Tranquility Broken
My Beth Chai blog post for this week.I think back a week and imagine myself in rural Uvalde, Texas. School has just let out, summer heat is in the air and families are gathering for a weekend of birthday parties, little league games and garden chores. Young children swing on the jungle gym. Fourth grade girls throw their bikes onto the ground and giggle together. Emails come, announcing the honor roll for the term and parents hug their children with pride. Of course, there is tension and troubles, but the normal, expected, everyday type. Too many bills, the difficult boss, the ailing grandmother, perhaps a marriage on the rocks. But overall, life is good in Uvalde, Texas. A quiet corner of the universe called home. The outside world pays little attention to Uvalde, like Parkland, Newtown, Littleton before it. And this is okay. More than okay.
It is unfathomable that one gunman, whether mentally ill or just evil, could destroy this tranquility, quite literally shoot it up. How could one young man transform his malcontent into such malice? I certainly can’t answer what would make one human being want so badly to hurt another. I cringe when I accidentally step on somebody else’s toe. But this I know for certain. He did not do it alone. The NRA didn’t literally load the gun, but it did figuratively. Lenient gun laws didn’t literally pull the trigger, but these laws did figuratively.
There’s a reason this attack happened on May 24 and not April 24 or March 24. The gunman turned 18 on May 16 and was able to walk into a Texas gun shop and make his purchases, without a background check or waiting period. Even the weak gun laws of Texas held him back in April, in March, in the months beforehand. Would it have made a difference if the gun shop had to vet him much more carefully? I think likely so.
In Judaism, we say that to take a life is to destroy a world. To save a life is to save a world. This struggle is not going to be easy and success is not guaranteed – but we must try to be a voice for reason. We must stand up as a Jewish community, along with all like-minded neighbors, and say, “Enough. We are no longer going to be complicit in the insanity perpetrated by weak gun laws backed by the NRA.”
I love the quiet corner of the universe that I call home. I suspect that you also do. Enough to fight for it. May this Shabbat be restorative and strengthen us for action.