With a Broken Heart

Days of pain, anguish, anger, even fury is what good people around the world are experiencing.

Jews and non-Jews. This is a matter of humanity, even if most of the world seems to have forgotten.

The return in coffins of a mother with her two babies, one of whom is even difficult to identify with the usual method of identifying corpses, which is by comparison of teeth, since at the time of being cruelly kidnapped he did not even have teeth, and of an old man who dedicated his life to sustaining a message of peace precisely with those who turned out to be his executioners, challenges us in the depths of our souls.

If I always thought that the Jewish tradition and our texts are an ocean of contradictions, I believe that this week, these days, are the most profound example of this circumstance.

This week we read Mishpatim.

Mishpatim are sentences, the construction with words of the human instrument that enables communication.

Mishpatim are also judgments or ordinances, the human construction that regulates coexistence and establishes Justice.

Both constructions seem to be absent.

It is in this portion of the Torah that the rules applicable to kidnapping and murderers is discussed.

It is here that an Eye for an Eye, a Tooth for a Tooth is determined. Reciprocity in the retribution of the evil inflicted on any person. Reciprocity that has been talked about so much in these 500 days.

For the last several days we have seen the expression “We will not forgive, we will not forget” circulating on social media, and it is really very difficult to feel or think otherwise. And at the same time there are questions that come to my mind…. How much longer?  Who and how will cut this chain of horror and barbarism?

Spiritual masters of all times invite us permanently to vibrate in the frequency of love and compassion, even in situations of pain and attack. And thus we have gone through history.

We, the Jewish People have experience in transcending horrors through prayer and Emunah, faith. That´s how we have survived for more than 3000 years.

Ani maamin ve emunah shlema…. I believe with absolute faith…. We sing and recite for centuries. And many of us still believe that that is the way.

However, vibrating in love and compassion should not be interpreted as a free pass for indiscriminate attack. Turning the other cheek is not an absolute premise.

And this is where the possible contradictions appear, the moral challenges that we have been facing for more than 500 days.

It is known that for us there are few values superior to that of life. We are commanded to choose life, always. From the divine commandment Not to Kill, to Talmudic discussions in which it is established that it is not permissible to surrender one life even to save thousands of others.

It is in honor of these rulings that we are paying this tremendous price, with the silence and complicity of the world, of exchanging coffins for terrorists, knowing that those terrorists will probably attack us again somewhere in the world. They have reaffirmed this over and over again, and I believe that it is the only true thing that has come out of their mouths.

On the other hand, it is also a rule emanating from our texts that if someone comes to kill you, you must kill them first.

So? What do we do?

How difficult it is to rise above the most visceral emotion that emerges in face of each heartbreaking image!

And yet that is the dance on which we sadly have so much practice.

Our texts accompany us in pain and in the dilemma.

Honor and choose life, paying the necessary price, but also defend ourselves and do what is necessary to prevent and repel a new attack.

We continue walking through history with our heads held high, our broken hearts and our deepest faith that in spite of everything we will emerge victorious from this ordeal.

What is the victory? To continue existing despite the tireless efforts of the agents of evil who seek to destroy us.

The world has confused revenge with justice. We haven’t.

Today, and for 503 days, we have been heartbroken. Our collective soul does not stop crying.

And our spirit keeps on going.

We honor life. We respect the living and the dead.

And we defend ourselves by respecting these values.

Once again, Am Yisrael Chai. No matter what.