Shattered

Shattered. Broken. Is that how this anti-Semite wanted us to be? Looking at the glass windows riddled with holes, its shards spewed and sprawled across the floor, my head raced, examining what seemed like a nightmare come reality.

I was still processing until my mind finally absorbed what no Jew wants to acknowledge. Someone or someones have perforated our windows – windows of G-d’s sanctuary room- our lighthouse welcome to all. What type of impression was the gunman trying to have? What kind of reaction did he expect from the city’s Jewish community?

The morning began with a torrential downpour, from cloudy skies to the sound of G-d’s bowling, known to mankind as a severe thunderstorm that seemed to dampen the bright morning’s mood.

On a regular day, at this time, all my sons were already in the Chabad house, but today, my little sons were choosing to wait out the storm. An important phone call stalled my husband. Our home, which was two blocks away, encouraged my older sons to go even in the storm, and they seemed to slam the door one after the other.

The slamming of the front door seemed to me to be a symbol to have its own purpose and meaning: as if my sons declared, one after the other, “I’m making my proud stand as a Jew regardless of the rain.”

A very short time passed, but something seemed forgotten. Each came back inside. It was like a symphony gone wrong; the continuous opening and closing of the door with shuffled slushy footsteps to their now weighted feet, almost one on top of each other, made me wonder, “Time barely had passed. Was something wrong?”

As a whispering amongst my little and big boys began, I felt shut out. Sometimes, my children, in their most profound love and sympathy for me, didn’t always want to share the whole story with their Jewish, overprotective mother.

A little bit of time had stretched itself out, but their secret was still intact, and being used to the whispers, I got busy with my morning routine. My husband then called to ask me that we go to the Chabad house together. It wasn’t out of the blue that we would have a coffee break. Instead, a lot of times, before classes, either his or mine, it was this nice experience before we devoted ourselves to the community.

Each time, before a class or event, we always shared a cup of coffee. Perhaps, I pondered something was happening where we would enjoy a cup of tea and help another family in need.

To my utter horror, this was not the case. When I arrived, I noticed the tragedy; our worst fears of anti-Semitism had come. Our windows: to our town, to our doorstep, how could this be?  Five of the windows were perforated through, glass was on the floor, and I thought to myself, “What are my kids going to think? How are they going to handle and absorb this?”

I looked up slowly, trying to capture all the details in my mind. From the broken, shiny pieces on the floor to the freshly shattered windows, I turned around and saw that some of my kids were playing like kids do. Breathing a sigh of relief, I let myself take the moment to clear my thoughts, and then let the flow come: “Humanity was not lost after all. We could have kids who play, laugh, and still tease each other.”

My husband, the rabbi, stepped closer to me. Kindly giving me the space that I desperately needed to absorb what happened. He saw I was digesting my surroundings and whispered to me, my first real gift of the day: “The police came already, we had already done a report, and everyone is on high alert.”

I breathed a sigh of relief, realizing that I was blessed. This was one less step that I would have to deal with. Stepping closer to the windows again, my fingers touched the broken glass and its missing soul.  The Rabbi’s words then impacted me. The police were already here. Was it fear? Anger? Is it a bit of both? Was this destructive action meant for each Jew to hide in their homes and never come out? To shut their doors for good? At what point should one or does one acquiesce to the anti-Semite’s demands? At what point in this anti-Semitic war does one throw the towel in, give up, and surrender?

This memory brought me back to how I grew up and what that meant. One was too young, too naive, too comfortable to listen. It was being in a generation of being overly relaxed, even in exile.

My generation was the kid whose grandparents went through the Holocaust. Every classmate of mine and every neighbor that surrounded me grew up with a shared bond- the grandchildren of holocaust survivors- my generation felt that burden on our shoulders, whether it was one himself, a friend, or simply a community understanding of such times. It was our shared reality – one lived it. It was this, so to speak, togetherness as the grandchildren of survivors; one was warned time and time again that one was never truly safe.

One just shrugged their shoulders and felt, “Oh, Bubby and Zaidy are just overreacting”; therefore, the attention to this topic was almost non-existent even if it was glaring at us and screaming in one’s face, for one didn’t give it that much thought. In fact, as the grandchildren of holocaust survivors we felt shameful to be anything but the normal kid.

Their continuous warnings of “The Nazi’s in some form, a changed time, will come back to get you.”  Here in America, that seemed improbable, impossible, and almost the thought was something to laugh at.

What was one to do? One didn’t have this mindset. Even though sitting close to one was their own grandparents telling them their personal stories of what they went through. I thought to myself, “When are we going to wake up, and when we wake up, how are we going to respond?”

Reflective thoughts of comfort seeped through, “Wasn’t it the Lubavitcher Rebbe Who sent us out here on shlichus? Wasn’t it the Lubavitcher Rebbe who sent us out to be a lantern to our community? Wasn’t it the great Alter Rebbe who walked for miles on end, to the outskirts of the city, just to cut some wood for a widow to heat her house in the frigid Russian winter?

I remember hearing of my great-Bubby Sarah who escaped the programs in Russia. It was she and her two sisters; they were the three Rothchild sisters, running for their lives to this country. Ironically, their side of the family were the first Rothchilds that were poor, penniless, and with the huge responsibilities of now raising their families in a brand new unknown place. The only comfort was Bubby Sarah’s Shabbat candlesticks that when polished spoke volumes of the old country and its shtetl stories.

If doing the right thing is L’chatillah Ariber, breaking through and overcoming boundaries, doesn’t this include smashing through and shattering with much exertion the glass ceilings of limitations? This, too, this tragedy to our Chabad house must be symbolic of something. There has to be a lesson for the average Jew, the chassid, and a close-knit Jewish community, but what was it?

I took in the tragedy and the deeper averted Travesty, realizing how close it could have come to me, for I could have witnessed the shooting. The previous night I was absent because of a conflict with scheduling, and my Torah Ladies class had to be canceled.

As a few hours passed, I thought to myself, do we put this in the news? What if we had copycats? Whether it was neo-Nazis or pro-Hamas sympathizers, they did it for a reason. They are looking for a reaction, my reaction, my community’s reaction. Giving any negative reaction at all could cause a whirlwind of a terrible catastrophe with wings all its own.

It’s the Jewish persona, the Jewish embodiment, who has this relationship that has always been. No matter what, the Jew will stand up for what’s right for humanity. No matter what, we, as emissaries, stand and choose to be there for our community.  We won’t back down. We don’t stay overwhelmed for long. Where would this behavior, mentality, approach of giving up get us?

My nerves started to tap on my shoulder. I began to feel worried. Looks like they succeeded I thought. Shrugging into myself, allowing my nerves for this brief period to be the watchman of the lighthouse. Try as I might, I was scared and afraid. How do I be in the same building again? The same place where I always learned with my community, and the same place that I always ran around to do programs. The fear was still there, hard to shake off: this underlying fear of what will be?

How did the Jew survive thousands of years in exile? Answering my own question, was the spitback question of what one’s Hebrew teachers have taught, “One is part of a stiff-necked nation.”

A joke amongst our noahide friends, those who huddled with the Jews for generations regardless of it being popular or worse, the opposite, always called us a stiff-necked people.

A stiff-necked person, I mused to myself, doesn’t let things get him down. This review of the Torah teachings and messages it brings down to our generations of, “maseh avos siman lavanim,” the stories and sayings are a sign and teaching for the children and students.

This reflection: for over the past fifteen years, whatever sweat, blood and tears was devoted to my community, years of dedication, of helping, serving, working, making everything as much as possible – I cannot and will not allow myself to step down and become an extinguished fire, a small, little ember in the distance.

“Pesach…,” I thought to myself. That was the next holiday. It was right around the corner. There was a click, a change inside me from the worry of what was, to the worry of getting Passover here. Pesach was in a few weeks. It didn’t matter what happened to the windows, there was going to be a seder this year.

Again, no longer just an acquaintance, but getting comfortable with me, my nerves came and tapped me on the shoulder, this time on both, but I admonished them and kept on going.

Where were we going to have the seder? The conversations with the rabbi were back-and -forth. He was adamant that all we needed was extra police protection and move on and forward as always. Why should we be afraid ? We didn’t have time to worry, and what’s best is to put one foot in front of the other.

I didn’t agree to this idea yet. I took the rest of the day to think, staring out the still broken windows. My wheels starting to turn, I realized that the rabbi was right. As a community there is strength in numbers; Hashem always watches over us and not from a distance. G-d never used the English hello of the famous arm’s distance, but a true Yiddishe embrace: the overbearing Jewish mother taking hugs to the helpings of seconds and thirds.

In exile G-d sits right next to us- as a parent to all of us. In the hardest of times, there is only but one set of footprints in the sand for that is G-d’s, and in the most trying of times, He carries us through the sand until the end.

As I stood back from the window and its story, it was another day, another event. Pesach, Passover, was coming, how much more I wondered should one push oneself? Feeling strengthened, invigorated, a fresh new breath of love to help and be alive filled my veins with fire. How many more things can I do?

It dawned on me, to fight this age old anti-Semitism that is banging down my door, I have to shatter the glass ceilings of where I once was, and the accomplishment level of what I have given to my community. This was the only way to break the stain of what the Nazis left on humanity. For it will never be enough for me to stand still and be stagnant, but rather be fluid, in motion and exertion in our holy work, helping others of the community, which needs to thrive, jump, and feel jubilant in its nourishment. I needed to double down and do ten times more than ever before, and if I felt that the effort and work dedicated to the before the tragedy was hard, this new doubling down with the fight to help was no walk in the park.

It would be so much easier to have the seder in my house, which felt safer than here. I realized these thoughts were those of giving up and letting  the ones’ who caused the destruction to win.

I told my husband that we will up the security and have a seder, the seder is here! Accentuating my point emphatically by pointing to the whole room that was part of the sanctuary, the court case, so to speak, was over and the verdict was in: we are staying put!

It dawned on me, and I had realized how to succeed in these new times where the forgotten balance of wrong and right was stamped on most teenagers’ forehead: bettering myself, taking off the training wheels of certain comforts that happen with fifteen years of dedication to G-d, my community, and the Rebbe. Rather imagining those sleepless nights rocking a newborn to sleep, that type of care and love and cherishing can’t be compared to the status quo, the realm of normal, getting too comfortable. How much more so does one need to cherish, love, and care for their community?

Another worry came up: the windows wouldn’t be fixed in time, and people that will come will see the riddled holes through our center’s windows. No covering it up, it was now on its own display, a broken, disfigured, sad excuse for its former self. Protective windows were now broken, and no time to lose because Pesach was coming without the fixed windows.

I was shocked! Seder night, no one seemed phased by the windows’ sad story; everyone seemed to celebrate Pesach, and I felt like bragging if someone thinks that the Jewish community and its representatives are going to back down because of a few holes in our windows, they were mistaken!

Now I thought, what should I do? What is my approach? If holes pierced through the glass of our sacred shul and center, my counter-positive reaction needs to be that I will redouble my efforts, buckle down, and step it up to work that much harder to take what the Lubavitcher Rebbe taught each and every one of us. His message after the Holocaust to the Jew: one does not stand down, as a stiff-necked people; we move and charge forward as a nation with anticipation of the seeded approach of asking, what else can I do to better myself for all of humanity? This, then, is really what shattering of the glass truly is.