It seems like a thousand years have passed since the Jewish Link went on break for Sukkot. A horrifying wave of terror, beginning with the murders of Rabbi Eitam and Naama Henkin h”yd, on Chol Hamoed, have colored our perspectives and shaken the foundations of our world. Our hearts cry with each and every family who has lost a loved one, and we are collectively shuddering at the fear striking the hearts of our children, neighbors, family and friends in our homeland.
This is not a time for platitudes; even-handed, balanced statements calling on both sides to work for calm are not appropriate. That would intimate that Rabbi and Mrs. Henkin and their four sons who witnessed the deaths of their parents, were somehow armed assailants attacking the terrorists, when in fact they were driving in a car, heading home from a family visit, engaging in normal, everyday activities we all do every single day, wherever we live. Or, that someone standing at a bus stop glancing at a phone is somehow an imminent threat who must be neutralized.
You won’t find anyone wearing earbuds on the street in Jerusalem anymore. In just a few days, our modern, beautiful Israel has turned into a surreal quasi-computer game, where terrorists can just attack people. But there is no moral justification for attacking a defenseless woman with her child in the Old City, or a 70-year-old woman at Jerusalem’s Central Bus Station because you oppose Jews living in the West Bank or visiting the Temple Mount.
In Teaneck this week, the Jewish community’s Teaneck Holocaust Commemoration Committee stood together at the town council meeting with members of Teaneck’s Enslaved Africans Memorial Monument Committee, to show that our communities have a shared goal. The goal is to memorialize those who have come before, and teach our children the value of human understanding.
It is our humanity that holds us together. The Teaneck town council’s strong support of the architect’s collaborative proposal was a joy to witness.
My mother-in-law survived the Holocaust, and lived to bring two children and welcome six grandchildren into the world, and we hope she continues to enjoy them for many years until 120. She was a child when she was fleeing and hiding from the Nazis in Budapest, fearing to breathe, lest she be found out and carted off to the gas chambers. Even toward the end of the war, when the Nazis were withdrawing from Hungary, they were still going house to house looking for Jews to kill. Because deep down, they weren’t killing for a bigger purpose; they were just heartless murderers.
Like the ones in Israel today.
Our leaders must support the Israeli government’s security efforts without reservation and we must all ask our President to call on the Palestinian Authority to use all possible measures to end this violence now.
By Elizabeth Kratz
