Grief At Home, Abomination In Orlando

(Photo via REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson)

"Abroad the sword bereaveth, at home there is as death." (Lamentations 1:20)

Words fail this week.

In our Jewish community at Harvard, we have lost a wonderful young person - a 2015 graduate of the College and recent president of our undergraduate community at Harvard Hillel, just at the outset of his adult life, whose heart suddenly stopped as he finished a charity triathlon event in Connecticut.

And in the wider scope, there is the atrocity in Orlando, whose horror is perhaps especially relatable as we bury and mourn our own friend, grieve with his parents and siblings, and know that so many families and circles of friends are suddenly bereft this week of unique, inimitable, irreplaceable, cherished loved ones.

Call the massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando an act of terrorism, call it a hate crime, a mass murder - it is an abomination, in the truest sense of that word, an act of craven disregard for the image of the Divine in each human being. And to whatever degree it is connected to the misguided twisting of a spiritual tradition, it is a desecration of religion and a defamation of God's name.

Words fail. But this week anyone blessed with anything of a public platform, a pulpit, a blog, must speak and even shout against the spirit of unrighteousness that seems to have broken loose to roam about at will in the land.

"No way to prevent this, says only nation where this regularly happens," runs the spot-on headline from The Onion, written about I-can't-even-remember-which of the previous mass shootings, and circulating now again - while a current headline announces that Walmart voluntarily has decided to discontinue its sales of AR-15 assault rifles and high capacity ammunition cartridges.

Walmart.

One popular gun retailer reports that, since the Orlando shooting, its sales of AR-15s have increased from "three or four a day" to "about ten an hour, and round about lunchtime fifteen an hour."

The numbering of Israel in the wilderness, in the midst of which we pick up our Torah reading this week in the book of Numbers, is often described as a 'census of the people.' In fact, per the verses, it is a counting of those fit to turn out for military service and for duty in the Tabernacle.

One can argue over whether the founding fathers of the United States considered a right to bear arms to be self-evident, but even the most conservative of Supreme Court justices have conceded that it cannot be unlimited.

More to the point, the ill-regulated cycle of well armed criminal psychopathy and legislative inaction in which we find ourselves is long past smacking of a failed state - heaven forbid.

It is instructive to hear Ehud Barak, a recent Prime Minister of Israel and military Chief of Staff say on American television that, speaking as the former head of one of the most militarized and service-ready populaces on the face of the earth, he finds U.S. gun laws - or rather the lack of them, arming hate-criminals to the teeth - incomprehensible: "People probably understand the American ethos about having weapons, but foreigners cannot understand why the hell you have to equip them with assault rifles."

Meanwhile, in the prophetic reading paired with our portion from the Torah this week, we read of a couple praying for a child - the wondrous story of the heavenly visitor who announces to them that they will become parents underscoring the miraculous aspect in every story of family-building.

The child in this case grows up to be the mighty Samson, self-arming vigilante on behalf of his people; but the point in the story of his birth is how his parents resolve that their child will be sacred.

This week, as my mind reels from grief and sorrow to outrage and back to grief again, words fail. But the effort to constitute a just and caring society, in which every child can grow to celebrate life to the utmost - in the all too limited, fragile, and unpredictable span of time that is granted for life - must not fail.