Another Week, Another Tragedy
We know nothing
I had a plan. I always have a plan. Sometimes, the topic for this substack is clear to me on Monday and other times it takes until Thursday to write it out. Then, I woke up. This time, I rose to the news of the attack in Washington D.C. where Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, a Christian Israeli and Jewish American, on the precipice of engagement, were gunned down outside the Capital Jewish Museum by a man shouting “Free Palestine.”
Here were my thoughts from yesterday as Lauren and I attempted to make breakfast for a 2.5 year old who thinks he eats at a diner and a four month old who is now rolling and putting anything in her mouth that she can get her hands on. Needless to say, the thoughts were scattered:
Before I knew their names, I panicked and wondered, were my sister and sister in law at this event? Are they dead?
Once I knew their names, I wondered, did I know them? Milgrim? Sounded familiar but then realized it was a different spelling.
I need to take Cal to school today. Will the security be ramped up? Will my commute be longer.
Try to spell out what happened to Lauren, literally, because Cal is at that age where he is a linguistic parrot. D-E-A-D has a haunting ring to it when whispered.
As I drop Cal off at school, a thought flashes into my head. Should I buy a gun?
I don’t like guns, generally feel like we should repeal the 2nd amendment, and think we should create a firearm buy back system. And here I was driving in Westchester, NY wondering something that felt so out of character. But just last week, taking the subway in Brooklyn, I wondered if I should take my kippah off. What a strange and scary world we’re living in.
I have a post in mind I have been wanting to write more thoroughly around how none of us really know anything and the more we can understand that, the less likely we are to get into the fights we see happening all around us. I’ll get to that another week. But for now, I think there’s some Torah to teach to this absolutely twisted reality we live in especially around what what we think we know.
In Parshat Behar, the first of the double portion we read this week, the Torah shares the following:
ולֹ֤א תוֹנוּ֙ אִ֣ישׁ אֶת־עֲמִית֔וֹ וְיָרֵ֖אתָ מֵֽאֱלֹהֶ֑יךָ כִּ֛י אֲנִ֥י יְהֹוָ֖ה אֱלֹהֵיכֶֽם
Do not wrong one another, but fear your God; for I am your God.
Sounds concise and simple, right? Be nice and remember what world you’re in! Nothing is ever simple though. For if the Torah is saying this, it means people aren’t following the directive. If they’re not following the directive, the latter clause can help us understand why. In essence, people have become so caught up in their own self-belief, their own righteous indignation, their own inflated sense of superiority, that they have forgotten we’re all just little blips on a radar screen.
The Ishbitzer Rebbe, Reb Mordechai Leiner, also known as the Mei Hashiloach, shares the following teaching on this notion:
This verse is also directed to great and precious souls who see another going against God’s will, accusing him and deeming him fit for punishment. On this the Holy One said, “do not wrong one another’…Man is supposed to pray to God to be merciful with his fellow, yet here he is judgmental and accuses!
No matter how how and mighty you believe yourself to be, it’s not your place to act on another to punish them for their supposed immoral beliefs. You can feel the anger or frustration at another person. Your job is then to offer prayer or whatever else will allow you to help them, stay composed, and maintain your humanity. Oh, you might say in response, but what about the idea that we’re supposed to rebuke people when they do something wrong? The Mei Hashiloach anticipates such an argument:
Even though God indeed commanded us to reprove our neighbor when we see wrongdoing, and to try to distance his fellow from all evil as much as is possible, this is only possible in a place where he clearly knows he can help him by bringing him to the good, or through prayer, which arouses God’s compassion and returns him to the observance of the Torah. However, if he cannot return him to the fold, he should rather judge him meritoriously and not accuse him. Thus it is inconceivable that one could judge his neighbor as guilty, for perhaps his neighbor’s yetser hara, his inclination to evil, is greater than his own.
No matter how you slice it, argues the Mei Hashiloach, our job as humans is not to mete out punishment on someone simply because they stand for something, identify as someone, or believe in a cause that we don’t. In the event you find yourself in such a dynamic, maybe if it’s a person who you feel like you can safely engage with, only then can you offer prayer or other methods to arouse compassion for them or bring them to goodness. That last word is bolded because note that it doesn’t say you do anything to hurt them.
But if you don’t believe there’s hope to engage with them, and here’s a powerful statement, you have work to do. Be generous of spirit to this person. That’s in your control. Because in the end, he says, none of us know anything about what another is going through.
This world we live in, where people are hunting those that look Jewish because of something Israel did, is so incredibly dangerous. It is open season on Jews because some guy in Chicago believes everything he read online. Now two people are dead and I am sure more will come. None of this requires equivocation with what’s happening in Gaza. That’s its own tragedy that requires an immense amount of tending. Israel will have to continue to deal with its handling of that. But this is not that.
We live in a world where people think that they know something, really believe it in their hearts, and it gives them license to take the life of another. That’s so inherently counter to what it means to be created in God’s image. We’re not Gods even though we’ve foolishly been gifted the divine weapon of life and death.
Somehow, those of us involved in the world of bettering the world have to keep fighting. We have to keep reminding people that even as tragedies befall us, there’s still work to be done. That work should be based on a simple notion. Don’t wrong one another.
Tragedies always have unfolding layers. One painful one is how devoted Yaron and Sarah were to peace in their own work. That’s an essential part of their legacy that we can carry on. The world is bigger than your ideology. You and me-we’re in this together. That’s the essential part of the plan. The more we lose sight of this, the closer we get to losing this whole thing.
Shabbat Shalom