Rabbi Grossman asks where God was found in last week's horrific massacre at Virginia Tech, and I was touched by her portrayal of God made manifest in the acts of heroism and self-sacrifice by students and teachers at Virginia Tech, even as the bullets flew around them. And yet, as I try to make sense of this inexplicable tragedy, I can’t help thinking that there is another place where God was found as well: in the face of each and every student and professor--created in God's image--who was murdered that morning. Thirty-two times, God’s image was desecrated that morning, and then a 33rd as Cho Seung-Hui took his own life, bringing to a close an incomprehensible orgy of destruction. As the smoke cleared, God’s blood-spattered image was all too evident.
How did it come to this? To me it is terrifying that Cho Seung-Hui, a person with a history of mental illness and violent tendencies, was able to walk into a gun store and walk out with weapons and ammunition capable of instantly turning a deranged individual into a mass murderer. It is horrifying that we live in a country where lethal handguns are legal and readily available, where states like Virginia allow people to carry concealed weapons and to purchase multiple firearms at a gun show without even giving their name, and where the National Rifle Association stymies efforts to place even the most basic, common-sense controls on gun ownership.
Writing in this week’s New Yorker, Adam Gopnik points out that other countries that experienced mass shootings such as England, Canada, and France have responded by tightening gun laws and, as a result, have prevented such horrific events from recurring. America, by contrast, has suffered and grieved through the Columbine shootings, the execution of Amish schoolchildren six months ago, last week’s rampage at Virginia Tech, so many countless others, and then done nothing. So much carnage, so many times God’s image has been obliterated in an instant because of easy access to handguns. When will we finally stop the madness and allow God’s image to flourish once again?
Read the Full Debate: God & The Virginia Tech Shooting
April 2007 Archives
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Where was God During the VT Shooting?
The terrible tragedy at Virginia Tech raises a number of questions, but the ultimate question is: where was God when this happened? This is not a new question. We are forced to ask ourselves it in the face of every tragedy.
I am reminded of a response given by a Holocaust a survivor who replied to the question in a typical Jewish way: with another question. He wrote: ask not where God was in the Holocaust, ask where was Humanity?
In Judaism we believe God gave us the world to care and develop. God gave us good rules to follow. God vested us with the responsibility to care for those around us. We are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. We are God’s hands in the world.
Let us remember that there would have been no Holocaust if there had been 6,000 Oscar Schindlers, each willing to protect 1,000 Jews. There would have been no Holocaust if the nations of the world had accepted Jewish refugees.
Dr. Liviu Librescu, the professor who sacrificed his life for his students at Virginia Tech, understood this. He lost his entire family during the Holocaust. Persecuted in his native Romania for not following the party line, he was freed to go to Israel in l978. He came to Virginia Tech on sabbatical in 1986. It is ironic that he stayed because he loved the peaceful atmosphere. On Monday, when the gunman came shooting to his classroom, Dr. Lebrescu blocked the door with his body as he yelled for his students to jump out the classroom window to escape. All his students got out. He stayed and kept the door closed while the killer riddled his body with bullets through the door. He gave up his life on Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, so his students could escape.
There were others who were also God’s hands that day: Trey Perkins helped hold the door shut in his German class while staunching the wounds of a classmate with his sweatshirt. Kevin Sterne, a senior and former Eagle Scout, grabbed an electric cord and fashioned a tourniquet to stop a student’s bleeding from a severed artery. I am sure we will be hearing the stories of other such heroes over the next days and weeks. They were God’s hands. Like the righteous gentiles who endangered themselves and their families to save strangers during the Holocaust, these individuals represent goodness in the midst of evil.
Where was God at Virginia Tech? In the hearts and minds of these individuals. In the ability of the students and faculty to return to campus this week and pick up their lives and go on as caring, feeling, and loving individuals.
That is where God is in the midst of tragedy: in motivating good people to help others and in giving us the strength to go on even in the midst of tragedy.
--Posted by Rabbi Susan Grossman
Read the Full Debate: God & the Virginia Tech Shooting
I am reminded of a response given by a Holocaust a survivor who replied to the question in a typical Jewish way: with another question. He wrote: ask not where God was in the Holocaust, ask where was Humanity?
In Judaism we believe God gave us the world to care and develop. God gave us good rules to follow. God vested us with the responsibility to care for those around us. We are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. We are God’s hands in the world.
Let us remember that there would have been no Holocaust if there had been 6,000 Oscar Schindlers, each willing to protect 1,000 Jews. There would have been no Holocaust if the nations of the world had accepted Jewish refugees.
Dr. Liviu Librescu, the professor who sacrificed his life for his students at Virginia Tech, understood this. He lost his entire family during the Holocaust. Persecuted in his native Romania for not following the party line, he was freed to go to Israel in l978. He came to Virginia Tech on sabbatical in 1986. It is ironic that he stayed because he loved the peaceful atmosphere. On Monday, when the gunman came shooting to his classroom, Dr. Lebrescu blocked the door with his body as he yelled for his students to jump out the classroom window to escape. All his students got out. He stayed and kept the door closed while the killer riddled his body with bullets through the door. He gave up his life on Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, so his students could escape.
There were others who were also God’s hands that day: Trey Perkins helped hold the door shut in his German class while staunching the wounds of a classmate with his sweatshirt. Kevin Sterne, a senior and former Eagle Scout, grabbed an electric cord and fashioned a tourniquet to stop a student’s bleeding from a severed artery. I am sure we will be hearing the stories of other such heroes over the next days and weeks. They were God’s hands. Like the righteous gentiles who endangered themselves and their families to save strangers during the Holocaust, these individuals represent goodness in the midst of evil.
Where was God at Virginia Tech? In the hearts and minds of these individuals. In the ability of the students and faculty to return to campus this week and pick up their lives and go on as caring, feeling, and loving individuals.
That is where God is in the midst of tragedy: in motivating good people to help others and in giving us the strength to go on even in the midst of tragedy.
--Posted by Rabbi Susan Grossman
Read the Full Debate: God & the Virginia Tech Shooting
Thursday April 19, 2007
Defining a Jewish State
I understand Rabbi Grossman’s discomfort with including a person in Israel's government who isn't committed to the notion of Israel as a Jewish state, but I also think that the term “Jewish state” is so vague and amorphous that it makes a dangerous litmus test. If “Jewish state” means religiously Jewish, then we should kick out the Shinui Party, which is dedicated to secularism. If "Jewish state" means culturally Jewish, then we should disallow the Hadash Party, whose anti-Zionist platform derives from its Marxist anti-nationalism. And if “Jewish state” means demographically Jewish, we should disallow Arab parties like Raam and Balad – or, for that matter, right-wing parties like Yisrael Beiteinu that reject a two-state solution, leading to a majority non-Jewish country. The point is that the concept of "a Jewish state" is still very much a work in progress, and orthodoxies of any sort (to say nothing of name-calling) stifle this progression rather than further it.
I encourage anyone with thoughts along these lines to look at the relevant section of a thought-provoking document entitled Masechet Atzma'ut ("Tractate Independence") – a Talmud-like commentary on Israel’s Declaration of Independence put out by Rabbis for Human Rights. I want a safe and secure Israel as much as anyone, and I think an important component of this goal is figuring out exactly what we mean when we say "Jewish State."
Read the Full Debate: What's the Place of Non-Jews in a Jewish State?
I encourage anyone with thoughts along these lines to look at the relevant section of a thought-provoking document entitled Masechet Atzma'ut ("Tractate Independence") – a Talmud-like commentary on Israel’s Declaration of Independence put out by Rabbis for Human Rights. I want a safe and secure Israel as much as anyone, and I think an important component of this goal is figuring out exactly what we mean when we say "Jewish State."
Read the Full Debate: What's the Place of Non-Jews in a Jewish State?
Wednesday April 18, 2007
Interfaith Dialogue & Israel's Future
As we prepare to celebrate Yom Haatzmaut the question brewing around many political circles is: Is there a Muslim partner even worth dialoguing with?
Recently Gary Bauer, the one-time Republican presidential candidate and Christian activist, and Mort Klein, the head of the Zionist Organization of America, wrote an op-ed that appeared in The New York Jewish Week suggesting that there is no such thing as moderate Muslim leadership.
The recent argument on this blog surrounding Prime Minster Olmert's appointment of Raleb Majadele as the first Muslim Cabinet minister, only highlights the low point of Jewish and Muslim relations. After nearly 60 years I should hope that 20 percent of a country's population is represented in a Cabinet position. But so it goes in the absurd world of the Middle East.
The fact that American Jews object, perhaps more than Israelis, to such an initiative is indicative of the strained relationship not only between Israelis and Palestinians but also more broadly between Muslims and Jews.
Following the Holocaust, Jews and Christians worked hard on bringing their faiths closer together. Symbolic as well as concrete theological concessions were offered by both sides. Christians and Jews swapped delegations, created forums and supported grassroots, interfaith initiatives to breed trust and help ensure that Jews would no longer be portrayed as Christ-killers. But while we were making tremendous strides in Jewish-Christian relations, a new feud was brewing between us and Islam.
If Islam would've been more involved in consistent interfaith dialogue for the last 40 years would it have changed things in the Middle East? Only a prophet could answer such a question. Would it have created an infrastructure for the possibility of a better relationship? No doubt.
The problem with Muslim-Jewish interfaith dialogue is that at this point those who are involved are many times too old, too skeptical, have too much baggage, and too many scars.
That's where my friends Gul Rukh Rahman and Ari Alexander come in. Together they run a Muslim-Jewish interfaith organization called Children of Abraham. Directing their efforts at young Muslims and Jews from across the world, they have harnessed the relational power of the Internet to bring young Muslims and Jews together.
What they and other young peace entrepreneurs argue is that ultimately the Israeli-Palestinian issue can not be divorced from a much larger religious divide that currently exists between the two groups. Likewise, the most effective interfaith dialogue does not take place between hardened and seasoned imams and rabbis. Rather, it happens with two people who are still young enough not to have had their hope shatterered.
I hope Ari's right.
Read the Full Debate: What's the Place of Non-Jews in a Jewish State?
Recently Gary Bauer, the one-time Republican presidential candidate and Christian activist, and Mort Klein, the head of the Zionist Organization of America, wrote an op-ed that appeared in The New York Jewish Week suggesting that there is no such thing as moderate Muslim leadership.
The recent argument on this blog surrounding Prime Minster Olmert's appointment of Raleb Majadele as the first Muslim Cabinet minister, only highlights the low point of Jewish and Muslim relations. After nearly 60 years I should hope that 20 percent of a country's population is represented in a Cabinet position. But so it goes in the absurd world of the Middle East.
The fact that American Jews object, perhaps more than Israelis, to such an initiative is indicative of the strained relationship not only between Israelis and Palestinians but also more broadly between Muslims and Jews.
Following the Holocaust, Jews and Christians worked hard on bringing their faiths closer together. Symbolic as well as concrete theological concessions were offered by both sides. Christians and Jews swapped delegations, created forums and supported grassroots, interfaith initiatives to breed trust and help ensure that Jews would no longer be portrayed as Christ-killers. But while we were making tremendous strides in Jewish-Christian relations, a new feud was brewing between us and Islam.
If Islam would've been more involved in consistent interfaith dialogue for the last 40 years would it have changed things in the Middle East? Only a prophet could answer such a question. Would it have created an infrastructure for the possibility of a better relationship? No doubt.
The problem with Muslim-Jewish interfaith dialogue is that at this point those who are involved are many times too old, too skeptical, have too much baggage, and too many scars.
That's where my friends Gul Rukh Rahman and Ari Alexander come in. Together they run a Muslim-Jewish interfaith organization called Children of Abraham. Directing their efforts at young Muslims and Jews from across the world, they have harnessed the relational power of the Internet to bring young Muslims and Jews together.
What they and other young peace entrepreneurs argue is that ultimately the Israeli-Palestinian issue can not be divorced from a much larger religious divide that currently exists between the two groups. Likewise, the most effective interfaith dialogue does not take place between hardened and seasoned imams and rabbis. Rather, it happens with two people who are still young enough not to have had their hope shatterered.
I hope Ari's right.
Read the Full Debate: What's the Place of Non-Jews in a Jewish State?
Tuesday April 17, 2007
A Wolf Guarding the Sheep
I applaud Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for appointing a Muslim Israeli Arab to the Cabinet. What a contrast to the surrounding Arab nations, many of whom refuse to allow Jews to be citizens. However, I disagree with Rabbi Waxman that this is a position to applaud. Why? Because Olmert should never have accepted into his Cabinet someone who does not support the prime mission of Israel: to be the Jewish State, whether Neturei Katre or bi-nationalist. As a citizen of the open democracy of Israel, Raleb Majadele can vote, run for office, and freely express his views. However, justice does not require that someone who wants to destroy the basic mission of the State be appointed to shepherd it. The wolf is guarding the sheep.
It is true that Israel did not ensure equality of opportunity for its Arab citizens. The constant state of war forced upon it by its Arab neighbors meant that its Arab citizens were always seen as a fifth column and therefore not conscripted into the army. Why place Arabs in the difficult position of having to fight against fellow Arabs in the event of war? However, that meant that Arab young people did not have the benefit of Israeli Army experience that is a career ladder for so many.
Nevertheless the disparate support for education, infrastructure, housing, and job development given to Arab villages and towns was shortsighted. In the context of an Israeli budget always stretched to the limit and supported by Diaspora Jewish money, we may understand why such a situation developed. The problem is we are paying the price today.
We Jews remember what it is like to be a minority people. The Torah tells us to treat the stranger fairly, for we were strangers in the land of Egypt. Fair distribution of aide is the right thing to do. There are also real concerns about demographics and the nature of the Jewish State, particularly in the Galilee where many Arab villages and towns are found. And it is also the smart thing to do. Studies show that higher education and job opportunities are the strongest indicators of reduced birthrates.
Israel is caught in its own moral dilemma. On one hand it wants to treat all its citizens equally. The plight of Arab citizens strikes the conscience of many Jewish Israelis. (It is unfortunate there is not a equivalent concern in the Arab world for its minorities.) There is increased support for individuals and organizations who reject the idea of Israel remaining a Jewish State. Such a tendency is not only foolhardy, but also dangerous. There are many Arab states. While they may debate what the role of religion or tradition is in their nations, none goes through the angst or ambivalence we do about their Arab identity. Israel needs to treat our minorities justly. Israel does not need to apologize for its mission as the only Jewish State in the world.
It is also unfortunate that over 60 years after the Holocaust, as anti-Semitism is rising throughout Europe and the Arab world, so many Jews here and in Israel think the solution is to eliminate the Jewish nature of the State of Israel. Eliminating Israel as a Jewish State would not bring peace. Just the opposite. It would empower the radicals to set their sights on the rest of the Westernized world. It would also endanger Jews everywhere in an even more serious way.
We need Israel as a Jewish State now more than ever. We should expect our leaders and our philanthropic organizations to be clear about that and refuse to support even those who prefer to destroy Israel with the kid glove--by rejecting Israel’s essential Jewish nature--rather than the fist.
--Posted by Rabbi Susan Grossman
Read the Full Debate: What's the Place of Non-Jews in a Jewish State?
It is true that Israel did not ensure equality of opportunity for its Arab citizens. The constant state of war forced upon it by its Arab neighbors meant that its Arab citizens were always seen as a fifth column and therefore not conscripted into the army. Why place Arabs in the difficult position of having to fight against fellow Arabs in the event of war? However, that meant that Arab young people did not have the benefit of Israeli Army experience that is a career ladder for so many.
Nevertheless the disparate support for education, infrastructure, housing, and job development given to Arab villages and towns was shortsighted. In the context of an Israeli budget always stretched to the limit and supported by Diaspora Jewish money, we may understand why such a situation developed. The problem is we are paying the price today.
We Jews remember what it is like to be a minority people. The Torah tells us to treat the stranger fairly, for we were strangers in the land of Egypt. Fair distribution of aide is the right thing to do. There are also real concerns about demographics and the nature of the Jewish State, particularly in the Galilee where many Arab villages and towns are found. And it is also the smart thing to do. Studies show that higher education and job opportunities are the strongest indicators of reduced birthrates.
Israel is caught in its own moral dilemma. On one hand it wants to treat all its citizens equally. The plight of Arab citizens strikes the conscience of many Jewish Israelis. (It is unfortunate there is not a equivalent concern in the Arab world for its minorities.) There is increased support for individuals and organizations who reject the idea of Israel remaining a Jewish State. Such a tendency is not only foolhardy, but also dangerous. There are many Arab states. While they may debate what the role of religion or tradition is in their nations, none goes through the angst or ambivalence we do about their Arab identity. Israel needs to treat our minorities justly. Israel does not need to apologize for its mission as the only Jewish State in the world.
It is also unfortunate that over 60 years after the Holocaust, as anti-Semitism is rising throughout Europe and the Arab world, so many Jews here and in Israel think the solution is to eliminate the Jewish nature of the State of Israel. Eliminating Israel as a Jewish State would not bring peace. Just the opposite. It would empower the radicals to set their sights on the rest of the Westernized world. It would also endanger Jews everywhere in an even more serious way.
We need Israel as a Jewish State now more than ever. We should expect our leaders and our philanthropic organizations to be clear about that and refuse to support even those who prefer to destroy Israel with the kid glove--by rejecting Israel’s essential Jewish nature--rather than the fist.
--Posted by Rabbi Susan Grossman
Read the Full Debate: What's the Place of Non-Jews in a Jewish State?
Monday April 16, 2007
Advancing the Jewish State
Recently Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert created a controversy by naming Raleb Majadele, an Arab-Israeli Muslim, to his cabinet – the first time a Muslim has held such a high-ranking position in Israel's government. Predictably, reactions were strong. Many moderate...
Friday April 13, 2007
Restitution As Confession of Guilt
I agree with Rabbi Waxman that there can be no real restitution for the horrors of the Holocaust. However, restitution is important for another reason: the agreement by Germany to pay restitution signified that Germany publicly accepted responsibility for its...
Wednesday April 11, 2007
True Justice Means More Than Restitution
In response to Rabbi Stern's post, it is impossible to think about righting the wrongs of the Holocaust because the cruelty, barbarism, and evil on such an unimaginable scale preclude any talk of justice. The work of the Claims Conference...
Tuesday April 10, 2007
Holocaust Restitution & the Claims Conference
In 1952 the Prime Minster of Israel, David ben Gurion made one of the gutsiest and hardest political decisions ever to have been made, he accepted restitution funds from West Germany –a country that had just murdered six million Jews....
Friday April 6, 2007
Virtue Is Its Own Reward
Rabbi Grossman writes movingly about the reasons she abstains from chametz on Passover. As a Reconstructionist Jew, I too believe that God doesn't intervene in the world to punish wrongdoers or those who violate the commandments, and yet I still...
Thursday April 5, 2007
We Should Make 'Choosing' the Focus
Rabbi Grossman asserts that she does not eat bread on Passover because she "loves God." Her metaphor pulls at my heart but it also pulls on my brain. Do we really believe that God asks us to practice mitzvot in...
Thursday April 5, 2007
Does God Really Care If We Eat Bread on Passover?
The Torah prohibits eating bread or any form of leavened product, chametz, during Passover. The penalty for eating or even owning chametz is severe: being cut off from the people Israel (Exodus 12:15). Such a punishment sounds descriptive rather proscriptive:...
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This blog is no longer updated and is closed for comments. We welcome your comments about Judaism in our Judaism forums.
Brad Hirschfield currently blogs on Windows and Doors.
Author, radio and TV talk show host, and President of CLAL-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, Brad Hirschfield is the author of You Don’t Have To Be Wrong For Me To Be Right: Finding Faith Without Fanaticism. Listed as one of the nation’s 50 most influential rabbis in Newsweek, and a regular commentator on Court TV, he is the creator of the popular series, Building Bridges, airing on Bridges TV, and the co-host of the weekly radio show, Hirschfield and Kula.
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