Response to the Horrific School Shooting in Uvalde Texas

Response to the Horrific School Shooting in Uvalde Texas

Rabbi David Baum

May 27, 2022

הָרוֹפֵא לִשְׁבֽוּרֵי לֵב וּמְחַבֵּשׁ לְעַצְּ֒בוֹתָם: מוֹנֶה מִסְפָּר לַכּוֹכָבִים לְכֻלָּם שֵׁמוֹת יִקְרָא

Photo by Jordan Whitt on Unsplash

God is the Healer of the broken-hearted and binds up their wounds.

God fixes the number of stars; God calls all of them by names.

-Psalm 147

This pasuk, from the book of Psalms, is recited every morning during our morning prayers as part of Psukei D’Zimrah. It is reminiscent of the line from Psalms that President Biden quoted in his address “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.” (Psalm 34:18). They are seemingly identical lines, but the line from Psalm 147 gives us a context for our broken hearts. In Psalm 147, we are brokenhearted as a people after the destruction of the First Temple, and the exile of our people from Jerusalem. This Psalm in particular echoes the words of the prophet Isaiah who comforted the exiles in Babylonia with a promise of return. The Psalmist was speaking to those who were returning from exile to a Jerusalem they did not recognize. The Psalmist reminds the people: each one of you was named by God, whether you survived the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile. In the face of the mass loss of life, your life matters.

In a sense, those of us of a certain age are in exile. Mass shootings in schools were almost unheard of until recently. My first memory of a mass shooting in a school was the massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999 when two teens killed 13 people and injured 20. Since 2000, there have been 14 mass shootings (where four or more people were murdered) in schools in the U.S. leading to 169 deaths (not including the perpetrators).

This is not the America that many of us recognize, but for those born after 2000, this is America they know. We are a country that has become numb and almost accepting of the murder of children in the places which should be their sanctuary of safety and learning: schools.

Our tradition is always hopeful, despite the horrors we have faced in our history. After the destruction of the second Temple and the genocide of our people perpetrated by the Roman Empire, there was little to be hopeful for, and yet, we held on to the hope of healing. This Sunday, we will celebrate Yom Yerushalayim, a modern Israeli holiday that marks the reunification of Jerusalem during the Six-Day War in 1967. It took over 1800 years, but our hope turned into reality when Jewish sovereignty was re-established, and a holy city reunited as one.

Our prayers may have kept us hopeful, but prayer is just one part of the equation.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote about the efficacy of prayer, especially during difficult times:

“Prayer is no panacea, no substitute for action. It is, rather, like a beam thrown from a flashlight before us into the darkness. It is in the light that we who grope, stumble, and climb, discover where we stand, what surrounds us, and the course which we should choose. Prayer makes visible the right and reveals what is hampering and false. It is radiance, we behold the worth of our efforts, the range of our hopes, and the meaning of our deeds. Envy and fear, despair and resentment, anguish and grief, which lie heavily upon the heart, are dispelled like shadows by its light. Sometimes prayer is more than a light before us; it is a light within us.”

This week, we mourn as a country at the senseless slaughter of 19 children aged 8 - 10, and two teachers. We are broken as a country, and we shatter after every successive unnecessary and brutal murder of our children. We gather to pray, to be together as a community, but prayer is no panacea, no substitute for action.

This Shabbat, I will speak about how gun violence has not only affected our children nationwide but also how it affects each one of us as members of our holy community of Shaarei Kodesh. We are no strangers to gun violence as we are just eight miles from Parkland, and our congregation was directly affected by that school shooting.

Please join us this Shabbat (at around 11 am), in person or on Zoom, where I will address this issue and what we can do to help end our ‘exile’.

For those families who are looking for ways to speak to their children about violence, please check out the following resource.

Resources for families: Talking to Children About Violence: Tips for Parents and Teachers by the National Association of School Psychologists

May God bring comfort to the families whose children were taken from them by a murderous gunman, and may God give us the strength and purpose we need to come back from the exile of the innocence lost due to the pandemic of mass shootings in America.

Rabbi David Baum