Violence and Responsibility

I read a novel over the past week which I highly recommend.  It was written by David Grossman and it’s called To the End of The Land.  It takes place in Israel and the main character is a mother whose son decides to reenlist in the Israeli Army after his official army service has ended.

She is petrified that he will be killed in a dangerous offensive that he is part of.  She lives in persistent fear that she will receive a knock on her door, followed by the bearing of tragic news about her son.  So she leaves home and, with the boy’s father (not her husband but you find that out early on) embarks on a journey of discovery and memory.  Her magical thinking, which of course she recognizes as such, is that if only she stays away from home, no one can knock on her door and deliver the bad news.

It’s an amazing novel by an extraordinary author – among his close friends are Amos Oz and A B Yehoshua – a great story, superbly drawn characters, a complex meditation on memory and fear, life and death – and one of the themes it explores is the near obsession we have with protecting our children. 

The mother in the story feels helpless.  Her son reenlisted  and tells her he has done so at the last minute.  He is out of her sight and surrounded by danger.  And yet she does not act helplessly – she regales the child’s father with information about his son that he did not know, since he was detached while their son was growing up for his own reasons.

And during her son’s service, when she would see him on leave, she is not quiet about her opinions regarding the war and the occupation.   She is vivacious, intelligent, loving, with a strong moral compass and a recognition of the complexity of the situation.  She is quite capable of giving a “what for” in multiple directions – toward the Arab captors of her son’s father; toward her son for not speaking out when someone in his platoon left an elderly Arab man in a meat locker for several days.

Within her limited capacity, she acts and speaks with a sense of purpose.

A few days ago, the students at Sandy Hook Elementary started school again in a nearby location, painstakingly designed to reproduce their actual school as accurately as possible.

For the past weeks, so many of us have felt a combination of numbness, terror, sadness, empathy and anger watching the tragedy from afar, watching families eulogize 6 year olds, as well as young and middle aged adults.

An elementary school in Connecticut should bear no resemblance to a military operation – at first blush, the protagonist in Grossman’s novel and the parents in Newtown have little in common – but the core element – the inability to protect children fully and the fear which that inability engenders – is familiar.

I will not speak for all faith traditions now – I will speak on behalf of Jewish tradition.  The fear that comes from our ultimate inability to offer protection – to our children, to all of God’s children, frankly – is no excuse for paralysis and the inability to accomplish everything is no excuse to do nothing.

A terrified Israeli mother – albeit a character in a novel but her circumstance and comportment are very real – a terrified Israeli mother spoke out and acted and all of us who watched this recent, but by no means unparalleled, tragedy unfold need to speak out and act, as well.

Today is the first Shabbat following the 40^th yahrzeit of Abraham Joshua Heschel.  Today we started to read about the enslavement of the Israelites and the beginning of the redemption.  And there’s one further distinguishing aspect to this day which I’ll get to.

I’ll start with Heschel’s yahrzeit.  Abraham Joshua Heschel taught for decades at the Jewish Theological Seminary and wrote numerous books about rabbinic law and philosophy.  He was masterful at expressing concepts that seem to defy expression – how to begin to confront the infinite and, related, how to begin to take responsibility.

He wrote the following about the potential misuse of human power in his book, Between God and Man:

In exercising power, we submit to our will a world which we did not create, invading realms that do not belong to us.  Are we the kings of the universe or mere pirates?  By whose grace, by what right, do we exploit, consume and enjoy the fruits of the trees, the blessings of the earth?  Who is responsible for the power to exploit, for the privilege to consume?

It is not an academic problem but an issue we face at every moment.  By the will alone man becomes the most destructive of all beings.  This is our predicament:  our power may become our undoing.  We stand on a razor’s edge.  It is so easy to hurt, to destroy, to insult, to kill.  Giving birth to one child is a mystery; bringing death to millions is but a skill.  It is not quite within the power of the human will to generate life; it is quite within the power of the will to destroy life.

As we know, Heschel was a staunch protestor against human violence and a staunch advocate for human rights.

He famously said, when marching in Selma, Alabama for civil rights for African Americans, that while he was marching, his feet were praying.

I’ve generally understood that to mean, gee how nice, I had a meaningful, prayerful moment while marching.  But I’m inclined to think he was saying something more potent than that.  Not enough to pray with words.  We also need to act, and that may constitute the most significant prayer of all.

That was part one and here comes part two.

I said earlier that this morning’s Torah reading describes the enslavement and the beginning of the redemption. 

Classically the story of the Exodus is understood most dramatically as a story of human suffering and divine intervention – God’s strong hand and outstretched arm are responsible for the deliverance.

But there is a subtext in the story that is about human initiative.  The midwives who refuse to kill the male children as per Pharoah’s orders, and Pharoah’s daughter who saves and adopts a Hebrew child, seem to be exercising what later generations would call conscientious objection.  Undeniably, this is courageous human initiative at work.  The Torah suggests a strong connection between humanity and divinity – so we are told ותיראן המילדות את האלהים  vatir’ena ham’yaldot et ha’elohim – the midwives feared God.

And a Midrash suggests that when Pharoah’s daughter reached out her hand to grasp the basket, she couldn’t reach far enough on her own and God extended her reach.

The multiple textures of the narrative in the Torah and the Midrash present us with a usable framework, a transformative web of humanity and divinity.  The bottom line seems to be that when human beings, for whatever reason, act courageously to stop evil from taking place, it sets a positive chain of events in motion. 

God will do all sorts of pyrotechnic shtick like turning the river into blood and bringing frogs and locusts.

But the redemption begins when three women do the right thing.

And now part three. 

In 2006, Mayor Bloomberg of NYC and Mayor Menino of Boston founded Mayors Against Illegal Guns.  It has grown since then to include 750 Democratic, Republican and Independent mayors across the country.  In the wake of the shootings in Newtown, this organization designated the Shabbat of January 5 as the Sabbath to Stop Gun Violence.

Two weeks ago, Rabbi Adelson traced the Jewish approach from Biblical through contemporary sources, emphasizing the Jewish obligation to minimize the possibility of one human being harming another.

A Joint Statement issued by the Rabbinical Assembly and the United Synagogue ofConservative Judaism identified several specific proposals which Rabbi Julie Schoenfeld, Executive VP of the Rabbinical Assembly, summarized as follows in a speech she gave two weeks ago at the National Cathedral Gun Violence vigil:

• We must ban the sale of assault weapons
• We must institute appropriate background checks
• We must cease the online sale of ammunition

I encourage anyone who is so inclined to sign a petition circulated by the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. 

In the aftermath of the shootings, many prayers were offered, along with appropriate condolences to the families.

In the spirit of two midwives and a princess, in honor of the 40^th yahrzeit of a leading voice in modern Jewry, in memory of the 20 children and 6 adults who were killed in Newtown and the numerous victims of similar shootings over the years, with homage to appropriately protective parents everywhere, I say, not enough for our lips to pray.  Our voices need to pray; our legs need to pray; our signatures need to pray.

When the Israelites were trapped at the Sea, Moses looked up to God and said, “Now what?” and God said, מה תצעק אלי–דבר אל בני ישראל ויסעו Ma titz’ak elai?  Daber el b’nei yisrael v’yisau.

Why are you crying out to me?  Talk to the children of Israel and move forward.

Time for us to protect.  Time for us to protest.  Time for us to talk to each other, especially to those who have influence – and move forward.

Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck on January 6, 2013, coinciding with Abraham Joshua Heschel's 40th Yahrtzeit and the Shabbat to Stop Gun Violence