IN THE MIDST OF EVIL TAKE ACTION!
I’m wondering where in the Torah, indeed, where in the entire Tanach, does God tell us that prayer is a sufficient substitute for action. I hope somebody can point that out to me. Prayer can be powerful. We use it to heal, to engage in it to energize us, to strengthen us during formidable times in our lives and to express our gratitude for the lives we have, but where is it written that prayer is all that is needed to repair the world? Nowhere. Nowhere. Absolutely nowhere.
Like you, I awaken to one story after another about violence in our society. Mass shootings everywhere, concerts, clubs, airports, train stations, houses of worship, and on our streets. The New York Times blasts in a headline, The Toll Since Sandy Hook: More than 400 People Shot, in over 200 School Shootings (2/16/18). I turn on the television really forcing myself to because I know I will become inundated with one horror story after another about the latest school shooting, about some crazed person, this time, 19 years old, able to legally purchase an assault weapon but unable to legally drink alcohol because he is underage. I know I’m going to hear crazed, bereft, shocked parents who will yell at the television cameras as reporters ask them the most unseemly questions in their shock and grief. I listen to one mother whose daughter was just murdered and whose only crime was to attend school that day. She got in the way of a murderer’s bullets. And, the mother screams, “Do something! How do we allow a gunman to come into our children’s school? How do they get through security? What security is there? The gunman—a crazy person---just walks right into the school, knocks down the window of my child’s door and starts shooting. Shooting her! And killing her! "(CNN 2/15).
And, then there it is over the years: photos of our Presidents, both Republicans and Democrats, attending prayer vigils, offers of prayers and condolences to mourning families. Some have been supportive but impotent to help effect changes to our gun laws and others like what we are witnessing presently choose to cast this carnage politically as the result only of mental health issues instead of asking how it is possible for assault weapons to be legally purchased by civilians? Does anybody really think that the framers of the U.S. Constitution had assault weapons in mind when the 2nd Amendment was drafted?
I knew like many of you that if a change in our laws did not follow the carnage at Sandy Hook, where so many little, young students were murdered in cold blood, nothing would. Here we are: A nation whose majority wants changes in our gun control laws and one Congress after another unable to enact them. We must ask who exactly is representing the will of the people? Who? Why do we continually send people to Washington if not to represent us and do the will of the people they purport to represent?
And, there it is again and again, beyond the images of the stricken families, friends, nation and all those mountains of flowers offered as expressions of support to the families and in memory of those struck down -- Politicians offering their prayers and condolences.
My niece overwhelmed by the violence and horror she is watching unfold on her screen tells me I am lucky my children are adults, that I no longer need to send them off for a day of school. Doesn’t this just say it all?!
So, along with our prayers and condolences, perhaps we should be praying for the soul of every politician who we elect to represent us. As Jews we believe in an afterlife, we believe in a time of judgment for the lives we have just led. We are taught in a society where people go hungry we are all responsible and in a society where our elected legislators are unable to effect change and stand up to all of this senseless carnage and take action to do so, how can we conclude anything other than that they all in some measure have blood on their hands?
We grieve along with everyone one else about this latest round of senseless murders. We live in a nation under siege. How can anyone correctly argue it is now safe to blindly send our children to school? In the absence of people capable of effecting change, Torah instructs us to be those people. Much more than prayer is needed. Be those people.
Like you, I awaken to one story after another about violence in our society. Mass shootings everywhere, concerts, clubs, airports, train stations, houses of worship, and on our streets. The New York Times blasts in a headline, The Toll Since Sandy Hook: More than 400 People Shot, in over 200 School Shootings (2/16/18). I turn on the television really forcing myself to because I know I will become inundated with one horror story after another about the latest school shooting, about some crazed person, this time, 19 years old, able to legally purchase an assault weapon but unable to legally drink alcohol because he is underage. I know I’m going to hear crazed, bereft, shocked parents who will yell at the television cameras as reporters ask them the most unseemly questions in their shock and grief. I listen to one mother whose daughter was just murdered and whose only crime was to attend school that day. She got in the way of a murderer’s bullets. And, the mother screams, “Do something! How do we allow a gunman to come into our children’s school? How do they get through security? What security is there? The gunman—a crazy person---just walks right into the school, knocks down the window of my child’s door and starts shooting. Shooting her! And killing her! "(CNN 2/15).
And, then there it is over the years: photos of our Presidents, both Republicans and Democrats, attending prayer vigils, offers of prayers and condolences to mourning families. Some have been supportive but impotent to help effect changes to our gun laws and others like what we are witnessing presently choose to cast this carnage politically as the result only of mental health issues instead of asking how it is possible for assault weapons to be legally purchased by civilians? Does anybody really think that the framers of the U.S. Constitution had assault weapons in mind when the 2nd Amendment was drafted?
I knew like many of you that if a change in our laws did not follow the carnage at Sandy Hook, where so many little, young students were murdered in cold blood, nothing would. Here we are: A nation whose majority wants changes in our gun control laws and one Congress after another unable to enact them. We must ask who exactly is representing the will of the people? Who? Why do we continually send people to Washington if not to represent us and do the will of the people they purport to represent?
And, there it is again and again, beyond the images of the stricken families, friends, nation and all those mountains of flowers offered as expressions of support to the families and in memory of those struck down -- Politicians offering their prayers and condolences.
My niece overwhelmed by the violence and horror she is watching unfold on her screen tells me I am lucky my children are adults, that I no longer need to send them off for a day of school. Doesn’t this just say it all?!
So, along with our prayers and condolences, perhaps we should be praying for the soul of every politician who we elect to represent us. As Jews we believe in an afterlife, we believe in a time of judgment for the lives we have just led. We are taught in a society where people go hungry we are all responsible and in a society where our elected legislators are unable to effect change and stand up to all of this senseless carnage and take action to do so, how can we conclude anything other than that they all in some measure have blood on their hands?
We grieve along with everyone one else about this latest round of senseless murders. We live in a nation under siege. How can anyone correctly argue it is now safe to blindly send our children to school? In the absence of people capable of effecting change, Torah instructs us to be those people. Much more than prayer is needed. Be those people.