December 22, 2012
Eight days
have passed. There still are no words to describe the sense of loss and
emptiness, of unimaginable pain, and there never will be. A hurricane or
tornado takes lives, and words like ‘tragedy’, ‘random’, ‘negligent’ and
‘inexplicable’ spring to mind. Drought gives way to famine somewhere in the
world, and we speak about government corruption and ineptitude. Monks set
themselves on fire in Tibet,
and we speak about desperation and admire their struggle against an oppressive,
persecuting regime. Civilians die in Syria, and it’s far enough away
that we see their deaths as the devastating but necessary cost of their fight
for freedom against a butcher, son of butchers. All these are tragedies, but
tragedies that almost have a purpose. But this, this has no purpose. And it’s
happened before, and it will probably happen again.
The day of
the Columbine shootings, Rick Barger, the Lutheran minister in Littleton, Colorado,
spent the day as a victim’s assistant. His was the first face many of the
students saw as they fled the building. Thirteen years later, he still carries those
teens with him. He was interviewed frequently by the press in the early days
following the shooting, and, whenever people asked about where God was that
day, he would say, “God took a bullet and died in halls of Columbine.” [1] That
the murdered in Sandy Hook were so young, and
their deaths so brutal, makes it worse.
Though we
sometimes express it in different language, Jews and Christians share the
belief that each and every human being is created in the image and likeness of
God.[2] The
phrase, ‘image and likeness’ is more ancient than the Torah and more potent
than even our sages suggest. In recent years, scholars have discerned that, ‘Image
and likeness,’ is the Akkadian way of describing a manifestation of God in this
world. They used the phrase to describe the icon or statue of the god placed
above an altar. The innovation of our Bible is to apply that phrase, image
and likeness, to each and every human being.[3] Suddenly
we understand why the first commandment in the Torah is p’ru ur’vu – be
fruitful and multiply. Bring children into the world, nurture children, teach
them, raise them to attain their destiny, and you have made God that much more
real, that much more present. No other mitzvah gets the same amount of
attention; story after story in Genesis and the first part of Exodus emphasizes
the point that people of faith are to value having and raising children above
almost everything else. One message of the Binding of Isaac, as it is written,
is that even God, who requires all sorts of sacrifices on the part of the
faithful, will never, ever ask for the death of our children. If you think
you’re hearing God ask for the death of a child, the Torah tells us, you are
the one who is mistaken.
So, yes, as
President Obama said on Sunday night, America finds the presence of God
among those adults who heroically gave their lives to try to protect the
children at Sandy Hook Elementary and among the emergency workers and first
responders who put their own needs aside to deal with the carnage and serve the
living. Yet as after every pointless, violent death, after Sandy
Hook, we are also experiencing a diminishment of God’s presence. Our
sages teach in the Talmud that one who saves
one life is as if he has preserved an entire world; but who causes one life to
be lost is considered as if he has destroyed an entire world. These children
and their teachers haven’t been called back to God; God didn’t need any more
angels, nor was he protecting them from a worse future; I can’t imagine a
better place for a six-year-old than a first grade classroom. Rather, they are
dead because they were in the right place, at the right time, when a man came
by with big guns that held far too many bullets and committed a heinous mass
murder.
I hope
you’ve joined in the international effort to try to console the bereaved.
Vigils and prayer services are important ways to support those who are
struggling to survive traumatic loss. By all means sign condolence cards that
are circulating online, send flowers and contributions and acknowledge the
grief of the bereaved. Nihum aveilim – comforting the bereaved – is a
central practice of hesed, of love, and an important mitzvah. It
brings strength and reassurance to those who receive comfort, reward to those
who give it and hope to its witnesses. Please, please comfort the grieving:
just don’t stop there. Confronting this event forces us to look inwards as well
– although the details of his story are still emerging and probably will never
be completely clarified, the one thing we know about Adam Lanza is that he,
like us, was a human being. And that should be terrifying.
Many in
recent days have pointed to the breakdown of mental health care in the United States
during and since the Reagan years. Many of us know of parents who wrestle with
the challenges of raising children who have psychiatric disorders that
predispose them to violent and abusive behavior. The resources for education
and healing simply aren’t available… at least anywhere outside of the prison
system. I believe I heard Alan Chartock this week crack that the core of the
problem might be that mental hospitals don’t have alumni associations to fund
them.[4]
Families in this congregation have been affected and continue to be affected
every day by people with mental illness – few of whom are as dangerous as Adam
Lanza turned out to be – but all of whom require more care than is easily
available to them.
Valuing
care for those who live with mental illness requires a significant amount of
compassion - sharing in the suffering of another. That’s a hard thing for many
people to do with respect to people with mental illness. Our tradition offers
us a way to access that compassion by placing all of us on two continua: one
regarding the yetzer hara, the other regarding the yetzer hatov,
both innate forces in every single individual’s personality. The yetzer hara
is what motivates each of us to serve ourselves – it is selfish, demanding
and wily, tricking us into choices that benefit only ourselves even when we
think we are being generous and fair. And its counterpart, just as innate
though it usually emerges later, is the yetzer hatov, the part of our
psyche that motivates us to serve each other and the greater good. The relative
strength of each varies from person to person, yet, those engaged in the
spiritual life seek to teach the yetzer hara boundaries and nurture the yetzer
hatov in themselves, their students and their loved ones. Each yetzer grows
only to the extent that we exercise it, and each becomes less powerful as we
hold it back.[5]
We find
that place of compassion when we realize that a person whose yetzer hara is
dominant and yetzer hatov is deficient should not be ostracized. Rather
that is exactly the person who might benefit most from repeated, sensitive
attempts to grow in character. Although some small percentage of human beings
might be incapable of getting there, there are many people for whom such
learning is difficult but not impossible. Although our sages affirm that it is
the individual’s responsibility to choose life, each of us has innumerable
opportunities to influence that decision in others. People who live with mental
illness – diagnosed and undiagnosed, managed and unmanaged, medicated and
unmedicated – are not that different from the rest of us; neither we nor our
society are exempt from responsibility.
The
scarcity of effective mental health care is, however, just one of two themes
that has captured attention in the wake of the murders in Sandy
Hook. Reasonable people are looking at this as the latest in a
disturbing series of incidents of gun violence against the public. And in
particular, we are frustrated with the easy availability of assault weapons, whose
sole purpose is to enable people to kill other people, as quickly and as conclusively
as possible; the accessibility of guns and ammunition, without background
checks, on the web and at gun shows; the lack of computerized tracking of gun
purchases; and the prevalence of high-capacity magazines in civilian homes and
hands. In the context of biblical values shared by the vast majority of
Americans, this risk to walking image-and-likenesses of God, is perplexing.
But in the
context of American democracy, the veneration of the second amendment and of
guns is completely incomprehensible. Frontier fantasies aside, Americans don’t actually
live in John Wayne movies. We don’t resolve disputes by pulling out guns; may
the biggest gun win. We live in a country with laws. We resolve disputes by
going to court and arguing about them, then abiding by the judge’s ruling,
which, in turn, we have a right to appeal. We deal with policy issues by
electing representatives to local, state and federal government office and
holding them accountable. And we rely, at least in theory, on the democratic
principle of one person, one vote – not the violence principle: biggest gun
wins argument.
In many
quarters of our country, gun culture has strayed into idolatry. I’m not
referring to people who keep one handgun in a secure gun safe to use in
self-defense (though that’s probably not a rational decision, given the
statistics), nor to most of the people who hunt or shoot for sport on gun
ranges. However the positions taken by the NRA, the Gun Owners of America and
similar groups on the primacy of the Second Amendment over every other freedom
– including, apparently, the inalienable rights to life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness – are the very definition of idolatry: the supplanting of
our core values by trust in the gun.[6] Read
Wayne
LaPierre’s statement carefully and parse out his argument; you will find that
he and his organization put their faith in guns. You won’t find that in Jewish
scripture. You won’t find it in the Gospels or the Pauline letters. And it’s
not the American way either.
I actually understand
how people could stake out a religious and ideological position to trust in
guns; I don’t think they are monsters or aliens. Life is anxiety-provoking and
unpredictable, especially when you meditate on the horrors that people commit
against each other and the many ways we have created to exterminate ourselves
and each other. There are many ways to cope with that uncertainty, and among the
most tempting is to think there is a way we can defend ourselves against all
threats and exercise complete control over our lives. There’s a reason biblical
teachings on idolatry often employ the language of seduction – full control
over our lives is tempting, desirable and ultimately an illusion.
Some people, overwhelmed by anxiety
and fear, and seeking control, want to carry their guns everywhere – on their
commute to work, to defend against an imagined road rage incident; at the
office, in case a coworker gets out of control; into government buildings and courtrooms,
lest a lunatic show up; and into churches and schools so that those who would
think about acts of violence there will be guaranteed to get shot down first.
But just because so many have
chosen this path doesn’t make it right, smart or wise. Its fallacy is in its
false distinction of self from other; who’s to say that the other is the
threat, and that I am not? Furthermore, no gun, no matter how powerful, works
as a foolproof amulet against evil forces. Only as worshippers of idols do we,
in our anxiety, turn to weapons as a sure defense against the chaos. As
Americans, we ought to believe that the democratic process helps more than guns
do; as people of faith, we turn our hearts to prayer, our minds to the yetzer
hatov and our hands to mitzvah and acts of lovingkindness.
We will
have many opportunities to study and explore many facets of this issue over the
next few months – among them will be a service in commemoration of the national
Sabbath against gun violence on January 5. And we already have innumerable
opportunities to take action. Hugging our children and then getting on with
life without hearing some call is just not acceptable… The paralyzing illusion
of powerlessness a manifestation of the yetzer hara. We need to put that
voice in its place and listen instead to the yetzer hatov that insists
that gratitude for our lives, there but for the grace of God, demands that we
give freely of ourselves. Acting to transform our community and our society is
what will bring us the greatest joy.
Please raise your hands: who
contacted President Obama, Vice-President Biden, Senator Kerry, Senator-elect
Warren, Representative Neal or a state legislator this week? I’ll ask that
question again next week… One letter won’t be enough to keep our government, prone
to inaction and gridlock, moving in the right direction. Is there anyone here
who won’t write another letter in the week to come, to help keep up the
momentum, attention and energy? President Obama said that the public would have
to keep on top of these issues in order to keep Congress in motion; we can do
this – it’s never been easier to write a Congressman than it is today. We must
stand up for the principles we share, for the values that make us Jews and
unite us as Americans and, in so doing, provide for the common defense, promote
the general welfare and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our
Posterity.
As we
reflect on how we go about finding tranquility in our unpredictable world, we
hold in mind the blessing of the psalmist:
Happy are
they who find refuge in You, pathways in their hearts.
Though they
pass through the Valley
of Tears,
They
regard it as a place of springs,
As if
the early rain had covered it with a blessing.[7]
With God’s
help, may our tears mingle with the tears of all the bereaved to nourish the
growth of a better world.
***
I then read a prayer
written by Rabbi Naomi Levy and recited the names of those murdered on
Friday, December 14, in Newtown,
before we continued with prayers for our country and peace.
[1]
Rick Barger, Book Review of Jim Atwood, America
and Its Guns: A Theological Exposé, The Alban Institute, 2012. www.alban.org.
[2] Genesis
1:27.
[3] See
Benjamin Sommer, The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel (New York,
Cambridge University Press, 2009).
[4] Dr. Alan
Chartock, CEO of Northeast Public Radio, local NPR station for the Berkshires.
[5] See Rabbi
Ira Stone’s commentary on R. Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto, Mesillat Yesharim (Philadelphia: JPS, 2010).
[6] For more
on guns and idolatry, see Rick Barger’s article and the book it reviews, cited
above #1.
[7] Psalm
84:5-6.
