The great Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai wrote how the lives of these dead and wounded increase the radius of a bomb's crater. If that's the case, then the diameter of the bombs that went off in Boston stretched across the world.

How we talk to and about each other around issues that matter can destroy a city or maybe even a country. Words matter. Innuendo can kill. More and more, that seems to be true today, as well.

We can all learn from those around us, and oftentimes we are forced to think in new and different ways when we keep an open mind to those who think differently than us.

I will celebrate Simchat Torah and hear again the chanting of the Creation, look at our tree and pray that the world will come to be what it should be.