A Tearful Prayer
In the aftermath of the terrorist attack on Yeshivat Mercaz HaRav in Jerusalem this past March 6th...
While my husband and I and some of our friends were praying for our son Thursday night, the 6th of March, the parents, families, and friends of eight beautiful and beloved young men were receiving the news that their loved ones had been murdered.
We were praying for our two-year-old because he had to be put under for two minor surgical procedures and we were frightened about something going wrong, God forbid, with the anesthesia or the surgery. He’s our first and so far our only and is so precious to us. To lose him would thoroughly wreck our world. It’s inconceivable. God forbid. God forbid. To even type those words gives me a pain in the chest and my chin wrinkles up the way it does preceding a sob.
To see the stretchers with the bodies of those gorgeous boys, wrapped in prayer shawls, surrounded by friends and family in shock, preparing to say goodbye, looking for a recognizable feature of their son, friend, or brother to show through the cloth – instant tears. All I can do is shake my head and say, “No, No, No.” Those boys should be going home to their mothers so their mothers can hold their faces in their hands, examining them, recognizing in that face their husbands or uncles or grandpas – or even themselves. They should be squeezed and kissed and snuggled. I love how the spot behind our son Jacob’s little ears smell. These moms and dads won’t get to snuggle their kids like that anymore, to smell them, or embrace them, and it just makes me sob for them and for all of us.
That there are people in the world who would murder young men – in a Yeshiva of all places – should no longer surprise me. That there are people in the Middle East who throw a parade cheering on the murderer the next day is no surprise. The fact that I know many people whose minds function quite well who would say, “That’s awful, but Palestinian kids are murdered too” and would not strain themselves further to explore if their equivocating is fair, moral, factually correct, or logical – this should no longer surprise me. That they would see no link to this act and to the Holocaust that just happened, and to pogroms that have occurred for millennia, should not surprise me. That they would think quite possibly that there is nothing they could do to improve the situation, should not surprise me.
Hashem! Even though the terrorist and I are both Gentiles, or in his case I should ‘was’ since he was stopped before he could kill more people, I can not see what I have in common with that man. You know what? I kind of wish I did, because if I felt like I had anything in common with him, or the miscreants who would cheer him on, or turn a blind eye to his actions, I might feel like I could talk to them, shake some sense into them, even scream ‘Wake up!” in their faces if that’s what I needed to do. If I had anything in common with them, they might listen for one millisecond. What should I say to them? “Fellow Gentile, we should all be following the seven laws the God of the Torah laid out for us!” Despite that hundred percent truth of that statement, that feels like spitting into the wind.
Hashem, I’ve heard that no prayer is wasted, so I know this one won’t be either. I look at my nephews who are 16 and 17, who now tower over me, who now shave, and drive, who are about to turn into adults and I can’t wait to see how their stories play out. Well, Hashem, we wanted to see how it worked out for those boys who were murdered. We wanted to see who they would marry, and what their kids would look like.
Hashem, there are Bnei Noach who see this happen and who weep and ache for the families of those kids. You know that. Please help us all to see how the little step we have taken to follow the seven laws can help this never happen again. Please shake some sense into the people who would cheer on that murderer or who would like to do it again, God forbid. They won’t listen to me for a minute. Not even thirty seconds. Please help Jewish people who are so sick of seeing this happen they have thrown up their hands and quit.
Gentile people, listen to me: Follow the seven universal laws derived from Genesis and love the God of the Torah, and this will stop. Be the best person you can be every day. Defend Israel and the Jewish people. Shut out the cynics and the moral relativists because they are seriously confused people. If you are reading this, I’m probably preaching to the choir. Or else I’m spitting into the wind. So let this be a prayer, a prayer that Gentiles will stop what too many of us have done for thousands of years. And a prayer that thousands of us will do what too few of us have done for thousands of years, so that no more Jewish kids will be killed. Or their parents.
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