2008 Woodie Awards
Choosing Life Amidst Death
One Writer's Reflections on the Merkaz HaRav Massacre
Perel Skier
Issue date: 4/15/08 Section: Opinion
What is there to do?
For all our divisions and our spite, we Jews have a tremendous capacity to suffer as one. Text messages leap from phone to phone like neurons, tingles down a national spine. Professors set down their chalk at the news and stand wordless. We choke up. We weep. We pray. We hug people we don't know, people we wouldn't sit next to, people we won't see again. Like one massive body, we absorb the shock and sway: eight boys, sons, brothers will never be men. They belong to us and we belong to them. For that moment we stand mourning them, in the dark, with our heads bowed and hoarse Tehillim on our lips, we all belong to each other.
But then the lights come on and the emotion dissipates. We walk back to our separate dorms to tackle different courses and unique challenges, and it is not so much a sense of closure as a need to get out of that horrible, helpless place, to grapple with things that we have the ability to fix, that pushes us so quickly from the auditorium and the memories. Because for those boys-for those deaths-what is there to do? How can there ever be anything that can make right that kind of searing pain? You hear the descriptions over and over, and all the symbols of goodness and holiness are perverted and profaned. Gemaras and tzitzit! It's like a knife in the heart. You almost want to say to God, "Wasn't it bad enough on the busses? Do we need our faces rubbed in it?" Killed because you're Jewish. Not land, not politics. We are destroyed for the heritage we share-and it speaks to the untapped power of this heritage that it can envelope us so fully in grief.
But if you think about it too much it will smother you. You'd much prefer to talk proverbial tachlis. What's to be done? What is there to do?
Oddly-or perhaps not oddly, if you're acquainted with our national reputation-the bond of unity unravels here. We should level Gaza! No, we can't level Gaza, we can't end this with violence-we need to join the army! No, all we can do is pray…We should start a fund, start a foundation, perform mitzvot in their name-protest outside the United Nations! We should learn from their example…
For all our divisions and our spite, we Jews have a tremendous capacity to suffer as one. Text messages leap from phone to phone like neurons, tingles down a national spine. Professors set down their chalk at the news and stand wordless. We choke up. We weep. We pray. We hug people we don't know, people we wouldn't sit next to, people we won't see again. Like one massive body, we absorb the shock and sway: eight boys, sons, brothers will never be men. They belong to us and we belong to them. For that moment we stand mourning them, in the dark, with our heads bowed and hoarse Tehillim on our lips, we all belong to each other.
But then the lights come on and the emotion dissipates. We walk back to our separate dorms to tackle different courses and unique challenges, and it is not so much a sense of closure as a need to get out of that horrible, helpless place, to grapple with things that we have the ability to fix, that pushes us so quickly from the auditorium and the memories. Because for those boys-for those deaths-what is there to do? How can there ever be anything that can make right that kind of searing pain? You hear the descriptions over and over, and all the symbols of goodness and holiness are perverted and profaned. Gemaras and tzitzit! It's like a knife in the heart. You almost want to say to God, "Wasn't it bad enough on the busses? Do we need our faces rubbed in it?" Killed because you're Jewish. Not land, not politics. We are destroyed for the heritage we share-and it speaks to the untapped power of this heritage that it can envelope us so fully in grief.
But if you think about it too much it will smother you. You'd much prefer to talk proverbial tachlis. What's to be done? What is there to do?
Oddly-or perhaps not oddly, if you're acquainted with our national reputation-the bond of unity unravels here. We should level Gaza! No, we can't level Gaza, we can't end this with violence-we need to join the army! No, all we can do is pray…We should start a fund, start a foundation, perform mitzvot in their name-protest outside the United Nations! We should learn from their example…
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