Thursday, March 06, 2008

Awful, just awful

Bombings, shootings, massacres, suicides...ENOUGH IS ENOUGH ALREADY!
Seems like everywhere you turn lately there is a shooting or a bombing or a massacre or somebody attacked somebody else or a baby drowned or someone went postal at a fast food restaurant or publicly commited suicide....

Just in the last 24 hours we had news of:
a minor boming in Times Square click here or click here,
a digusting case of intentional child abuse click here,
2 separate incidences of murdering university students click here,
a potentail mob killing click here,
something out of a sick Hollywood science fiction flick click here,
an accidental death and attempted suicide click here,
another teen suicide click here,
a massive death toll after dual bombings in Baghdad click here,
an unthinkable terrorist attack at a Jerusalem yeshiva click here

Here (see the comments) are some of my thoughts about the last event on the list that really shakes an entire belief system to its core: If you believe in study and learning and dedicating your life to studying Torah, then how and why can this kind of terrible thing happen in a yeshiva, basically a school and study hall, of all places? My inital thought is that the standard answer will be something along the lines of the fact that the Jewish people are in need of Tikkun and therefore we should study even harder to enable it to come to pass...
And Eran mentioned, in that dejected voice he has lately, that they don't even have to bother with getting a bomb built and finding a willing suicide attacker - now its obvious that an attacker can just find an automatic weapon-that's easy to get your hands on anywhere

As always, comments are encouraged to confirm the fact that I am not writing this blog just for my own mental health.
I don't care: Agree, Disagree, Acknowledge, Praise, Slander, REACT

3 comments:

brenda said...

After watching just half an hour of the late morning Israeli TV shows I have discovered that: all the yeshiva students who were killed were teens (it houses a high school division as well) who were at the yeshiva getting ready to celebrate Rosh Chodesh with their friends. The bochers are referring to the incident as a "tevach" - a massacre - in the Israeli media. These students were of the kind that serve in the IDF defending their country and their right to be religious soldiers. One of the former students waited on a nearby rooftop while he heard gunshots in the library, before the gunman came out and he shot him twice in the head. Three more students are in critical condition.

Miriam the Mommy said...

I believe it was a kollel guy, a 40 year old, who was the one who killed him in the end.

My husband heard about it on his Magen David Adom mirs at the time, like heard it get called in while the guy was still shooting, heard shots... nuts. Totally, utterly, nuts.

I haven't been out of my house really since then, except on shabbos and we try not to talk about sad things on shabbos. But most of the mood is I think alternately scared and MAD.

As for why Hashem did this, sure, tikkun is possible. But consider these boys had fulfilled their purpose in the world - their time was up. Hashem could have taken them quietly, having one get sick, one in a car accident, and so on. But he chose for them to die this way, in this loud and horrifying way that hopefully, through their deaths, people would come to daven for the wounded, come to take on mitzvos in their merit, come to take intiatives to fix our goverment..

But we never know why Hashem does anything. Just what he wants us to do...

brenda said...

So i re-read the comments I left on Miriam's site - and I hear that I was being gently leashed in by the idea that someone other than myself and my friends and family may be reading it.
Then re-read my post and comments and can feel the anger a little stronger here.
I'm still pretty worked up over this as I write this 4 days later having been to a community-wide Shabbat dinner where there were not more than slight references to the events in Jerusalem, a friend from my former work's wedding where not only were my husband and I the only Jews there, we were probably some of the only people that have not known and loved this couple for the five years or more they've been a couple,
In any case, I agree with mtm that the boys had fulfilled their purpose here in this world and that maybe their purpose was to be there and then and cause all the stir that this has caused.