Choose an article dealing with injustice from a newspaper, magazine, or online news website. Write about why you chose it and what it makes you think about in your own life.

“She was a student fighting to learn, and now she’s fighting to live.”

Malala Yousafzai was a pupil.

Malala Yousafzai was an activist.

Malala Yousafzai was a writer.

Malala Yousafzai was an artist.

Malala Yousafzai was a speaker.

Malala Yousafzai was a girl.

Malala Yousafzai was age 16 when she was shot by Taliban gunmen, returning home from school. Taliban gunmen feared she was sparking a rebellion in Pakistan, a rebellion of women’s rights and education. They may have put a physical hole in her head, but in my mind that only fueled the fire brewing in Asia, the fire that will one day become too big for gunmen to shoot out, too immense to contain. I hope that one day this fire will envelope the whole world.  Then all people will be treated equally, and peace will reign.

Amazingly, girls like Malala all around the world are mistreated, frowned upon, and uneducated.  Many are sold into a life of servitude, or prostitution.  For the millions of girls in situations like these, there is little hope for survival, let alone the future.  Education changes all of this. If you educate a girl, you educate an entire community.  What I mean by this is that educating a girl increases the probability that the girl will find a stable job.  If that girl has children, those children will go to school, grow up, educate the children of their own-and so the cycle continues.

I find it astonishing that human beings are still struggling with the basic right of equality.  In my mind, the root of most social justice issues is equity-the division of rights.  Malala’s story, and many like it make me think about my own life, and the great number of things I take for granted- a meal on the table, new clothes to wear. Consider the high school application process- for example.  So many New Yorkers put an incredible amount of energy into the task of getting accepted into “the best” school, while kids in India and Afghanistan are struggling to attend school at all. 

But there is change coming.  I see it in new headlines, I see it in the tzedakah collector boxes at my temple, I see it in hands clenched tightly together, and I see it in Malala’s incredible recovery.  Girls are being freed all over the world.  They are being