Synagogues often stage overflow services for Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year in Judaism, but with social distancing limiting attendance numbers, the London rabbi Yoni Golker had to think of a new way to reach his congregation.
His desire to explore the concepts of atonement, redemption and forgiveness – the message of Yom Kippur – took him on a virtual mission to California after reading about an unlikely friendship between Dr Denise Taylor and Ronnie Fields – the man who killed her brother.
Since the onset of lockdown, Golker, 37, has interviewed a number of prominent Jews – ranging from the former chief rabbi Jonathan Sacks to the Love Island contestant Eyal Booker, emerging as something of a spiritual YouTuber. His latest 40-minute video chat, entitled My Brother’s Killer is Now My Friend, goes live on Yom Kippur.
Neither Taylor nor Fields is Jewish, but both believe – like Golker, the associate rabbi of St John’s Wood synagogue in north London – that their tale transcends religion, race and nationality.
Taylor, now 58, had just graduated from university in 1984 when her nineteen-year-old brother, Bo, was shot dead by Fields during a bungled cannabis deal. Fields, then 24, was sentenced to a minimum of 27 years. Taylor and her father had called for a life sentence without parole.
Fast-forward to 2016 and the bereaved pair were in court again – urging the judge to release Fields.
In the interim, Taylor had become a prison doctor and, around the 20th anniversary of her only sibling’s death, she was en route to address a room of “lifers” when a radio programme changed her life, she told Golker.
“I heard a story on the radio about a woman who was in touch with the man who had killed her parents and how … she had forgiven him. I was working in a men’s prison and I thought ‘that sounds like something I would want to do’.”
Instead of giving her planned talk, she shared her story. “I knew what it would mean to them to be able to meet with their victims’ families,” she said.
She wrote to Fields and in 2005 he replied, saying: “Ms Taylor, believe me when I tell you this, no matter what you or your family think of me, I live every day of my life with the fact that I took a life. I regret that it happened and I am deeply sorry for bringing so much pain and discomfort into your lives.”
Over the following decade, Taylor visited regularly from her home in San Luis Obispo and she and her father attended several parole hearings. Fields walked free in 2017 after 32 years and set about starting afresh, supported by Taylor, whom he had listed on prison documents as next of kin.
The pair collaborated with a BBC article in 2017, but afterwards Fields declined all further interviews. “I wanted to put it behind me,” he told the Guardian. “But when the rabbi contacted me I told him, ‘God keeps opening doors for me and I keep closing them’.
“If somebody can get something good out of it then I give something back.”
Things initially went well for Fields: he got a job, saved money and steered clear of trouble. But in June 2019 he lost an arm and a leg in a motorbike accident and has spent the last 15 months in a rehabilitation clinic, from where he spoke to Taylor and the rabbi.
Explaining how Taylor’s actions affected him, he said: “The commissioner [of the prison] said only 1% of people actually do that [forgive]. Most people never want you to get out of prison.”
One such person was Taylor’s mother. “Her mother told me something, she said ‘I hope that every day of your life be miserable’. I’ve been lying on my back for over a year … I’m just in a bad shape and I’m going to be like this for the rest of my life. It’s just karma.”
Taylor, who visited Fields following the crash, said: “I forgive him for myself and I hope it helps him but ultimately he has to forgive himself.
“He needs to hopefully, at some point, come to peace with something bad happened, resulting in the death of my brother. And then, at some point, say ‘OK … I have a purpose in life to do something good’.”
