve. When access was denied due to issues with authentication, people lost out on food assistance and had trouble enrolling in school.

“When the Aadhaar worked, it really helped people. When it didn’t, it really hurt people,” says Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum. India’s Supreme Court cited her research twice in a 2018 ruling that attempted to set guardrails on Aadhaar usage.

Still, as the Aadhaar system grows and evolves, it’s often unclear how to access services without it, and recent efforts to tie Aadhaar to voter registration and income tax collection have rekindled debate over whether Aadhaar is truly “voluntary.”

Why does Aadhaar matter beyond India?

The World Bank reports that up to a billion people globally have no form of identification, with the highest concentration in Africa and Asia. Digital biometric ID systems are an increasingly attractive solution – especially to governments in developing countries – for their simplicity, relatively low cost, and promise of universal access. 

Joseph Atick, digital identity expert and co-founder of the ID4Africa conference, calls India “a laboratory for the rest of the world.”

“The most successful feature of Aadhaar,” he said in a recent webinar, is “the fact that you have been able to enroll so many people in such a short period of time.”

Many governments, including in nearby Malaysia and Sri Lanka, are looking to India for insight on how to build their own digital ID systems. While Aadhaar won’t be a perfect blueprint for every country, experts say its rollout offers lessons to anyone hoping to close the ID gap.

“Aadhaar is seen as a model,” says Ms. Dixon. “It’s very, very important for people to have access to a just, fair, equitable ID.”

COURTESY OF BRAD PEACOCK

James Crews edited “The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy.”

Is kindness a quaint, ineffectual virtue? For poet and editor James Crews, the answer is a resounding no. As he demonstrates throughout “The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy,” a follow-up collection to his bestselling anthology “How to Love the World,” kindness can be life-altering. It may also help people find a way forward during the most difficult days.  

Like its predecessor, “The Path to Kindness” presents more than 100 uplifting poems by acclaimed writers, including Ted Kooser, Ellen Bass, Tracy K. Smith, and Joy Harjo (the current U.S. poet laureate). The collection also features prompts for reflection or journaling, topics for reading-group discussion, and author biographical notes. 

In a recent Zoom interview, Crews explained that he began planning “The Path to Kindness” during the first full year of the pandemic. Fear of COVID-19 was rampant at that time, and many people viewed anyone outside their household as dangerous. 

To counter this negative thinking, Crews made a practice of finding moments of kindness in his daily life. “This was just smiling at someone during a walk in the park or catching a glimmer in someone’s eyes when we were passing each other in the grocery store, just really small moments of connection and acknowledgment and connection to the natural world,” he says. “Out of that practice grew a desire to collect poems that suggest the world could still be a joyful, connected place, even at a time when we were more disconnected and maybe despairing more than we ever had before.” 

Over several months, Crews collected pieces for the book intuitively, choosing work he most needed to read or hear.

One poem he was drawn to immediately was “Small Kindnesses,” by Danusha Laméris, which emphasizes the inherent goodness in people and how positive interactions accumulate over hours and days. “Laméris’ poem went viral after the presidential election in 2016,” Crews notes.

Two other poems he chose early on were “Kindness” and “Red Brocade,” by Naomi Shihab Nye.

“‘Kindness’ has been a real touchstone for readers in the past few years and became the most downloaded poem from the Academy of American Poets website during the pandemic,” he says.

“‘Red Brocade’ tells the story of how Arabs used to say, ‘Welcome whoever comes to your door, feed them, and get to know them.’ By the time you’re done doing that, you know the person and you’re so friendly, your differences don’t matter,” he explains. 

Crews contacted writers of diverse backgrounds, ages, and locations, both inside and beyond the United States. Some of their poems remind readers to celebrate everyday moments that could easily be overlooked or forgotten. Others, like Susan Musgrave’s “More Than Seeing,” highlight the importance of honoring the interconnectedness of life. 

“As I put together this book, I didn’t think specifically about mapping out a path to kindness,” he says. “That title came later. But if we all did the things that are recommended in these poems, we would reach that path. And we would become much happier, more joyful people in the process.”

This is not to suggest that people add more tasks to their to-do list. Poetry is continually surprising, Crews says, and allowing yourself to be surprised and delighted is a way to restore a sense of peace and tranquility.  

Once that need has been met, it’s easier to focus on the fact that “every moment we have a choice, a sort of fork in the path that we reach. Are we going to approach someone with love, appreciation, connection, or are we going to turn away from them if we don’t believe in the same way that they do?” he says.

What makes some people feel drained is that they confuse niceness with kindness. Niceness often means never making waves or never confronting people. “Kindness, to me, is much deeper,” he says. “It’s about acknowledging the innate value of people, not reducing them to their beliefs and opinions.” 

Crews makes this point in his preface to the collection, where he describes the despondency his husband, Brad, felt after being discharged from the military under the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. No one in Brad’s town knew the reason he’d left the Air Force, but small acts of kindness from neighbors, friends, and customers at the organic farm where he worked kept Brad from ending his life – and gave him a new sense of direction. 

As people resume more normal lives, Crews hopes “The Path to Kindness” can help readers find their own way to brighter, happier days.

More Than Seeing

There is a moment before the kingfisher dives, 

the eagle swoops, the small green ducks disappear

like the breeze in the low hanging cedar branches 

over the river; there is a moment before I name

the kingfisher, the eagle, the ducks when I am not

the observer, I am the dart of light, rush of wings,

the trusting wind; I am grace: an end of living

in awe of things, a beginning of living with them.

– Susan Musgrave

From “The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy,” Storey Publishing, 2022. Reprinted with permission of the author.

Reuters

Palestinians protest at the compound that houses Al-Aqsa Mosque, known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as the Temple Mount, in Jerusalem's Old City April 22.

Peacemaking is hard work in Israel, especially during the rare times when Passover and Ramadan are celebrated at the same time. This year’s overlap of religious calendars did create some lethal tensions between Jews and Muslims over access for worship at their holiest sites in Jerusalem. Yet the real story is why tensions didn’t erupt into a deadly war like the one during last year’s Ramadan.

One reason is that the Israeli military hit hard last year against Hamas, the Islamist rulers in Gaza who had backed violent protests in Jerusalem and fired rockets in Israel. Another is that Israel has had a remarkably diverse government for 10 months, one that includes the first Arab party to be an active member of a ruling coalition. (A fifth of Israeli citizens are Arab.) In the wider Middle East, the 2020 Abraham Accords led to more Arab states recognizing Israel. That was a breakthrough in Jewish-Muslim understanding.

One overlooked reason is that more Arab leaders in Israel are offering alternatives in their communities to the popular hate over Israel’s crackdowns on violent Palestinian protesters in Jerusalem and the West Bank.

One leading Arab politician, Mansour Abbas, worked behind the scenes in recent days to prevent chaos at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, an area known to Jews as the Temple Mount. He is a prominent member of the ruling coalition and head of the United Arab List party, also known by its acronym Ra’am. In a recent speech, he explained why he works for the good of all Israelis and why most Israeli Arabs are against what he called terrorist attacks by a minority of Israeli Arabs:

“It is inconceivable for someone to come and decide that he is taking the lives of innocent people – this must be a basic value rule that has nothing to do with anything else. Secondly, there is a citizenship contract between us of living together – such acts violate the contract.”

Another example is Samir Mahameed, mayor of Umm al-Fahm, Israel’s largest all-Muslim city. Last Friday, he peacefully stopped young men who were blocking roads and destroying property in protest over police actions at the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

“I’m in favor of legitimate and nonviolent protest,” the mayor told the Haaretz newspaper. “There is no place for a protest that violates public order.” A former principal of an elite high school for Arab students, he says he strives for a kind of leadership that listens with respect.

Such motives and actions stand out because only 56% of Israeli Jews believe that the majority of Arab citizens oppose violence carried out against Jews, according to a March survey by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s aChord Center. The survey found that 98% of Arab citizens of Israel actually do oppose acts of violence against Jews.

Changing the perceptions of Arabs and Jews toward each other in Israeli democracy takes more than speeches. Actions aimed at calming fears and raising up shared ideals can reduce violence. They also notably reflect the spirit of inclusivity in both Ramadan and Passover.