We have been talking about brothers and brotherhood.
Brothers share DNA, parents, history, culture and sometimes values.
Ideally at least, brothers feel a sense of high obligation to one another and
always have each other’s backs.
Other than in rare cases of Solomonic excess, one only has a
few literal siblings. All others are only “brothers” in a figurative sense. On
the basis of the Old Testament, I have compared brotherhood to the layers
of an onion, in which the highest level of responsibility lies toward those at
the center of our lives and radiates out through the “layers” of immediate
family, then extended family, tribe and nation.
