Letters to the Editor: Reactions to Parkland, Missile Defense

Reactions to Parkland

Maimonides (1135-1204) never heard of a school shooting, but he understood the National Rifle Association (NRA) perfectly (“When Will It End?” Feb. 23).

Torah obligation in regard to sales of weapons: Maimonides (Mishneh Torah, Laws of a Murderer 12:12, paraphrasing Babylonian Talmud Avodah Zarah 15b) declares: “It is forbidden to sell weapons of war to [those with an inclination to violence]. Nor is it permitted to sharpen their spears, or to sell them knives, manacles, iron chains, bears, lions, or any object which can endanger the public; but it is permitted to sell them shields, which are only for defense.”

Maimonides explains that in selling arms to such a person, “One strengthens the hands of an evil-doer and causes him to transgress” and “Anyone who causes one who is [morally] blind … to stumble — or one who strengthens the hand of a person who is [morally] blind and does not see the path of truth because of the desire of his heart — violates a negative precept as Torah (Leviticus 19:14) states, ‘You shall not put a stumbling block before the blind.’ ”

Mitch Paradise, Los Angeles

First of all, the Second Amendment pertaining to the militia was really replaced by our police forces and the United States military.

Secondly, it takes two-thirds of the states to change a constitutional amendment and that will never happen over this issue. We have gone 242 years without a dictator in the United States.

All semi-automatic assault rifles should be limited to a six-round clip for public use.

Anyone who has been expelled from school, fired from a job, dishonorably discharged from the military or other similar situations, should automatically be put on a no-gun purchase list for two years. After that period, when applying, that person should be on a 30-day review and, if determined not a threat to society, be allowed to buy a weapon.

Schools should have at least one qualified licensed teacher with a semi-automatic handgun and a bullet-proof vest for every 10 classrooms unless all of the above laws are put into effect.

Joseph B.D. Saraceno, Gardena

Kudos to your editorial staff for the excellent commentaries from across a wide spectrum of highly regarded intelligent members of our community. They wrote about the ongoing situation whereby children and teachers are being shot in their schools. Each commentary deserves consideration toward resolving this ongoing “violent culture,” as Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin calls it.

As I read the various comments, it seems that the main argument against the changes needed to end gun violence is the interpretation of the Second Amendment. It reads:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

The U.S. Congress, over time, has changed its definition of the term “militia” as related to the United States. It’s time for a definition more in line with what our nation needs today — clearly stated so as to leave no doubt.

The Second Amendment specifically limits the right to keep and bear arms to a well-regulated militia. The members of the NRA do not constitute a “well-regulated militia.”

This could well be a good start to rid our country of “the plague of gun violence,” as the Journal labels it in its cover story.

George Epstein, Los Angeles

I find little reason to think that the CIA, FBI, state and local police, psychologists and psychiatrists, family, friends, neighbors or schoolmates will ever be able to identify all among us who may, someday, perpetrate a mass shooting, and it’s clear that we’ll never have the resources to track and monitor those who are merely deemed suspicious.

The automatic rifles debate and failed regulations won’t change until our politicians climb out of the pocket of the NRA, and there’s scant likelihood of this happening anytime soon.

The 300 million-plus guns in which we’re awash won’t be confiscated and will continue to be easy to obtain, and the gun manufacturers aren’t planning to go out of business. Hunters, marksmen, hobbyists and those who own guns for self-protection shouldn’t have to fear that the government wants them.

The only solution I see for those who want to protect their loved ones is to escape.

Hal Rothberg via email

On April 20, there will be a National Action Day featuring numerous forums to protest what seems like an endless series of mass shootings.

I feel it is imperative that yeshivas reach out to their secular and religious brethren across faiths and participate in the day’s planned activities.

April 20 was selected because it is the 19th anniversary of the Columbine massacre, and thus the start of the murderous mayhem that has been continually visited upon our citizens. For Jews, April 20, 1889, has a sickening significance: It was the day Adolf Hitler was born, the genocidal maniac who was the architect of the Shoah.

We are commanded to not kill; we are obligated to perform acts of tikkun olam; and we choose as our task to be the promulgators of morals and values to the rest of the world.

What we cannot do, however, is depend on the conservative right, its white supremacist allies and the Republican lawmakers who have blocked and expunged every gun-regulation initiative unless it has the imprimatur of the NRA.

“Never again” is, unfortunately, a mantra that will be part of our political lexicon unless our vigilance is accompanied by direct and overt actions.

Marc Rogers, North Hollywood

Here’s a suggestion regarding guns from someone whose experiences make him worth listening to.

Former astronaut Capt. Mark Kelly, husband of shooting victim and former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, is a gun owner and supporter of the Second Amendment.

He also supports the use of extreme-risk protection orders. This would have allowed law enforcement — had the FBI done its job — to remove the firearm owned by Nikolas Cruz while a determination was made regarding the likelihood that he would commit gun violence, as he expressly said he wished to do.

Julia Lutch via email

There is a very simple solution to the gun controversy as long as politics is removed from the discussion.

Stop blaming everyone except yourselves for shootings on school campuses. Take matters into your own hands and hire armed security guards responsible for school safety. Don’t expect the government or the police or laws to protect you. Do as the Israelis do. And as Ben Shapiro reminds us, “Every single government authority failed in Parkland. And they expect Americans to forfeit our self-defense rights to them?”

There can never be a guarantee that every attack can be thwarted, even if we would abolish the Second Amendment, placed by our Founding Fathers not to defend the public from burglars but to place controls on the new government. The bad guys will still get guns no matter the laws, and the good guys will be defenseless. Among the first things that a totalitarian state does is to confiscate weapons.

All the gun laws on the books would not have prevented any of the atrocities in recent years from happening. And, as is often said, the answer to a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. I’ll bet that the last words on the lips of someone about to be executed by a terrorist is, “I pray that the guy next to me has a gun!”

C.P. Lefkowitz, Rancho Palos Verdes

Danielle Berrin’s column on guns and Isaiah Berlin is a wise and passionate plea for balance and moderation (“In America, Life Should Come Before Total Liberty,” Feb. 23).

Gun fanatics are ideologues. An ideologue is a person with an agenda, and that agenda trumps everything. It trumps facts, common sense, logic, intellectual honesty and reality. None of those things matters to an ideologue.

By definition, ideologues are extremists and they are found on both the left and the right. Moderates, on the other hand, are pragmatists. Their whole approach is about compromise and finding solutions.

In “The Righteous Mind,” Jonathan Haidt writes, “When a group of people make something sacred, the members of the cult lose the ability to think clearly about it.” This is why Judaism teaches us that idolatry is wrong and dangerous. Only ideologues and extremists engage in idolatry. It’s the NRA’s idolatry of assault weapons that led to the slaughters in Las Vegas and Parkland.

The true path to healing the world is to follow the calm and measured voices of moderates, not the loud and angry voices of ideologues and extremists.

Michael Asher via email

Dear Ms. Berrin: As Benjamin Franklin noted, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety,” accusations of contextomy by Benjamin Wittes and Gregory Ferenstein, notwithstanding.

Warren Scheinin, Redondo Beach

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Buoyed by Missile Defense

As Larry Greenfield wrote (Blessings of Missile Defense,” Feb. 16), missile defense has detractors, like letter writer Steve Daniels, who admitted that the Iron Dome system works in Israel and that scientific advancements in the U.S. are proceeding, as well.

Recently, Israel conducted a successful flight test of its new Arrow 3 missile defense interceptor. The Israeli Defense Ministry stated the test was a full military scenario.

I choose Greenfield’s positive vision and the proven successes of missile defense over the cynicism that motivates critics to label this life-saving technology a “boondoggle” for defense contractors. Israeli children would beg to differ.

Karen Reissman via email

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Awash in Self-Obsession

There’s a new mode of transportation in Venice, Calif. It’s called a Bird Scooter. For anyone who has a 3-year-old, these are motorized, adult versions of your kid’s first Razor or Micro Mini, whipping through the streets of Venice like slim, individualized 21st-century gondolas. As whimsical and playful as their presence is in Venice, I have had more than one incident where a Bird gondolier lost in his zippy feeling of invincibility nearly crashed into my clueless perambulation, lost in my glass “Golden Calf” iPhone, almost rendering me a scooter-incident statistic.

There is a distinct tension I feel as an inhabitant of the 21st century that the Birds remind me of: It’s easy to become numb to the presence of others around us, especially those going in a different direction. As both an observer and a participant in this self-obsessed new world, I fear it is desensitizing us to the needs of others, which is one of the cornerstones for building a just society.

This is a national phenomenon. From our tribal allegiances to our cultural xenophobia, all sides are guilty and accountable for feeling that our right of way is the only right way. In our fast-paced flurry about town, our privileged and affordable access to the globe (both physical and virtual), our siloed social media universe facing inward, we have, ironically, lost a human quality — the ability to experience the Other.

In a recent University of Pennsylvania scandal, law professor Amy Wax was asked by the university to “take a sabbatical” in the wake of her publishing an unpopular op-ed in The Wall Street Journal spotlighting a return to “bourgeois values.” Wax recognized the moral decline in the United States, noting that more than half of all children in America are being raised in single-family households, a rise of opioid addiction is decaying our core, and increased tribalism is fracturing our country. Her theory of change was assailed by her colleagues and she was put in academic herem.

As a woman who loves Torah, the fallout from Wax’s editorial captures a unique form of heartbreak. Gone are the days of respectful disagreement; forgotten is the engaged discourse of our academic institutions. It seems that unpopular opinions must be reckoned with through shame, isolation and marginalization of those who generated them. Lost are the academies of Sura and Pumbedita; we have confused the messenger with the messages. Our fingers gliding upon the glass of new media has turned our touch cold to one another. Gone are the days of rigorous and respectful debate, which old-fashioned Jews called machlochet.

It’s easy to become numb to the presence of others around us, especially those going in a different direction.

Pirkei Avot 5:16, the Wisdom of our Fathers (a distinctly male-dominant claim of wisdom — should we ban it because we have yet to unearth its female corollary?) and one of our foundation texts on machlochet states: “Any dispute that is conducted for the sake of heaven, its outcome will ultimately be determined. And if not for the sake of heaven, it will not be determined.”

L’Shem Shaymayim, “For the Sake of Heaven,” hovers heavily. What does it mean to dispute “for the sake of heaven” for a 21st-century reader? The ancient idiom dominates, and our minds weigh it with authority. But what if the whisperings of those who came before us were read instead as: “Any dispute that is conducted for the sake of heaven, its outcome will ultimately be determined. And if it is not, for heaven’s sake(!), it will not be determined.”

The rabbis speak to us from the beyond both imploringly and playfully: Dispute! Debate! Disagree! For most of our musings are not in heaven’s realm. We must recapture the ancient art of machlochet, as our engagement with one another is our redemption while we are still here. Don’t zip speedily by your fellow with a false sense of invincibility because everything ever thought, written or known can be found in three seconds of a Google search. That’s for the Birds.

Let us recapture the awe of standing before the Other; fall in love with the world of ideas, not information. Not all unwanted advances — of ideas or sexual appetites — need be conflated into accusations of sexual assault or an unpopular opinion into an academic lynching. May we smash false idols of glass screens and reclaim the fine art of disagreement with an impish curiosity as we stare face to face with our opposition, as, for heaven’s sake, it is so not about you. It’s about us.

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Rabbi Lori Shapiro is the founder and artistic director of The Open Temple in Venice.

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My Husband, the Shabbat King

I’ve never fancied myself a balabusta. For the past eight years, I’ve assumed this role, however, in my relationship with my husband, Danny Lobell.

Because I was a freelance writer for most of our relationship, I would dutifully care for our two dogs, six chickens and tortoise, clean the house religiously and cook every meal. I’d make elaborate Shabbat dinners, invite over tons of people, and make the house look perfect, all the while writing for many clients and building my portfolio. On the side, I was also managing Danny’s comedy career.

Some Thursday nights, I would have two pots full of rice going on the stove and be panfrying 14 pieces of schnitzel while baking six loaves of challah and washing and drying loads upon loads of laundry. Often, I was up until 3 a.m. setting the table, then getting up around 10 a.m. and working all day on the finishing touches. I usually never left the kitchen on Fridays. Our home doesn’t have central air conditioning, so there were some fun (read: terrible) summer days I spent indoors preparing for Friday night dinner.

Danny played his own part by grocery shopping, entertaining the guests, cleaning up after dinner, and serving tea and whiskey. He did his part to help.

I decided I’d had enough of this working woman/housewife role. I applied for a full-time job, and a month later, I got it. Immediately, I felt that huge housewife burden vanish.

And although it wasn’t all bad on my end — I love cooking for Danny and Shabbat guests, caring for our adorable pets and having a clean home — I knew I was stretching myself too thin. I was getting crabby with Danny. I was anxious, tired and overweight. I didn’t have enough time for self-care. My brain was constantly in “go, go, go” mode.

Then, one day last year, I decided I’d had enough of this working woman/housewife role. I applied for a full-time job, and a month later, I got it. Immediately, I felt that huge housewife burden vanish.

As soon as I started going to work, I felt better. I knew it was the healthiest move I could have made.

Immediately, I felt closer to Danny, because I was able to focus on my work work, which I had always enjoyed much more than housework. I had money to hire a housekeeper, who made our home look sparkling clean before Shabbat. The only thing I worried about was if Danny would be able to put Shabbat together for us.

I should have learned after all these years that worrying is counterproductive. There was no need to be apprehensive.

At the end of the first exhausting week of work, I came home on Friday afternoon to a clean house, a delicious-smelling stew in the slow cooker, all the appropriate lights duct-taped for Shabbat and a table set for the two of us. A beautiful bouquet of flowers sat in the middle. As soon as I saw Danny, who was adjusting his tie in the mirror, getting ready to watch me light the candles, I hugged him and nearly cried. “You did it,” I whispered.

The next week, Danny made an even more elaborate meal, invited some of our wonderful friends, got another bouquet, and bought me a cute top from my favorite shop, Karen Michelle.

The following week, Danny’s parents came to visit, and he went all out, running to Got Kosher to buy the best challah and baba ghanoush in town, to Bibi’s to get some amazing rugelach and Yankee’s dips, to Glatt Mart to procure the juiciest brisket it had and smoked it for 12 straight hours.

One day, I hope that I have more time to cook again (cleaning, eh, not so much) and to get back to a few of the housewife duties I actually enjoyed. But right now, I know I’m in good hands with my husband, Danny, the Shabbat King, who continues to impress me.

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The Foibles of Dating Nice Jewish Men

Dating is hard. In my case, it is usually funny, sometimes painful and often pathetic.

I’m Jewish and like being with a member of the tribe. When I got divorced, it became even more important. As the mother of a son, I’d like him to marry a Jewish girl, so it was important to lead by example. Every date I have with a “nice Jewish man” gets me closer to giving up the dream and dating non-Jews.

This is a snapshot of my dating life. It is important to note that all three of these men are Jewish, age appropriate and gainfully employed, with active profiles on dating sites that list them as “looking for relationships.” This is what it looks like to be a Jewish woman in your 50s, dating Jewish men in Los Angeles.

Man No. 1: He is 54 years old, divorced and estranged from his grown children. He’s coming out of a long-term relationship with a woman who has a young child. When I asked how long it had been since they broke up, he said the truth was he was in the process of moving out of the home they shared. He actually was at their house when we spoke, taking out the garbage. He assured me that, even though they technically lived together, he was moving out and their relationship was over. I quickly realized he mentioned her a lot, so I started counting. For the next few minutes he referred to his not-really-ex by name 26 times. He then explained, in the interest of full disclosure, that he voted for Trump and would do it again. His living situation was no longer the grossest thing about him. That was the end of that.

Man No. 2: This man let me know he had been divorced for three years, but was happily still living with his ex-wife. They have four kids, one of them, a daughter, still at home. Rather than disrupt the daughter’s life, they have agreed to live together until she goes to college, which would be this fall. He assured me I didn’t need to worry about dating him, because they had a system in place. She slept in one room, he slept in another, and they took turns dating on weekends. To clarify, they alternated weekends at the family home so they could both pursue fulfilling relationships that included sex. On his weekend at the house, his ex-wife and daughter sleep at her parent’s home. When it is the ex-wife’s weekend, he goes to his mother’s house with his daughter. Really? How can this be a thing? I think this is going to screw up that kid in worse ways than a divorce would. I don’t want to judge, and everyone should do what works for their family, but I’m going to have to say no on this one. No.

Man No. 3: I was set up with this man by a friend. I was told he would make me laugh, which is important, so we decided to meet for breakfast. He was handsome, on time, had a job and fantastic green eyes. We said hello, settled in for the dating dance, and it was going well. Then he decided he was going to call the waitress a bitch. Not once, but twice, to her face. There is no world in which I am going to be OK with this behavior, so I went in. I started by apologizing to the waitress. She was lovely, which made his treatment of her even more disturbing. I told him he was rude and I was not only not interested in staying on our date, but he needed to apologize to the waitress. It was then that he told me I was, wait for it, a bitch. I got up, “accidentally” spilled my iced tea on his lap, and headed home. We were done in just under 10 minutes.

I find my dating life to be entertaining, which is a good thing or I might impale myself. One day my prince will come, and he may or may not be Jewish. But until he finds me, I will remain hopeful. We must date knowing that missteps get you closer to love. All we can do is say a prayer while keeping the faith.

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Ilana Angel writes the Keeping the Faith blog at jewishjournal.com. 

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The Parkland Dilemma

I bought my first gun when I was 28 years old. I grew up in a home without guns; I never even fired a gun until I was in law school. Like a lot of people raised in Los Angeles, I had a knee-jerk aversion to firearms. Although in principle I supported the founding argument for the Second Amendment — I believe that an armed population acts as a final check on the possibility of a tyrannical government — I never felt the necessity to get a gun for home defense.

All that changed in 2013 — ironically, after a debate about gun control. That January, I appeared on CNN with Piers Morgan, who had spent the previous few weeks decrying the prevalence of firearms ownership in the United States, in response to the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut. Most of all, Morgan had relied on shallow emotional appeal: He had suggested, wrongly, that those who disagreed with his gun control proposals were hard-hearted regarding the deaths of the children.

During my interview with Morgan, I said he was acting like a bully — that he was standing on the graves of the children of Sandy Hook to push his political agenda. I pointed out that everyone on both sides of the aisle cares about the murder of innocent children, even if we disagree about the best ways to prevent such murders.

Within hours, I began to receive threatening messages. One such message noted my home address. I had a security system installed, and I purchased a Mossberg 500 pump-action shotgun, on the advice of a police officer.

During the most recent election cycle, I again received a bevy of death threats — this time thanks to my opposition to President Donald Trump’s candidacy. I received approximately 40 percent of all anti-Semitic tweets directed at Jewish journalists during the election cycle. I received threatening letters and death threats by phone. And so I purchased a Smith & Wesson 9mm handgun, again on the advice of a police officer. I have often considered carrying it in violation of the law, though I have never done so; the old Second Amendment adage “better to be tried by 12 than carried by 6” began to hit home during those difficult days.

Now, for owning two weapons for self-defense, I’m being labeled immoral again. All gun-owners are, collectively. How else are we to read the comments of Parkland, Fla., student Cameron Kasky, from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, who told Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) that thanks to his support for gun rights, Rubio resembled the Parkland shooter? How else are we to listen to the comments of Parkland student David Hogg, who said that National Rifle Association spokeswoman Dana Loesch “doesn’t care about these children’s lives”? I know Dana. We’re friends. She has two children, and she cares deeply about their safety. If she were local, there’s no one else I’d call first if my family were in danger and I needed help.

We’re all Americans. And we all care about the slaughter of children.

We’re all Americans. And we all care about the slaughter of children. That’s why I’ve called for the revision of federal law to allow gun violence restraining orders, a way for family members and friends of dangerously mentally ill people to apply to courts to restrict Second Amendment rights. That’s why my media outlet, The Daily Wire, has stopped naming and showing the faces of mass shooters, in an attempt to curb the publicity that often spawns such shootings. That’s why I’ve suggested a dramatic hardening of school security around the country: I went to YULA Boys High School, where security is top-notch — and I was there when the West Valley Jewish Community Center mass shooter drove right past our school, saw the security there, and kept driving. All children should feel just as safe as I did in high school.

Yes, we all care. And what’s more, I’m not going to give up my guns just because gun control advocates browbeat me. The Parkland students were failed by the FBI, which was warned twice about the shooter but did nothing. They were failed by the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, which received literally dozens of warnings but did nothing — and then they were failed again when armed deputies refused to storm the building.

The last line of defense isn’t the government. It’s me and my weapon. I’m keeping that weapon, and standing for Second Amendment rights, specifically because I care about my children. I assume those who disagree with me care about my kids, too. But there’s no way we’ll ever be able to find rational solutions if we shout at one another that our disagreements are evidence of our malice toward innocent children.

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Ben Shapiro is a best-selling author, editor-in-chief at The Daily Wire and host of the podcast “The Ben Shapiro Show.”

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Help Boys Be Better Boys

Amid the soul-searching that has followed the Florida shooting, there has been an implicit acknowledgement that there are in fact differences between the sexes. My friends on the left posted and reposted this stat: 98 percent of mass shootings are committed by men.

After decades of hearing that there are zero differences between the sexes, this acknowledgment is quite welcome. Unfortunately, the fact that it is being used to prop up a “masculinity is toxic” argument undermines its usefulness. Imagine what could be gained if we put theory aside and began to look at reality again.

First, let’s be clear: Masculinity did not cause the deaths of 17 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. A legally bought AR-15 did. An AR-15, combined with systemic failure on the part of the FBI, the police and school officials.

Second, this interest in sexual differences is based on a false premise: that these differences are “constructed” by society, that evil parents condition boys to be boys by continuously telling them to “stop with the emotion,” encouraging aggression, and prohibiting their desire to play with dolls.

When my son was 3, he ran to join the dozen other boys watching a construction site next to the playground. Not one girl stopped to watch, and I remember thinking: Maybe now the “no-difference” parents will begin to understand biological differences.

Once we return to accepting sexual differences, there’s much we can do to help boys — and girls — become their best selves.

Shortly afterward, a mother of one of his friends said to me: “I finally relented on the subject when I gave my son a Barbie and he used it to hammer down some Legos.”

I must interject here: There are, of course, some girls who enjoy watching construction sites and some boys who like to play with dolls. When we talk about sexual differences, we’re talking about how the majority of males and females act.

Boys are generally more physically aggressive than girls, and it’s not because of parental encouragement. In fact, good parents work hard at channeling their sons’ aggression into healthy, constructive pursuits. My son and I used to watch “The Ten Commandments” a lot, and every time we came to the scene where brawny Joshua helps to save Moses’ mother from being crushed, I made a point of saying, “See, this is how we use our strength.”

Unfortunately, some boys become bullies; their aggression turns violent, their energy is used to destroy, not create. This we surely can call toxic masculinity, and it is clear the Florida shooter fell into this category.

Would various Broward County institutions have been better equipped to treat him if there was a deeper understanding of how masculinity can turn toxic? No doubt. All schools — society in general — would gain radically from even an acknowledgement of sexual differences and the problems that can emerge.

Right now, most schools operate under the neutralization theory promulgated by academia for the past three decades: attempt to neutralize all differences. At my son’s elementary school, this has amounted to boys in kindergarten being sent to the principal’s office if they can’t sit completely still for hours on end. Oh, and gym class has been cut to once a week, and there’s only 20 minutes of recess. If it rains or snows, the kids are forced to sit for more than six hours with zero physical activity.

Would frequent diagnoses of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and other behavioral issues be significantly reduced if kids, especially boys, were allowed more time to run around? I looked at the schedule of the top all-boys school in New York as an answer: vigorous activity, academic work, vigorous activity, academic work.

The point is, once we return to accepting sexual differences, there’s much we can do to help boys — and girls — become their best selves. Belittling boys and men, the current trend, is not going to get us to that point.

My hope is that the horrific Florida shooting leads to much change, from gun laws to FBI responsiveness. It would not be insignificant if it also leads to a better understanding of differences between the sexes, and what can be done to foster self-respect and dignity for all kids.

It’s well past time to tear down the false gods, whether promulgated by the National Rifle Association or gender studies departments.

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Karen Lehrman Bloch is a cultural critic and author.

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Trapped Inside of Our Tribes

When push comes to shove, we often pick loyalty to a political party over loyalty to an idea or a truth. This is true whether we are on the left or right. Conforming to the views of our political tribe is the safe way to go. Criticizing your tribe in public, well, that’s a lot more risky.

Just ask conservative writer Mona Charen, who had the nerve to call out the hypocrisy of her own Republican Party last week at the CPAC convention. On a panel about the #MeToo movement, she said she was “disappointed in people on our side for being hypocrites about sexual harassers and abusers of women who are in our party. Who are sitting in the White House. Who brag about their extramarital affairs. Who brag about mistreating women. And because he happens to have an R after his name, we look the other way, we don’t complain.” She got a loud chorus of boos.

The hypocrisy works both ways. Don’t get me started about the liberal feminists who went easy on that serial sexual abuser Bill Clinton because of the D after his name.

I saw plenty of tribal loyalty during the heated arguments over the Iran nuclear deal. A pro-Israel friend of mine who is a die-hard Democrat confessed that he hated the Iran deal. So, why didn’t he speak up? Well, he hated Republicans even more. He couldn’t stand the idea of saying anything that might make them look good.

Blind loyalty is a bipartisan disease.

I also have blind loyalty — to the Los Angeles Lakers. Rain or shine, I’m a diehard fan. But I don’t just love my Lakers, I also hate the Boston Celtics. Those two sentiments go hand in hand. If you love the Lakers, you must hate the Celtics. It’s tradition.

I enjoy looking at both sides of an argument. It’s challenging. It opens my mind. When my views are locked in, that’s when my mind stagnates.

When friends ask me about my fanatical devotion to a sports team, I never know what to say, other than I love sports and I love rooting for my home team. I suppose if I wanted to get esoteric, it’s possible that, subconsciously, I’m using the Lakers to get tribal fanaticism out of my system. Then, when I’m confronted with something serious like politics, I’ll be more inclined to see both sides of an argument. Like I said, esoteric.

In any case, politics is not sports. The stakes in politics are enormous, and the views are fluid. I may like a party’s policy on one issue and another party’s on another issue. For me, it’s case by case, policy by policy, candidate by candidate. No reason to go all in with one party.

But there’s something else — I enjoy looking at both sides of an argument. It’s challenging. It opens my mind. When my views are locked in, that’s when my mind stagnates.

An open mindset is the animating force behind our new Roundtable email newsletter. It stands out from other newsletters because you get three different views for each issue curated from across the ideological spectrum. It’s an opportunity every morning to sneak out of our tribes and open our minds to a range of viewpoints.

But the Roundtable is an exception. If anything, the rift between left and right in America has grown wider than ever. In her new book, “Political Tribes,” Amy Chua writes: “The Left believes that right-wing tribalism — bigotry, racism — is tearing the country apart. The Right believes that left-wing tribalism — identity politics, political correctness — is tearing the country apart. They are both right.”

This is not the way America was meant to evolve.

“America is a super-group — the only one among the major powers of the world,” Chua writes. “We have forged a national identity that transcends tribal politics — an identity that does not belong to any subgroup, that is strong and capacious enough to hold together an incredibly diverse population, making us all American. This status was hard-won; it is precious.

“The destructive, fracturing tribalism that is seizing American politics puts this in jeopardy.”

The nasty fighting now raging over gun control is an example of this destructive tribalism. As Ben Shapiro writes this week in his Journal column, “There’s no way we’ll ever be able to find rational solutions if we shout at one another that our disagreements are evidence of our malice toward innocent children.”

An insult is not an argument. An emotion is not an idea. An attack is not a policy.

An insult is not an argument. An emotion is not an idea. An attack is not a policy.

Our obsession with tribal politics is bringing out the darker angels of our nature.

In 1780, four years after the Declaration of Independence, Founding Father John Adams wrote:

“There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.”

Adams had no idea that 238 years after he wrote those words, a social media revolution would facilitate and magnify the very political evil he feared.

Since the theme of our issue this week is prayer, maybe we can pray for a day when more Americans will channel their tribalism toward their sports teams rather than their political parties. As for me, I can’t stand those Celtics.

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Inclusion

The following is a transcript of a speech at a recent Bnai David-Judea Shabbaton. One part of the program was in conjunction with Yachad.

“Yachad, The National Jewish Council for Disabilities is a thriving global organization dedicated to addressing the needs of all Jewish individuals with disabilities and ensuring their inclusion in every aspect of Jewish life.” 

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Purim. It’s a story of good guys and bad guys, with a cast of characters that includes an inebriated king; a disobedient queen; a new queen with a secret; a pair of clumsy conspirators; and Darth Vader with a colonial-style hat. And we celebrate וְנַהֲפוֹךְ הוּא — the sudden reversal of fortune — by wearing costumes, putting on silly plays, and eating and drinking way too much.

All this may seem an odd juxtaposition with the subject of inclusion.  Though when you think about it….masks, costumes… Purim is perhaps the one time of year when we’re all judged — in fact want to be judged — by external appearances.  But people with special needs are often and unfairly judged that way all the time.  Though on Purim, costumes allow everyone to be included.

Actually, the tradition to celebrate Purim by dressing in costume is ironic, since the story the Megillah tells is so caught up in identity.  And identity is Purim’s real connection to inclusion.

Consider, for instance, that despite being a people מְפֻזָּר וּמְפֹרָד בֵּין הָעַמִּים, scattered and dispersed, by the time of the Megillah the distinction between the remaining tribes of Israel has been supplanted by a common identity: יְהוּדִים, Jews. He’s not Mordechai the Benjaminite; he’s מרדכי היהודי.  That the Persians used a one-size-fits-all label is no surprise; but the Megillah makes it clear that the exiles adopted it as well.

One could argue that this shared designation is the seed of וְנַהֲפוֹךְ הוּא. For the first time in our history, we’re truly united by a common identity.

Still, it’s a fragile community, as Mordechai instructs Esther to conceal even this fragment of identity (her שארית ישראל, if you will).  So she hides behind a mask and distances herself with a queen-Esther costume.  וְנַהֲפוֹךְ הוּא begins in earnest when Mordechai realizes that Esther’s mask and costume not only hide her, but simultaneously isolate her from the community.  She’s both afraid to be seen and is reluctant to see.  He awakens her to a responsibility towards the נֶּחֱשָׁלִים אַחֲרֶיהָ, the community she’s left behind.

So beneath the broad arc of triumph of good over evil, the Megillah is a story of community and inclusion. Esther’s actions demonstrate that we must remember those who, metaphorically speaking, do not live in the palace. Mordechai is our conscience, reminding us of the נֶּחֱשָׁלִים אַחֲרֵינו.

The word נֶּחֱשָׁלִים appears only once in Tanach — in Parshat Zachor, which we read every year on the Shabbat before Purim:

אֲשֶׁר קָרְךָ בַּדֶּרֶךְ, וַיְזַנֵּב בְּךָ כָּל הַנֶּחֱשָׁלִים אַחֲרֶיךָ — וְאַתָּה עָיֵף וְיָגֵעַ

“Remember what Amalek did to you along the way: when you were weary and worn out, they attacked all who were lagging behind…”

Note that it wasn’t Amalek who was responsible for their exclusion.  We were tired (עָיֵף) and worn out (יָגֵעַ)… and we neglected those in the community who fell behind, הַנֶּחֱשָׁלִים.

But just who are the נֶּחֱשָׁלִים אַחֲרֵינו — the left-behind, the excluded?

Of course, there’s the traditional triumvirate of the גר יתום ואלמנה — the stranger, the orphan, the widow.  But even this excludes those with special needs.

Like Esther, people with special needs sometimes hide, or are isolated, behind their masks.  Esther’s mask is described as יְפַת-תֹּאַר וְטוֹבַת מַרְאֶה, beautiful — but we soon learn that she’s more than just a pretty face.  How often do we give those with special needs a chance to show what they can do?

Consider my daughter Aviya.  She’s happy, friendly, outgoing.  She loves noses and circles.  She particularly enjoys playing with words — saying them backwards, reversing letters.  She doesn’t read books, she reads “koobs”; she comes home from school everyday on the “sub”.  She does this not because of her challenges; she does this because she’s clever and enjoys being silly.  It’s part of what makes her special.  But too often a perceived mask and costume leave her excluded, and leave her endearing traits unknown, unacknowledged, unappreciated.

To be sure, there are some things she can’t do and maybe will never be able to do.  There are some things she may never understand.  But what she does understand are feelings of exclusion.  When she goes up to other kids, they usually stare at her.  Though she doesn’t always understand this, she often feels their silence and their distance.

I worry that soon, when Aviya becomes a young adult, many grown-ups will respond to her the same way.  And despite a tremendous vocabulary, she can be hard to understand — and gets so frustrated at having to repeat herself that she often retreats into herself.  Or hides behind a koob.

She and so many others in our community are the נֶּחֱשָׁלִים בתוכנו — the excluded in our midst.

The word נֶּחֱשָׁלִים is often translated as “weak ones,” from the word חלש. However the shoresh of נֶּחֱשָׁלִים would appear to be  ח-ש-ל, not ח-ל-ש.  But חלש is the word the Torah uses to describe the battle with Amalek:  יהושע and his troops did not “defeat” Amalek; rather, ויחלוש יהושע – he “weakened them”.

So too, it seems נֶּחֱשָׁלִים should really be נֶּחֱלָשִים.  Not חשל but חלש. This is an example of a linguistic process called metathesis — the reversal of sounds or letters in a word.  And it’s not all that uncommon. For instance, כתונת is the source of the english word “tunic”; or the mispronunciation “nucyular”; or Aviya, who comes home everyday on the “sub”.

Usually this flipping of sound can survive to become part of the language only when the mispronunciation would not be confused with an established word. Thus the hebrew word כבש has the synonym כשב.

What makes נֶּחֱשָׁלִים remarkable is that its apparent shoresh, ח-ש-ל, already exists:  חשל is the forging or shaping of metal to strengthen it.  And not just metal — as Kelly Clarkson would say: מה שלא הורג מחשל.

So חשל and חלש have essentially opposite meanings.

Maybe all this is not a coincidence — maybe we’re being told

אל תאמר נֶּחֱלָשִים אלא נֶּחֱשָׁלִים

Don’t describe them by what they are  — weak, excluded — but as what we should all be  — members of a strong community.

Perhaps the text is reminding us not just of the actions of Amalek, but also how to correct our own failings. That, despite a common identity, more is required to forge a community.  For the עָיֵף וְיָגֵעַ — we, the weary and worn out — to be strengthened, we need to include the excluded. וְנַהֲפוֹךְ הוּא.

In other words, Kelly Clarkson got it wrong: it’s really

אלא שמחשלים אחרים, הוא חישל אותו

Those who strengthen others, strengthen themselves.  As individuals.  As a community.

So this Purim,

• Remember to let Mordechai be our conscience and Esther our action hero.
• Don’t forget that a mask — yours or another’s —  obscures ones view, and that external appearances are mere costumes.
• Recall the words of Shoshanat Ya’akov, which we sing after reading the Megillah,
  להודיע שכל קוויך לא יבושו ולא ייכלמו לנצח כל החוסים בך
• “…to make known that all who hope and trust in You
• will never be ashamed or humiliated…”
• Remember that הִתְהַפְּכוּת, reversal, begins with our sense of, and commitment to, the entire community of יְהוּדִים.

We should remember this as we scroll through the Megillah next week… or any time we settle in to read a good koob.

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Letters to the Editor: Poland Holocaust Bill, Gun Violence, #MeToo and Hamilton’s Jewish Identity

Poland’s Controversial Holocaust Bill

Poland’s new law rewriting its World War II history about not having any involvement in creating concentration camps in their country is a lie. Three million Polish Jews died in their Polish camps, and Polish people were involved in helping the Germans. They pointed out Jewish homes, where the Germans took whatever they wanted, and they helped with building and running the concentration camps. And when 40 Jewish survivors came back in Kielce to claim their homes and businesses after the war, the Polish people killed them. This was going on in most cities in Poland if you dared to come home after being liberated.

This is an unfair law to pass in a country that was deeply involved in killing so many Jews. I know because I was there. I am a witness and I am a survivor.

Ella Mandel via email

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No Solutions to Preventing Gun Violence

I find little reason to think that the CIA, FBI, state and local police, psychologists and psychiatrists, family, friends, neighbors or schoolmates will ever be able to identify all among us who may, someday, perpetrate a mass shooting, and it’s clear that we’ll never have the resources to track and monitor even those who are deemed suspicious.

The semi-automatic rifles debate and failed regulations won’t change until our politicians climb out of the pocket of the National Rifle Association, and there’s scant likelihood of this happening anytime soon.

The 300 million-plus guns in which we’re awash won’t be collected and will continue to be easy to obtain, and the gun manufacturers aren’t planning to go out of business.

Hunters, marksmen, hobbyists and those who own guns for self-protection shouldn’t have to fear that the government wants them.

The only solution I see for those who want to protect their loved ones and others is to move to another country, preferably one that isn’t rife with terrorists.

Hal Rothberg via email

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A Dangerous Escalation Among Nations

One is cordially reminded of that ol’ shibboleth: “The more things change, the more they stay the same (“Down Payment,” Feb. 16).

It’s all very complicated, but is that still not true?

Walter Uhrman, Encino

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Seeing the Light of Southern California

As a native Angeleno from Boyle Heights, it was an absolute joy to read Karen Lehrman Bloch’s piece “Seduced by the Light of Los Angeles” (Feb. 16). Especially when all one needs to do to encounter the opposite sentiment is to visit or live some 500 miles to the north of us in San Francisco, as I did to attend college in the late ’60s and early ’70s. In “The City,” as many San Franciscans like to call it, you dare not mention you are from L.A. for fear of having them look down their collective noses at you, after which you’ll invariably be the recipient of some snide remark about our great city.

Thank you, Ms. Lehrman Bloch.

Marc Yablonka via email

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Can Truth Survive?

Thanks so much, Shmuel Rosner, for the excellent analysis of the Rand Corp. study about truth decay and the great conclusion at the end of your article (“Truth Decay,” Feb. 9). I would like to just add a couple of things: From my observation, I think more and more people look for the truth in the wrong place — outside of themselves — and so become addicted to collecting more and more information. And second: It doesn’t matter how much information or knowledge or richness one has. What truly matters is what he or she does with them. But both my remarks only reinforce your great conclusion “that we no longer know what’s true and what’s not.”

Svetlozar Garmidolov, Los Angeles

For the people who endure blood libels, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement and college campus apartheid walls, do we really need the Journal to explore the “modern” decay of truth?

While I agree with Shmuel Rosner about “leaving [President Donald] Trump [and his hyperbole] aside,” why trace the beginning of the end of the era of truth to 2014 when former Vice President Al Gore provides such a better example? In 2007, British High Court Judge Michael Burton ruled that Gore’s global warming film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” while “broadly accurate,” contained nine significant errors in “the context of alarmism and exaggeration.” Burton found that the film was a partisan political view and that its “apocalyptic vision” was not an impartial analysis of climate change. Happily, we have your Journal as a beacon of truth.

Warren Scheinin, Redondo Beach

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American Presidents and Jewish Values

Gil Troy, in his story about presidents (“Why Jews Love Presidents [Most of the Time],” Feb. 16) reflects the message and mindset of the mainstream fake news, liberal left media in trying to provide some confirmation to support the bias of Jewish Democrats toward the Democratic Party, notwithstanding the fact that only 27 percent of Democrats support Israel and 79 percent of Republicans support Israel. He refers to Republican support for Israel as giving it a toxic embrace. If that weren’t enough, he then bashed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for alienating American Jewry.

He tries to give some emotional support to Democratic Jews who dislike President Donald Trump by consoling them as not being one-issue voters. The underlying premise of his story is that Jews can be patriotic Americans and hate Trump. He is oblivious to the fact that Trump is the best president for Israel and American Jews with the possible exception of Harry Truman, who recognized Israel 12 minutes after the formation of the state.

The events of this past week have proven that Gil Troy and the mainstream media are acting in conspiracy with the liberal left, mostly Jew-hating Democratic establishment.

Marshall Lerner, Beverly Hills

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Obama and #IranianWomenToo

Kudos to David Suissa for his column “Obama and #IranianWomenToo” (Feb. 16). I continue to be unable to wrap my Jewish, pro-Israel mind around the fact that liberal American Jewish Democrats don’t get it that Barack Obama, through the Iranian deal and more, was Israel and American Jewry’s worst nightmare in decades. The only fault that I found in Suissa’s column was the omission of two words: John Kerry.

Marc Yablonka via email

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A Conversion With Eyes Wide Open

In last week’s letters to the editor, Peter Robinson wrote that he knowingly chose to convert to non-Orthodox Judaism, and now rails at the unfairness that his heterodoxic theology and practice of Judaism is denied legitimacy by the Orthodox branch he consciously avoided. Ironically, he appeals to a rabbi whose branch of Judaism is likewise not recognized by Orthodoxy. You can’t join one club and expect reciprocity from a club with much stricter membership requirements.

Zev Newman, Los Angeles

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The Problems of a Missile Defense

Regarding Larry Greenfield’s column, “Blessings of Missile Defense” (Feb. 16):

1.  Even if the systems deployed by Israel are of limited utility, Greenfield expands his argument to include missile defense against intercontinental missiles (ICBMs), which is actually destabilizing rather than protective. If an adversary believes that an anti-missile system deployed against it is operational and effective, that adversary will indeed be more rather than less likely to use its ICBMs first in a crisis, fearing that it will be attacked and then left defenseless to retaliate.

2.  Greenfield is correct that “decades of startling scientific and technological advancements” have resulted in deployment of anti-missile systems in the U.S. (Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, for one), but he fails to note that even in “rigged” tests, when the timing and location of dummy attacking missiles is made known and no decoys are used, U.S. anti-missile tests have failed at least 50 percent of the time. The system is simply a boondoggle for defense contractors. “Missile defense doesn’t promise perfection” is a gross and dangerous understatement.

Steve Daniels via email

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Hamilton’s Jewish Identity Debated

After reading your story on Hamilton several times, I brought it to share with the Freda Mohr Senior Center Current Events Discussion Group (“Was Alexander Hamilton Jewish?” Feb. 16). Being Jewish, I was pleased that Hamilton, one of our country’s honored founders, seemed to have been Jewish.

However, one of our members had extensively researched this matter. He agrees that the information that was presented about Hamilton is correct as far as it goes, but much has not been included that would likely lead to a different conclusion.

His mother, named Rachel Faucette, probably was not Jewish. She had been married off to a wealthy Jewish man, whom she left after several years. A few years later, she gave birth to Alexander Hamilton, whose father was James Hamilton — apparently not Jewish. Furthermore, the school he attended may have not been “a Jewish school.” It had a teacher who taught a class with some aspects of Judaism, including the Ten Commandments in Hebrew.

In the final analysis, the panelists at the Feb. 7 event might have looked at some circumstantial information with a biased, prejudged viewpoint.

George Epstein via email    

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News Flash: Guns Kill

In the days following the Florida school shooting, all of the usual “guns are as American as apple pie” defenses came out as though they had been saved from the last mass shooting and the one before that. Key to the apple pie defense: “If we all had guns, there would be no gun violence.”

It’s interesting that this theory gets so much play given that it goes against everything we know about human nature. But it’s also based on a false assumption. Guns have never been as American as apple pie. Whether or not you believe the Second Amendment was purposefully misinterpreted (and I believe it was), huge swaths of the country have always found guns odious.

Even now, when the prevalence of guns in the U.S. is beyond belief — 300 million, nearly one for every citizen — more than half are concentrated in the hands of just 3 percent of Americans, who own an average of 17 guns each. About 70 percent of Americans do not own a gun. The percentage of gun owners has actually been declining relative to population growth and is at an almost 40-year low. Least surprising of all, the less education you have, the more likely you are to own a gun.

The latter was clear when I started posting about guns on Facebook after the Florida shooting. I think I finally found the issue that decisively separates classical liberals/conservatives from what I can only call the totalitarian right.

The totalitarian right’s response to mass shootings is the mirror image of the totalitarian left’s response to terrorism: Find every excuse to do nothing. Feel morally superior about doing nothing. Pretend that it’s completely normal for a 19-year-old with a troubled past and emotional issues to legally buy an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle.

The one idea that the NRA and the far right have come up with is arming teachers. When I posted about the Colorado school district that is now allowing teachers to carry guns, there was much cheering from the “more guns” crowd. Until a teacher friend wrote: “You all forget that teachers are people, too, with a variety of temperaments. I work in a school and I for one would not feel safer if some of my colleagues had guns at work.” She then messaged me about teachers at her school who have been suspended for being violent with the students.

Arming teachers is a bad idea. Having an armed guard at every school is a much better one. Again, human nature needs to be considered.

For the sake of our kids, let’s tone down the anger and find sensible, bipartisan solutions.

Many on the totalitarian right can’t even engage in a civil discussion about the issue. Why should we trust them to own guns? In my 20s, I dated an anti-gun activist who the NRA loathed because he ran circles around them both morally and intellectually. One of the phrases he used has always stuck in my head: “The ready availability of guns.” The accidents, domestic violence and suicides that wouldn’t happen if guns weren’t so readily available.

Of course, I’m not talking about taking away guns. (I would love it, but it could never happen.) But, as Nicholas Kristof wrote in The New York Times, there is clearly much that can be done to prevent all levels of gun tragedies, from mental health checks and safe storage measures, to banning semi-automatics and sales to those under 21, to standardizing gun laws across states.

A key obstacle, Kristof writes, is our mindset. Why shouldn’t guns be given the same rational assessment as cars? Treated as a public health issue?

People on the totalitarian right act as though guns are the most intimate part of their body. When your political philosophy shows more care for a fetus (which I, too, believe is a life) than a child at school, you might want to revisit it.

Meanwhile, the left’s descent into identity politics has not helped. In New York City, so-called progressive groups are succeeding at removing metal detectors from high schools. Why? Because they consider them “racist.” That’s right. Racist metal detectors.

Raw emotions from both sides are distracting us from moving forward on this complex societal conundrum. For the sake of our kids, let’s tone down the anger and find sensible, bipartisan solutions that a majority of the country will get behind.

If not now, when?

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Karen Lehrman Bloch is a cultural critic and author of “The Lipstick Proviso: Women, Sex & Power in the Real World” (Doubleday). Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal and Metropolis, among others.

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In America, Life Should Come Before Total Liberty

“I get through every day by focusing totally on my work, to the point of distraction. And especially when milestones come up — Dylan’s birthday, 12/14; when school gets out, when school starts; seeing buses. I push all my emotion down and distract myself with work. I’ve been doing that for five years now, and it’s not healthy.”

Those are the words of Nicole Hockley, whose son Dylan was killed in 2012 in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn., when he was 6 years old. He died in the arms of his special-education teacher, Anne Marie Murphy, who also was killed. Hockley spoke those words to two teens from Parkland, Fla., when they met last week in front of CBS cameras. Hockley’s face was etched with grief; the visible wound of endless emptiness, of persistent and permanent loss.

The reason we must tell and retell the stories of murdered children is because we must be reminded what is at stake in the gun control debate. It is not American liberty; it is American life. It is your child, your sibling, your teacher, your neighbor, your fellow citizen. And the lives at stake are not just the victims of gun violence — those who succumb to their wounds and never see another day — but the bereft survivors they leave behind.

We can argue endlessly about the means and measures necessary to protect and preserve American life, but we must at least start with a shared premise: Preservation of American life is paramount. This is the most fundamental expression of our decency and humanity as a society.

This shouldn’t be a radical idea. As Americans, we are promised much more. The Declaration of Independence states that we are endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, among them “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” But too many of us don’t appreciate what that means.

Almost 25 years ago, philosopher Isaiah Berlin delivered a prophetic commencement address at the University of Toronto, in which he distilled a lifetime of wisdom into “A Message to the 21st Century.” He began with the premise that, although human history has been riddled with violence and tragedy, the horrors of the 20th century as carried out by Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot were “unparalleled.”

“Compromises, trade-offs, arrangements have to be made if the worst is not to happen.” — Isaiah Berlin

“They were not natural disasters,” Berlin said, “but preventable human crimes [and] they could have been averted.”

The calamities of history, Berlin said, are products of a belief in absolute ideals, even the noblest ones. Once a society commits entirely to any ideal — let’s say the Second Amendment or even democracy itself — it will do almost anything to preserve that ideal, even if it means resorting to coercion or violence. Everything is justified by the goal of attaining an ideal society.

What Berlin understood is this: “The central values by which most men have lived are not always harmonious with each other. … Men have always craved for liberty, security, equality, happiness, justice, knowledge, and so on. But complete liberty is not compatible with complete equality — if men were wholly free, the wolves would be free to eat the sheep.”

Instead, Berlin counsels, we must compromise.

“Compromises, trade-offs, arrangements have to be made if the worst is not to happen. So much liberty for so much equality, so much individual self-expression for so much security, so much justice for so much compassion … [because] values clash.”

All Americans are entitled to liberty, but the preservation of the “total liberty” that the National Rifle Association preaches comes at the cost of others’ lives, liberty and pursuit of happiness. In order to have a fair society, individual liberties must sometimes be moderated to make room for additional cherished values.

Does Nicole Hockley have any less right to the pursuit of happiness than another American? The tragic reality is that the effort to preserve someone else’s total liberty denied Hockley her right to happiness and her son Dylan’s right to life.

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Justice on the Horizon

It was a typical evening. The kids were settled and I finally sat down to relax. Then the phone rang. It was a familiar number from Israel and I thought the call would be nothing more than a quick hello. But within 30 seconds, my life sharply tilted off-kilter.

“Malka Leifer has been arrested.”

“What?” was all I managed to articulate, my body flooding with adrenalin and my mind with a multitude of scrambled thoughts. My fingers shook as I messaged my sisters. Within minutes, they were at my door and we all spoke at once. Could this long journey to justice finally have arrived? Would Leifer finally return to Australia to face her alleged crimes or would she again evade extradition? Five television channels were already clamoring for our reaction to this huge news.

Leifer, the 54-year-old former principal of Adass Israel Jewish School in Melbourne, fled Australia for Israel in March 2008 after allegations of sexual abuse of numerous female students came to light. My sisters and I never thought we would tell anyone of the abuse. But then in early 2011, my sister Elly was the first to make a police statement, followed by my other sister, Dassi. Finally, I made my statement, too.

It was the start of a journey we never imagined would last this long. In May 2014, Leifer was arrested in Israel for the first time and before long was released on bail, albeit with an ankle bracelet. For the next two years, every time a court date was set for extradition proceedings to begin, she checked herself into a psychiatric hospital.

Would Leifer finally return to Australia to face her alleged crimes or would she again evade extradition?

Those two years were filled with anguished waiting as dates were adjourned and rescheduled, and still she did not appear in court. I can recall every single conversation that I had with people in Israel directly after the court hearings from which she was absent. I can recall the pain, the dashed hopes, the sense of giving up and the acute sense of unfairness over how she could remain free while I was still shackled by the demons of her abuse.

The final nail in my emotional coffin came when the judge handed down his ruling at the end of those two years: Leifer was to remove the ankle bracelet, live freely and attend a few psychiatric sessions every six months. Only then would she be brought before a psychiatric panel, whose members would decide whether she was fit to stand trial.

We were pretty much broken at this point. We didn’t know where to turn or what to do. After six months, it was decreed there was no change in Leifer’s mental capacity. The panel issued the same ruling six months after that.

Throughout 2017, my sister Dassi had been actively campaigning in Melbourne to bring Leifer back to Australia for trial. Then in May 2017, Leifer was spotted in Meron on Lag B’Omer, appearing perfectly healthy. In late October, we all traveled to Israel and had the most amazingly intense but empowering two weeks of campaigning. We left on a high, with incredible messages of support. We were confident we had raised the issue and increased awareness in the highest places of Israeli government, as well as with many prominent advocates for child abuse organizations.

One of the people we met was Shana Aronson, the Chief Operating Officer of Jewish Community Watch (JCW). She was very moved by our story and hired a private investigator to follow Leifer. JCW uncovered evidence that Leifer was mentally stable and handed over its findings to police. Within a few weeks, Leifer was arrested.

When I look at the recent pictures of Leifer with chains around her ankles and her head bowed, I struggle to reconcile this image with the powerful monster in my head. Images of her hands triggered memories of the things those hands did to me. Yet somehow, there is no big whoop of inner excitement or a need for revenge. There is some empathy, which may be misplaced, but I’m sure other survivors of abuse can understand this.

I see Leifer as the woman she was, and I see her as the submissive woman she is now. I hope she will be extradited to Australia so perhaps I may feel closure by facing her in court. But most importantly, I hope she will be put away so those hands cannot wreak havoc and everlasting damage on another young female.

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Nicole Meyer lives in Melbourne, Australia. She is a sexual abuse survivor and mother of four children.

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Sitting Shivah in Parkland

I never imagined that my Shabbat sermon in Los Angeles would lead me straight to Parkland to make shivah calls with grieving families. Here’s how it happened and what I learned.

In my Shabbat sermon, I spoke about the purpose of God’s hiddenness in the Megilah. From there I reflected on the horrific tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Fla., where 17 innocent people were brutally murdered. After my sermon, the chairman of Yeshivat Yavneh, where I am Dean of School, approached me and suggested we go beyond the lecture: Why not take some eighth-graders to visit the families sitting shivah in Parkland?

This was unexpected, but he was right. Judaism is not just a religion of ideas, it’s also a religion of action. We decided to take Estee Einhorn, our daughter, and Benjamin Rubin, David and Gitel Rubin’s son. They both lived with a shivah this year as my wife recently sat shivah for her mother, and David sat shivah for his father. Perhaps a little of what they experienced would help them process what they would witness in Florida.

We took the red eye to Fort Lauderdale on the night of Feb. 18 and hit the ground running at 6 a.m. Feb. 19. We got off the plane and started our experience with a visit to the school. It was beginning to get real. The memorials, wreaths, press and candles laid out in front of a giant school immediately drew us in to the scene of the crime. We carefully read the testimonies and letters of love laid out in front of a picture of each child killed. At that moment, our heart was officially in Parkland.

Next we went to the Chabad of Parkland to pray. It seemed like the appropriate way to start our morning. Rumor had it some family members were going to be there. They never showed. The Chabad rabbi said, “Last night was just a very difficult night; nobody was going to join this morning.”

And then it was time. We made our way from shivah to shivah. The pain, the suffering, the anger and resilience all filled the air. We did what we needed to do. We were there to support, experience and become the sounding board for their pain.

The best response in the face of unspeakable tragedy is exactly that — to unspeak.

There is so much to say and describe about these individuals, the lives they led, and the world they leave behind. But I will simply share a few impressions we walked away with:

1. Diversity. It was unexpected to see how the grieving process varied among people who suffered the same tragedy. Some were in a state of shock, some were in activist mode, others were in a state of deep reflection.

2. There’s a chance that we may have witnessed history. More specifically, we may have been witnessing how law and policy really start to change. Our history teachers may educate us on the three causes of the Civil War, but often there are less-noticed triggering events that set off the actual sea changes. I witnessed family members actively engaging lobbyists and lawyers, instructing to use the emotional moment to create significant change in our gun control laws.

3. Our children learned how sometimes the best response in the face of unspeakable tragedy is exactly that — to unspeak. Silence, comfort and a hug.

4. Evil is possible in the middle of paradise. Parkland and the greater Broward Country is just stunning. The blue sky and deep white clouds almost look too good to be real. Many of the houses are gorgeous, with surrounding lakes and everglades and Roman fountains. In the middle of this paradise, the worst kind of evil entered and darkened the heart of a community.

5. In times of darkness, it’s OK to break the rules. When we landed, we found out that the shivah times we were given were wrong. The shivahs would only be open to the public after we would be on our way back to Los Angeles. That didn’t stop us. If they don’t want to see us, they can tell us to leave, and that’s fine. But no one did. We were welcomed at every shivah call.

Our experience taught us that, when people are in pain, sometimes the biggest mitzvah is just to show up.

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Rabbi Shlomo Einhorn is Dean of School at Yeshivat Yavneh.

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Acting Through Our Anger

I was on the phone discussing a provocative story about the Jewish holiday of Purim when news of the Parkland, Fla., school massacre first broke. At the time, it was just “a shooting.” No one knew yet the extent of the tragedy. My phone conversation was barely interrupted.

Within a few hours, everything had changed. As news of the casualties kept dribbling out, my mind raced. This was the afternoon of Feb. 14. Our paper had gone to print a day earlier with a cover story on the looming crisis in Syria. What a shame, I thought, that we couldn’t have a story on Parkland while it was on everyone’s mind. That is the foible of print — you’re at the mercy of fate and the printer’s deadline. Well, if we couldn’t be topical, I said to myself, at least we could go deeper into the story for the next print edition.

In the meantime, there’s always online.

We quickly posted the story on our website and started planning the next print edition. Because our cover is glossy and needs to go to print earlier, we had to decide pretty quickly on a cover design. I recalled this haunting visual from our cartoonist Steve Greenberg showing a map of America delineated by guns. We went with that image, and a line that seemed to capture the mood of the moment — “When will it end?”

The issue of gun violence in America is so fraught with emotion and complexity we decided to get community reactions from a variety of voices. Senior reporter Danielle Berrin and I drew up a preliminary list to get diverse views. I also called our political editor in Israel, Shmuel Rosner, to see if he could connect us with an Israeli security expert who could share the Israeli perspective. He connected us to Oded Raz, whom we interviewed for our back-page Q-and-A. It’s worth reading what he has to say, especially about strategies to protect American schools from shootings.

On Friday afternoon, we got a lead on the Chabad rabbi in Parkland whose office is minutes from the shooting and who jumped into the chaos of the tragedy. We interviewed him on Saturday night and posted the story online the following morning. On Feb. 19, I heard that a Los Angeles rabbi, Shlomo Einhorn, had flown to Parkland with a few students to make shivah calls, and I asked him to write about it. You can read about his experience in the “columnist” section. All along, we had to juggle how to fit everything in with our regular coverage.

It wasn’t until Sunday, when I saw a heart-rending image of two mothers crying in Parkland, that it hit me — my heart had deadened since the news broke. I had become numb. Instead of feeling the unspeakable pain that had been unleashed on a community, I was thinking of how best to cover the story. I felt an odd, quiet shame: How could I be so callous? I reflected on the cold-bloodedness of a profession that leaves little room for emotion when a major story strikes.

Violence that destroys human lives triggers deep emotions, and anger is one of our deepest. When that violence keeps repeating — as with terror attacks in Israel or mass shootings in America — our anger becomes an emotional reflex.

And then I thought: Am I the only one? Was my absence of grieving only due to my profession?

I wasn’t a journalist when a terrorist plane struck the first of the twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001. As this mass of glass and steel crumbled to earth, I thought: Maybe now the world will better understand what Israel is facing. What a narrow-minded reaction: Couldn’t I find one minute to grieve for the victims? But I was enraged at the terrorists — that was my primary reaction.

Maybe this is human nature and I shouldn’t be so hard on myself. Violence that destroys human lives triggers deep emotions, and anger is one of our deepest. When that violence keeps repeating — as with terror attacks in Israel or mass shootings in America — our anger becomes an emotional reflex. This anger only grows as the story unfolds: How could we allow an unstable person to buy a semi-automatic rifle? How could the FBI and local authorities fail to act on the obvious threats? How could a school fail to protect its students? How could we live in a country with 300 million guns?

Ultimately, when faced with horrific tragedies, we have a visceral need to act, to do something, and so much of our action is fueled by anger. As David Brooks wrote in The New York Times, in the wake of the Parkland massacre, “The anger inevitably gets directed at the N.R.A., those who support gun rights, and the politicians who refuse to do anything while children die.”

However, Brooks continued, this kind of anger “may end up doing more harm than good. If there’s one thing we’ve learned, it is that guns have become a cultural flash point in a nation that is unequal and divided. The people who defend gun rights believe that snobbish elites look down on their morals and want to destroy their culture. If we end up telling such people that they and their guns are despicable, they will just despise us back and dig in their heels.”

He concludes that if we want to stop school shootings, “it’s not enough just to vent and march.”

There’s certainly room for venting and marching, but let’s also leave room for calm, methodical, strategic voices such as that of Israeli security expert Oded Raz.

In retrospect, I’m glad I withheld my emotions long enough to find his voice.

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So, What The Hell Do We Do Now?

In the aftermath of another horrible and heartbreaking mass shooting at an American school, the same political game took place that always takes place. That game breaks down into three stages: before the facts come in, once the facts are in, and the actual political debate.

Before The Facts Come In. Before the facts come in, proponents of gun control point at foreign countries and the lack of mass shootings in those countries and suggest that Congress ought to do something — anything, really — to make it more difficult for evil people to obtain guns. They do not specify what that something is. But it must be a law, and it must restrict law-abiding citizens’ access to guns. Furthermore, any Congressperson who opposes such unspecified laws is the tool of the “gun industry.”

Meanwhile, those who oppose gun control urge caution until we know the facts; often they offer thoughts and prayers. Proponents of gun control then mock those thoughts and prayers in order to imply that gun control opponents don’t care about dead children, and merely want to avoid responsibility by throwing the problem at God.

The Facts Come In. As the facts come in, proponents of gun control maintain their staunch advocacy for their position, but are often forced to acknowledge that their preferred measures wouldn’t have done anything to stop the shootings at issue. That doesn’t stop them from clubbing about the ears gun control opponents, who maintain that gun control measures must be tailored toward stopping actual events.

Meanwhile, opponents of gun control usually suggest two measures: mental health screening that would take dangerous people off the streets and into treatment, and security in schools. These are rejected out of hand by gun control proponents, who say they don’t want those who are mentally ill avoiding treatment in order to avoid the consequences of such treatment, and add that placing security in schools would somehow “militarize” the school environment.

The Political Debate. Congress usually proposes some measure of gun control. That measure of gun control is usually far more unpopular in specifics than it was in theory; it usually restricts rights most Americans care about, and fails to properly target the underlying problem at issue. Such measures almost universally fail. When they do pass, they show little evidence of impact on mass shootings.

So, where does all of this leave us?

Here’s what we know. The shooter used an AR-15, the most common rifle in the United States. The shooter was on the radar of school authorities, and he was reportedly in frequent contact with the police; he was reported to the FBI as well, but follow-up was apparently insufficient. People warned authorities about him, and they didn’t do anything or couldn’t do anything. That’s probably the best place to start looking for answers.

The shooter’s gun was obtained legally. He had never been arrested; it’s difficult to think of a way to prevent the sale of a gun to a person with a clean record without a mass gun ban or confiscation. He also had a gas mask and grenades — and it’s unclear where he obtained the grenades. We could look at stronger prosecution of straw buyers, as Jim Geraghty of National Review suggests, but that wouldn’t have helped in this case.

So, where do we go from here? Obviously, I think that we ought to consider security in schools as a first step — I went to a Jewish high school in Los Angeles that received bomb threats at least twice a year; the building next door was scoped out by mass shooter Buford Furrow, but he left thanks to security there. It’s not too much to ask that we place armed security at our schools, as Israel does.

But this much is clear: snap Twitter excoriations focused on casting aspersions at the character of our political opposition tears our country apart right when we need to come together in comfort. We have an unfortunate tendency to roll our eyes when people say they’re waiting for the facts, whether we’re discussing mass shootings or terrorist attacks; I’ve done it, too. But waiting for facts is the responsible thing to do. And as the facts come in, perhaps better solutions will make themselves clearer.

This column was originally posted at The Daily Wire.

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Ben Shapiro is a best-selling author, editor-in-chief at The Daily Wire and host of the podcast “The Ben Shapiro Show.”

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Letters to the Editor: Fake News, #MeToo, Table for Five, Larry Greenfield and Ruth Ziegler

Truth, ‘Fake News’ and American Politics

Regarding the Journal’s cover story “Can Truth Survive?” (Feb. 9): Reporter Shmuel Rosner probably doesn’t believe it can. His story is devoted mostly to a critique of a Rand Corp. study called “Truth Decay.” I confess I have not read the study and therefore am unable to comment on it.

Rosner recounts many of President Donald Trump’s falsehoods, the intentional conflation of opinion with fact, the tedium of cable news and even the cost of the decay of truth. It wasn’t until the end of his story that he disclosed his opinion: that truth decay “stems not just from the evil doers but also from the do-gooders who drown us in so much information that we no longer know what’s true and what’s not.”

Is he kidding? Because if he is serious, he believes that we do not have the ability to understand, to judge, to evaluate, to choose, to be capable of rational thought, or simply that we are just too lazy and don’t care. For our collective sake, I hope he is dead wrong.

Louis Lipofsky via email

Shmuel Rosner laments the decay of truth and writes, “Trump is a result of this trend as much as its instigator.” But Rosner doesn’t state the obvious: Republicans voted this compulsive liar into office and Republicans have long had an enormous problem with truth.

Why do so many Republicans believe President Barack Obama is a Muslim, that he was born in Kenya, that global warming is a hoax, that there is widespread voter fraud, that the Russia investigation is a hoax? Because too many of them self-censor and listen only to conservative media like Fox News and conservative talk radio, so they are easily duped.

And why do they self-censor? Because they have bought into the argument that the mainstream media are biased. Yes, the mainstream media have a liberal bias. But it doesn’t invent outright lies like the ones listed above.

Trump doesn’t care about the truth because he knows his supporters don’t care about the truth. That’s why he calls everything “fake news” and gets away with it.

Michael Asher via email

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Hysteria, Obscurity and the #MeToo Movement

Having just read Danielle Berrin’s column on male hysteria (“Male Hysteria,” Feb. 9), I’m now even more convinced of the female hysteria of the #MeToo movement, a movement that will quickly be hoisted by its own petard.

She claims that a few of these powerful and predatory men have actually been charged with a crime. I haven’t heard of any of these powerful men being charged with a crime, notwithstanding the fact that being charged with a crime is not the same as being found guilty of a crime.

Berrin complained that far too many female artists live and continue to live in obscurity. This might be true, but there are undoubtedly far too many talented male artists who also continue to live in obscurity.

Giuseppe Mirelli, Los Angeles

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Table for Five Is Weekly Food for Thought

In your “Table for Five” section for Parashat Mishpatim (Feb. 9), Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz, of Uri L’Tzedek: Orthodox Social Justice, argues for “the ethical imperative to protect and secure the needs of the stranger,” and “make the marginalized — rather than the elite  — our priority.”

I am a Conservative convert to Judaism, having embraced Judaism more than 50 years ago. I am a dues-paying member at an Orthodox synagogue near my home, where I go daily to minyan. I am also a member of four other non-Orthodox synagogues, where I regularly go and lead services in Hebrew, and am a cantor at one during the High Holy Days. While I can fully participate in those other synagogues, I am not permitted to get an aliyah to the Torah or be counted for a minyan at the Orthodox one. If I were to go to Israel, I could not be married there or be buried in a Jewish cemetery. Non-Orthodox convert women also know that their children will not be counted as Jews in parts of the Jewish world. Yet Jews born of a Jewish mother are considered fully Jewish even if they repudiate their Judaism, castigate it and couldn’t care less about being counted for a minyan or getting an aliyah.

Our people were made to feel like invisible outsiders when we were slaves in Egypt. Why should those of us who turned our lives around to incorporate Judaism into it now be made to feel like we are invisible outsiders in some Jewish circles? I call on Rabbi Yanklowitz and his fellow Orthodox of conscience and morality to work to change what I feel is an unjust standard, so that those of us who have transformed our lives to embrace the Jewish people and God’s Torah are not made to feel like marginalized strangers within the Jewish world.

Peter Robinson, Woodland Hills

I was delighted at Rabbi Mordecai Finley’s teaching on the Torah portion in your Tu B’Shevat issue (“Table for Five: B’Shalach,” Jan. 26). He admonished the Israelis for their sarcasm. Indeed, rightfully so; such humor can be a sign of contempt.

Irony or sarcasm is indeed biting. Hurt people hurt people. The conclusion of Rabbi Finley’s commentary made the greatest impression: Because you have been done wrong does not give you license to do someone else wrong.

Thanks to your wonderful newspaper and your knowledgeable contributors and staff.

Daniel Kirwan via email

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Remembering Ruth Ziegler, a True Community Supporter

We join the Jewish community in mourning the loss of Ruth Ziegler, a dear friend, supporter and member of Jews for Judaism’s board of governors (“Philanthropist Ruth Ziegler, 98,” Feb. 9).

For two decades, Ziegler supported our innovative educational services. After being honored at our 2005 gala, she funded a major endowment to ensure that Jews for Judaism’s life-saving counseling services would be available in perpetuity.

When I asked Ziegler what motivated her to make such a generous gift, she responded, “At the gala, I heard a mother share her pain after losing her daughter to another religion, and how you rescued her. I want to make sure no one else experiences that pain.”

Ziegler believed in saving a Jewish life and saving the world. Jews for Judaism is honored to play a role in perpetuating her legacy.

Rabbi Bentzion Kravitz, founder and executive director of Jews for Judaism, International

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Polish Law Demonstrates Dangers of Altering History

When any government, including Poland, attempts to whitewash its history, it usually ends up with paint stains on its hands (editorial cartoon, Feb. 9). Although we can’t compare the two, Americans should not be so quick to condemn others for their behavior without first checking our history. This month it will be 76 years since Franklin D. Roosevelt issued his executive order to intern Japanese-Americans after the U.S. entered World War II. Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court avoided answering whether these people’s constitutional rights were violated.

Barry Bereskin via email

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Write, Larry Greenfield, Keep on Writing

I love reading Larry Greenfield’s work. If I was not married happily, I would want to marry his brain! Keep his writing coming!

Allyson Rowen Taylor, Valley Glen

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Letter to the Editor Overlooks Certain Facts

In last week’s letter from Reuben Gordon, he completely misunderstood the media coverage regarding President Donald Trump’s comment that there were good people on both sides of the Charlottesville, Va., march. Gordon states that it was in regard to the Confederate monument debate and that there were good people in support of keeping Confederate statues. The people he is referring to were Neo-Nazis; there are no good people on that side and I guess Gordon did not hear or did not want to hear their continual shouts of “Jews will not replace us.”

Edward A. Sussman, Fountain Valley

Reuben Gordon’s letter supporting President Donald Trump just because Trump supports Israel is a sad example of tunnel vision. Trump is an aggressive, ignoramus racist who is in the process of inflicting severe harm on Americans (Jews included), … so to excuse his arrogant, narcissistic self because of his support of Israel is foolish and perhaps even dangerous.

Rick Edelstein via email

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He Asked and He Received a Small Change in Journal

When I ran into my friend David Suissa a couple of months ago while strolling down Pico Boulevard, I congratulated him on his new position at the Jewish Journal and the upgraded look of the paper. I then told him that Rhina, my elderly parents’ non-Jewish caregiver, noticed that the time Shabbat ends was no longer listed. As their caregiver, she needs to know when Shabbat concludes, and she wants to consult the Jewish Journal for that information. Suissa promised to correct it. Sure enough, in the next week’s edition, the time of Havdalah was once again listed! So thank you, David, for magnificently upgrading the paper, and on behalf of Jews and non-Jews who care when Shabbat ends, thanks for the weekly notice! Keep on publishing a great newspaper. Kol ha-kavod!

Mark Goldenberg, Beverly Hills

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CORRECTIONS

The Feb. 9 edition of Moving and Shaking misreported the venue for the L.A. Jewish Home’s Celebration of Life: Reflections 2018 gala. The event took place at the Beverly Wilshire hotel.

In a Feb. 2 Calendar item, visiting scholar Andrew Porwancher was misidentified.

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Mystical Teachings From the Stock Market

The wild fluctuations in the stock market last week, and Americans’ fear response, has me thinking about our spiritual relationship to change.

I know it’s a little nontraditional, but the truth is, I often like to think of the stock market as a sort of mystical teacher that reflects spiritual realities about human desires and the inevitability of cycles.

This theory of mine began during the Great Recession. I happened to have an artist residency on Wall Street at the time, and this proximity made the financial world seem less irrelevant to my scrappy artist life; I began to read the newspaper’s financial section for the first time.

And then the Bernie Madoff scandal broke. At first I was interested in Madoff as a sort of modern version of the Emperor Who Has No Clothes. But as more information came out, I began to be more interested in the nuances of what happened.

In physics as in stocks, in spirituality as in lasting love, we’re reminded that what goes up must come down.

His returns, in fact, were nothing special. What was extraordinary were their consistency, a straight line going up without the jagged peaks and falls of the real market. There was a general sentiment that his investors must have been extraordinarily greedy, but this is largely unfair to his victims. I began to think that instead of reflecting his investors’ greed, Madoff’s decades-long fraud reflected something essential about the American dream, and, in fact, our human longings.

People were not necessarily looking to get rich. They just wanted a safe place to put the money they’d worked so hard to save — a safe harbor, buffeted from the ups and downs of the market, of life.

But this is impossible.

In physics as in stocks, in spirituality as in lasting love, we’re reminded that what goes up must come down. And then, most likely, it will go up again. In the words of my favorite Buddhist sutra, “It is the everlasting and unchanging rule of this world … that everything changes, nothing remains constant.”

Change is not just a basic fact of life — it’s the basic fact of life. And yet with the exception of a few dopamine-loving thrill seekers — some of whom can certainly be found on the floor of the stock exchange — we humans are generally known to resist it.

Change is destabilizing; it makes us feel unsafe. Even a relatively small shift can strike fear in our hearts. The markets plunge and investors rush to sell, even though all the experts advise against it. Not a single person is in any physical danger, yet the news is on the same sort of high alert reserved for earthquakes and train crashes.

My favorite Jewish teaching on change comes from the mystics, who envision an endless back and forth (or perhaps up and down) as the basic state of existence. They believe that the state of being alive — of being itself — is ratzo v’shov, running and returning. The world is in a constant state of transition, shuttling back and forth between divine energy and worldly matter.

Our spiritual lives echo this motion, as well. We run to God, our souls drawn to the fire of transcendence, of holiness, to change our lives and find our best selves. And then we return to our own limited self, because we must, to remain alive and in one piece. And then the process begins again.

This is how we love one another, too. Studies show that although babies thrive on being close to their mothers, they need to break eye contact after a certain period of time; if the mother does not turn away, the baby will. This continues into adulthood; although times of alienation can feel like awful emergencies, they are in fact part of the fabric of love. We run to each other, to love each other; we make ourselves anew, forgetting everything that came before. And then we return to ourselves, back home to our own particular body, our story, our limits, our needs.

Ratzo v’shov, run and return, bull and bear, sacred and mundane, coming together and coming apart and coming together again. This is what it means to be alive.

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Alicia Jo Rabins is a writer, musician and Torah teacher who lives in Portland, Ore.

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