One man alone did not take O’Shae Sibley’s young life. An entire society murdered him.

A pre-teen Jewish boy with swarthy skin and dark, intense eyes journeyed through the constant and unrelenting horrors of Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe in search of his parents – who abandoned him to save him from being transported to a concentration camp along with them.

Walking from town to town in muddying rains, freezing snow, and blistering sun, he witnessed and experienced the extremes of human inhumanity: the cruelties of enslavement, rape, murder, theft of life’s essentials – all this not from the soldiers in combat, but, rather, from the citizenry.

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O’Shae Sibley’s murder was caused by America’s debilitating ignorance of LGBTQ+ people

This is why we need to fight for inclusive education from early childhood onward.

Though these terrors left him mute and changed him essentially into a feral child, his indomitable spirit led him deeper and deeper along his search for some sort of hope in finding human kindness, which he did find, but only on occasion and ever so briefly.

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Loosely based on his Holocaust survival story, Jerzy Kosiński’s novel, The Painted Bird, takes its name from an incident the boy witnessed while in the company of a man who earned his living by capturing and selling wild birds.

One day, the bird catcher grabbed a bird from its cage. Handing it to the boy to hold onto tightly, the man brushed its wings and head with paint of various colors and told the boy to release the bird to join its flock overhead.

Upon reaching its kin, the members of the flock viciously attacked the painted bird with their sharp piercing beaks onto what they saw as an outsider, an intruder, a perceived predator who must not be allowed to penetrate their space. It quickly plunged and crashed dead to the ground just next to the boy.

The sadistic bird catcher reminded and warned the boy that he too, a Jew, is like the painted bird, a perennial outsider, an intruder, a perceived predator who must not be allowed to penetrate gentile space.

I am continually reminded of the bird catchers and painters in our nation: the civil, religious, political, economic, and industrial “leaders” who spread paint of various colors and hues onto those who in some ways either cannot or will not abide by the dictates of ruthless social conformity. They refuse to relinquish their genuine selves, their unique selves, and for this, they often pay the ultimate price.

O’Shae Sibley was a 28-year-old Black gay man our society painted with intersectional shades. He was a talented and committed professional dancer and choreographer who was dancing and vogueing to Beyoncés album, “Renaissance,” with friends at a Brooklyn- area gas station on Saturday evening, July 29.

A group of men approached the group, confronted them with anti-gay slurs, and demanded they stop dancing.

Sibley’s friends, witnesses to the events, said he attempted to diffuse the situation when one of the men stabbed him in the torso. O’Shae was pronounced dead after being taken to a hospital.

“They murdered him because he’s gay, because he stood up for his friends,” said Otis Pena who was on the scene. “His name was O’Shae, and you all killed him. You all murdered him right in front of me.”

Pena is correct. One man or one flock alone did not peck out O’Shae’s young life. A society murdered him, one led by those who paint certain groups as perennial outsiders, as intruders, as perceived predators who must not be allowed to penetrate their space.

Members of stigmatized and marginalized (painted) groups live with the constant reality of random and unprovoked systematic violence directed against them simply on account of their social identities.

The intent of this xenophobic violence is to harm, humiliate, and destroy the “other” for the purpose of maintaining hierarchical power positions and attendant privileges of the dominant group over minoritized groups.

Whenever one of us is diminished, we are all demeaned. When any person or group remains institutionally and socially stigmatized, marginalized, excluded, or disenfranchised, when violence comes down upon any of us, the possibility for authentic community cannot be realized unless and until we become involved, to challenge, to question, and to act in truly transformational ways.

Beyoncé released her already classic album “Renaissance” just one year before O’Shae’s tragic murder. It features several examples of house music from Black queer artists and queer ballroom culture.

The form of “voguing” enjoyed today originated from the “cakewalk”: a dance performed by enslaved people in the United States as improvisational movements mimicking the mannerisms and bodily expressions of plantation owners.

O’Shae lived his life with integrity, joy, and with true authenticity. He believed that love will conquer hatred.

“REST IN POWER O’SHAE SIBLEY,” Beyoncé’s official website posted Wednesday morning, July 2.

Though I did not have the privilege of meeting Sibley, as we often rsay within the Jewish community after the death of a loved one, “May your memory be a blessing.”