HOW DO I SPEAK?

  How do I speak? How do I write? How can I deal with the storm of emotions running rampant through me? Do I say, it is what it is and forget about it, resign myself to it, whatever it is? Or am I permitted to rage, to shout, to plead, to cry? Does my responsibility to others mean I must check my emotions at the door, always remain upbeat when I am manifestly not? Nor can I be that cheery, optimistic person all the time. 

Or is it okay for me to shout at times, to acknowledge, that yes, I have faith, I have hope, could not continue on without them, but damn it! I am angry. Dear Lord. So angry. And so sad, beyond the power of words to fully express the depths of these emotions. 

Literally thousands of good people of all faiths and thoughts are praying for Yitzy, truly a golden boy. A throwback to the innocence of yesteryear. A boy who can spend hours in the forest along with his father, stand still enough so that birds of the forest will fly to his outstretched hand and eat from it. Immensely talented athlete, a triple threat in baseball, modest in his skill, he is an excellent student as well, in both Judaic and secular subjects, and cannot wait to put on a black hat just like his father and brother. 

He is a boy who loves his family and is beloved of and by them. His grandparents simply adore him and are beside themselves in our feelings of uselessness and frustration. In our feelings, our quietly shouted question - why him? In fact, why anyone? 

Why does this world refuse to wake up and understand the uselessness, the waste, of all the energies of hatred and warfare? Why cannot the members of the human race discard that path of evil and instead focus energies into solving the ills of society? Heal the ill with cures that should long ago have been in place!

Why at this time of stress from the unthinkable made real, must the woes of the world intrude as millennia old hatreds resurface from their dirty depths? Why must we constantly fight those who revel in the barbaric spikes of hatred and bias, advancing from words and thoughts of hate to acts of the same, shedding blood as of days of old. 

Why is it so difficult, perhaps impossible, to educate those who hate, oppress, who pillage and burn, that hatred may begin with the age-old plague of antisemitism, but it does not end there. Hate is cannibalistic; once a target is done, it moves on to the next. Until it totally consumes all. Nothing and no one left.

Thus yes, I am angry. I am upset about my own powerlessness to heal the wounds of the world. To heal Yitzy. Would that I could. My heart aches for him. I roar and shake my hands at the Heavens. I whisper my pleas in strangulated tone, hoping, praying, that yes there will be salvation; there is always hope.

 So many are praying for Yitzy, working for a better world, that hope must exist. Perhaps words have helped this morning for my soul is quieter, if not at peace, at least able to return to that optimism that all will indeed be okay. My faith and trust in the One Above must remain strong, know that the power of united voices raised in prayer and pleas for Yitzy will reach His ears and heart and a positive response will soon be forthcoming. 

May he be granted refuah shelaymah bimheyrah beyameinu. 

May he be granted a timely and complete healing.

May Hashem hear all our voices raised in prayer. 

Amen. Amen