Reb Jeff
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Darkness

12/14/2012

 
I got a press call today. I suspect that many rabbis and other clergy members across the country got the same call. The newspaper reporter on the other end of the line did her job by dutifully asking the question, "Rabbi, what are you going to say to your congregation about today's events?"
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How should I answer? What words of wisdom can possibly be offered about a man who would enter a kindergarten classroom and murder little children? Is there a way to make any sense of it at all? 

How I will cling to my children tonight! How I will cry out in pain for those lost little ones in Connecticut and for their families!

To make matters worse, tonight is the seventh night of Chanukah. We are near the climax of our holiday that celebrates increasing the light. Today's events are all darkness—a pit of swirling, unending darkness. 

Our tradition tells us that we are obliged to defy darkness. It is our duty not to give in to despair, but to insist that we are sustained by hope. We must rail against the fatalism that says that there is nothing we can do. We must dedicate ourselves to declaring that the world can be—must be—better.
"Never despair! Never! It is forbidden to give up hope!"
—Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, Likutei Moharan II:78
The reporter on the other end of the phone line took down my words as best she could. Tomorrow, maybe, they will be in the paper. And the day after that they will be in the recycling bin. But something from this experience—by God—has got to last longer than that. 

Today is not the day, but tomorrow surely will be, to say that there are things that we can do—must do—to stop events like this from happening again. Our governments, state and federal, can take action. Our communities can take action. Our schools and families can take action. Each one of us as individuals can do something. We have an obligation to rail against the darkness, to increase the light where there is despair.

My Chanukah plea to you is this: Be part of the light. Call your Congressmen and Senators on Monday morning and tell them how you feel about gun control. Show up at the next school board meeting and make your voice heard about emergency preparedness. Get in touch with your local police department and talk with them about how to prevent violence in your community. Support organizations that advocate effective treatment for mental illness and provide support for the families of people who are mentally ill. 

Do something. That has always been the Jewish response to despair. Confront the darkness.
Carrie Bail
12/14/2012 02:08:14 pm

Jeff, I think the call to some of the rest of us will come tomorrow! We have 24 more hours to think about what we might say! But your words are very persuasive, and I'm going to pass them on on Facebook, because it is SO rarely that people say gun control and increased awareness and help for the mentally ill at the same time. It isn't ONLY gun control, for the NRA is correct that it is people who kill people. But there are SO MANY people who need the outreach of mental health workers and the SUPPORT (read: not stigma) of the rest of us - that emphasis is equally important.

Barbara Lerner
12/14/2012 02:51:56 pm

Better access to mental health care would be wonderful, but that is a one-at-a-time solution. Making our schools safer. Great. What about our shopping malls, our downtowns. Focusing on that will just make us all paranoid.

We need to start with gun control. I already wrote to my senator and senator-elect today. Call Monday? I could do that. But this feels like something more is needed, but what?

Reb Jeff link
12/14/2012 03:03:26 pm

It is not an "either...or" situation. It is "both...and." There is no one solution to killing sprees. It has to be everything. We need better gun control and gun safety laws. We need schools, shopping malls, downtowns, movie theaters, etc., that are better prepared to react to emergency situations. We need better care for the mental illness. We need better identification of people who are a risk for violent behavior. We need it all.

The N.R.A. has been successful in derailing solutions by convincing people that the problem is too complicated and too difficult to solve. That is nonsense. The only thing that has been proven not to work is doing nothing.

Barbara Lerner
12/17/2012 02:38:28 am

Jeff,

You are, of course, right. I was blinded by anger to not see these other very important issues. From the reports that I am hearing, Sandy Hook was about as well prepared as we can expect schools to be. Thinking of our own public schools here, I believe we have the same level of preparedness.

Then, I thought about Mount Holyoke. We have an emergency notification system that will call everyone's cell phones, but then what? We don't practice these types of emergencies. Obviously, we don't have a single building that we know everyone will be inside and we can lock, but surely we can do more. Now, this comes at a time when I happen to be chair of the FCC, the committee that represents faculty to administration and to trustees. Campus safety, response to mental health issues (and also Title 9 sexual harassment issues) have just moved to the top of our agenda, to be taken up when we reconvene in January.

Barb


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