When we read about things like yesterday's terror attacks in Mumbai, it can strike us as awful, but also very distant -- very far away. . . . . But to think about my own loved one huddled in the dark, defenseless behind a locked door, just hoping that nobody with a weapon would break in (the image brought to my mind in reading Minna's below blog post) . . . it just brings the sheer horror of it home in such a profound way. . . . I cried in reading it (and I'm crying now writing this). . . . Part of that has to do with Minna and how much it hurts to think she suffered that. But I think I am also very much crying for the people Israel -- so many centuries of people hating us -- and for humanity as a whole. So much suffering. So much hate. So much death. Oh, Lord, when will it end? Please. Please. Bring peace upon us. Let it be speedily. In our days.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Night in Mumbai
When we read about things like yesterday's terror attacks in Mumbai, it can strike us as awful, but also very distant -- very far away. . . . . But to think about my own loved one huddled in the dark, defenseless behind a locked door, just hoping that nobody with a weapon would break in (the image brought to my mind in reading Minna's below blog post) . . . it just brings the sheer horror of it home in such a profound way. . . . I cried in reading it (and I'm crying now writing this). . . . Part of that has to do with Minna and how much it hurts to think she suffered that. But I think I am also very much crying for the people Israel -- so many centuries of people hating us -- and for humanity as a whole. So much suffering. So much hate. So much death. Oh, Lord, when will it end? Please. Please. Bring peace upon us. Let it be speedily. In our days.
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The news reports also tell of Jews being targeted in the Mumbai attacks -- with hostages, for example, being held at the local Chabad house. . . . . . This also tears at my heart in a way that thinking of Minna huddling in that bedroom tears at my heart. . . . This is the positive side of nationalism -- a word that has gotten to have a bit of a bad reputation in certain circles -- that I learned as a college student reading the works of the great Italian nationalist Mazzini (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Mazzini): of the potential of your feeling of connection to your fellow people to help us learn what it means to care for others and to work for a better world. . . . My connection with Minna also serves to help train me in this way. . . . But it's such a big step from caring about an individual to caring about the whole world. . . . I can't make it in one leap. The intermediate step of my love for the Jewish people is something I really need; it helps engender whatever it is that's good about me. . . . But, oh, how painful that connection is at times -- to think of people, people I am emotionally connected to through my sense of peoplehood, huddled afraid and helpless in rooms with gunmen who hate them just for being a member of my people . . . . it hurts. It hurts so much.
Terrorism has also touched my life in a profound way. For 10 years I worked in the World Trade Center. I left that job in the summer of 2000 and soon afterward my co-workers were transferred to another location, so the only people I knew who died were just professional acquaintances as opposed to friends. . . But the loss of that Trade Center remains a huge hole in my heart. . . . . That people could plot such destruction and suffering. . . It is something that never leaves me.
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