Our family’s story is one of many who journey to a new land in the hope of a better life than the one we would have led if we had stayed in our homelands. It is the story of the immigrant and the "American Dream."

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 seven 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. We engaged in a process of communal healing in an effort to teach the world that we are more than what happens to us.

In collective grief, we realized that healing is both individual and communal. 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 four, a community leader, trauma therapist, author, and Director of the Interfaith Conference of Greater Milwaukee. It is clear that our journey to a post-traumatic America, whether individual or communal, requires a process of healing through the "transformational will" that lives in us all.

Tuesday, November 8, 2022; 6:30pm-8:00pm CT Cost: $15