FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE

     "For Heaven's sake what on earth are you doing?" I liked that when I first saw it and find it even more meaningful now, after recent events and certainly after last nite.
     In the middle of the night the phone rang and we blearily saw that it was my NY daughter. Immediately shock ran thru our systems as our minds quickly flew to the boys, one in California and the other in Israel. My granddaughter we knew had been picked up last nite from her sleepover for the Shabbat.
     Quickly my daughter answered our hello with "Jamie is ok but how do I tell her this, again?" For the second time, this child, who lives in as much of a cocoon as can be made, for the second time she has lost a friend through violence. The first time was thru carelessness, a fire and three children and their grandparents gone. Now was even worse, her friend whom she saw every day at school, she and her sister, were gone, with G-d prematurely, because their father snapped and killed them.
     We spoke, I consoled and gave advice, shed tears and finally hung up. Needless to say, sleep was in no hurry to return. Nauseous, I just lay there, thinking of the world, the awful deteriorating one we are leaving to our kids and grandchildren.
     Why is there so much violence, so much hatred in a world in the 21st century. Why do we think all can be solved in violence and threats. The way to solve the growing acknowledged plague of campus rapes? Why just arm all the women! Really, in that case the men who rape will also be enabled and allowed guns so exactly how does this help?
     Do not favor abortion? Well, no one does. It is not something that one does because they are bored and have nothing  else to do! But it is a fundamental right of a person to have control over their own body, yet we are told no and in a false, angry and malicious paternalistic rolling tide, the choice is being ripped away. So will abortion stop? No, it will simply creep back into the back alleys and desperate attempts by desperate people.
     People all over the world talk of  ways to keep war from igniting and spreading all over our planet. Yet are they blind? Do they not see that we are already at war and with all due respect to our esteemed leader, it IS a clash of cultures, of ethics, of world views and until we realize that, we ARE doomed to continue to have to face this rolling tide of violence which has no rules, no humanity.
     For that matter how much violence has been done in the name of religion throughout the centuries. Yes, Obama, the Crusades were awful - and as a Jew I have studied that during my schooling but it does not provide an excuse for Jews to go around killing Christians (which they most emphatically do not) or for Moslems to kill Jews, Christians, sects other than their own and anyone else they think of. It is no excuse for radical Christians to call for war on others who violate their idea of Christianity or to abuse those in their charge nor for Jews to pervert their authority as religious leaders to abuse others, nor for imams and religious and political leaders of the Moslem faith to do the same. For G-d's sake! We even have Buddhists and Hindus killing now!
     Why can we not talk? Why can we not live and let live? Why must we feel this demand, this urge, to impose our views on others and threaten them with harm, with violence if they do not go along? We have that right here in the Village what with the threat to impose armed deputies upon us. It is a sickness that has spread and there appears to be no antivirus.
     But there is, actually. It is called education. It is called true leadership by true leaders. It is called tolerance. It is called patience and understanding. It is called not perverting the precepts of religion and killing and maiming in the name of G-d. Leave G-d out of it for He is crying. As am I, for the world, for those two girls killed by a growing wave of violence, killed by the very one who is supposed to protect them against all evil - their father. So how does my daughter break it to her daughter. With tears and hugs, with admissions of non understanding, with promises that that will never happen to her and then I will get the call and have to reassure both of them even as I tremble in fear of the future.
     And yet, there is hope if we all strive for a better world. I know that this is silly even as I type it, for people appear to be warped today, but I KNOW there are good people. I see it  every day in the actions of people here in the Village as they care for loved ones, for friends. I see it in loving relationships amongst families and friends out there, outside the Village. I see it in the voices of the few, but the few can grow into many if we really care and strive for it.
     To close, another statement I read, "Exercise daily. Walk with G-d." If we do that, in growing numbers, and truly understand that G-d wishes His children to get along, to care for each other, to help, not harm, to assist, not kill - we can improve. Kohelet, or Ecclesiastics, says that there is a time for every thing, every idea, on this earth. Now is the time for effort, for love, for cooperation. May we never have to break such things again to any of our children.