May 2013

Like many of you, as I watched the events of last week unfold, I often felt like I was watching a disaster movie. A day of community and civic celebration became a scene of chaos and tragedy, killing three innocent people — and then tragically a fourth — and injuring over 170. Then on Friday, Jeremy and I stayed in our homes during the Boston “lockdown,” listening to sirens nearby and helicopters overhead. It was terrifying to feel that the streets we assumed were safe might be hiding a killer on the loose.
And yet, as the news cycle calms and the rest of the country goes back to normal, I have to say that I’m troubled by the repeated pronouncements that we are now safe. To be sure, I feel much safer now that the perpetrators are off the streets, and I feel deeply grateful to the paramedics, doctors, volunteers, policemen, and firemen, who showed inspiring compassion and courage this week.
But, as I learned last night at a gathering of the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization (GBIO), in the mere four days after the Marathon bombing, an additional 9 people were lost to gun violence in the city of Boston. At the GBIO gathering, a woman reported that just hours after terrorist suspect Dzokhar Tsarnaev was caught, her family heard six bullets shot outside their home in Roxbury. Her teenage son responded, “When a murderer is on the loose downtown or in Watertown, we shut down the city. When killers are near here, it is just called living in Roxbury, and we are supposed to accept it.”
My first reaction to the young man’s cynicism was “Yes, but, this particular murder hurt hundreds…” – but the more I thought about it the more I felt there was substance to his complaint.
So, how should we as Jews respond to this young man? Well, let me share with you a lesson from the book of Leviticus, taught me by my teacher, Rabbi Nehemia Polen, which I spoke about this past Friday. As Rabbi Polen understands it, one of the essential lessons of Leviticus is that when we create a breach in our relationships, to repair the breach we must go to a deeper place than we normally inhabit. For instance, if an Israelite sins, his offering is sacrificed by the priest on the outer altar, a place where an Israelite does not go. When a priest sins, he goes to the inner altar and gestures toward the Holy of Holies, where even normal priests do not go. Thus, healing doesn’t mean going back to where we started, it means going deeper.
Connecting this to our situation, perhaps the best way to move forward from the Marathon bombing would be to build on the sense of unity we felt this week, and use that spirit to build a safer world, a world where no kid has to accept street violence, whether he lives in Dorchester or Copley Square. And if we’re feeling faint-hearted, let’s remind ourselves of the courage of so many ordinary people who ignored their own personal peril and heroically jumped into harm’s way to help the injured and fallen.
I personally believe moving forward on reducing violence means working harder to (i) ban assault weapons – weapons, it seems to me, which are way beyond anyone’s legitimate need for self-protection – and (ii) enact federal and state laws requiring background checks on all gun sales so as to prevent firearms from being freely transferred to unstable individuals. I also believe we need to strengthen mental health coverage and reduce the stigma of mental illness – both because it is right and because we will all be safer if potentially violent people are helped long before they cross the threshold to violence. Whatever you believe is the solution, we all owe it to the memory of those lost last week, and to the kids in violent neighborhoods who still live in fear every day, to do our best working together to create safer and more compassionate communities.
Warm regards,
Rabbi Margie