Rabbi Meszler's Rosh Hashanah message:
On the High Holy Days, we read the disturbing prayer entitled Unetaneh Tokef,
containing the famous passage, "who shall live and who shall die, who
by fire and who by water." This prayer asks us to recognize our
mortality and how much of life is beyond our control.
It is therefore all the more
mind-boggling when there are dangers that are within our power to avoid
and we ignore them. Reflecting on this past year, to me the most obvious
needless danger that we tolerate in America is gun violence. In the Unetaneh Tokef
prayer of 2015, we could easily add the phrases: "who by bullet and who
by negligence, who by semi-automatic weapon and who by unlicensed
handgun, who by lack of background check and who by accident." We as a
society have no one else to blame but our sick culture and our lack of
political will.
Let me share with you just a few
personal encounters I have had with this particularly American issue. I
was in my last year of Rabbinical School when I got a call about my
classmate Rabbi Joel Mosbacher. His father had been taken out of his
store in Chicago at gunpoint. After the robbery, he was shot and killed.
I remember driving up to the home to gather for the stunned
shiva
. My friend's life was changed forever. This is criminal gun violence.
But there is also accidental gun
violence. A year later, I was in serving a congregation in Washington
DC. I received the following letter from a congregant named Eve in
anticipation of the Million Mom March, a march for gun control, which
took place on Mother's Day, May 14, 2000. The march was in reaction to
the Columbine High School massacre.
Dear Rabbi,
Nate and I are by nature
not marchers. We do not enjoy crowds, preferring to promote causes
privately. Almost in spite of ourselves, this year's Million Mom March
will be an exception.
In 1983, our first child,
David, was shot and killed by another child. It was an accident that we
have never been able to move beyond. For 17 years, our lives have been
shaped, in a way deformed, by that event. It has hurt our souls, our
marriage, our subsequent children, our families and our friends. It
becomes a barrier between us and those who do not know because it is so
difficult to say that there was a child who is not here anymore.
People are kind but unless
you explain they do not understand. There is no polite way to say that
we had a beautiful, bright 22-month old baby whose babysitter loved him
very much but they kept a gun for protection and one day their four year
old son found the gun and accidentally shot David through the head and
killed him.
We really feel
uncomfortable sharing that story because although we have been over
every nuance for so many years, it is always a shock to bring it up. But
there is no way we can go out for a meal on Mother's Day and know that
others have given up their Sunday and we have not. So we will both be at
the March and hope that you understand that if only there had been a
safety mechanism on that gun, David would still be with us.
Our hope is that you will
think about us, and about David, and give thought to what it means to
make our children safe through gun legislation.
I marched with this family and
many others then. While the march brought many people together, it did
not produce any change in policy.
More
than a decade later, the epidemic continues unabated without any
legislative response, even after Newtown. Proposed legislation
focused on things I cannot imagine are objectionable: requiring
background checks
on all firearm sales and on passing new and expanded
assault weapon
and
high-capacity magazine bans
. Yet no legislation has been passed.
I thought the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012 would be the tipping point. It was not.
But mass shootings only account
for 1% of the gun homicides in our country, even though they are the
ones that get our attention. There are shootings that happen all the
time. Last month, a 23 year old young man who just graduated from
American University, Matthew Shlonsky, who grew up at a synagogue in
North Carolina, got out of a cab in DC. A stray bullet hit and killed
him in broad daylight. That could have been a member of any one of our
families. In Baltimore, while I was visiting my family in Maryland this
summer, fourteen people were shot
in one night
. It was in that moment that I decided I needed to speak on this issue today.
So what does Judaism say about
this issue? Judaism is not just about lighting candles on holidays,
life-cycle events and how to be a better person. Judaism is also a
religion of ethics, law, and the street.
Make no mistake, Judaism is not a
pacifist religion. We have a clear obligation for self-defense. Jewish
tradition emphasizes the sanctity of human life. It also says that we
are entitled to defend ourselves and even take a life to save ours. "
If someone comes to kill you, kill them first"
(Berachot
58a) is a fundamental principle in the Talmud. Rashi adds that a thief
in the night better beware because the resident has a right to kill
someone breaking in, assuming their worst intentions. Added to this is
the obligation on us to assist other people who are in trouble: "
You shall not stand idly by while your neighbor bleeds"
(Leviticus 19:16).
On the other hand, these laws are not absolute. When it comes to owning weapons, the Talmud teaches (
Avodah Zarah 15b): "
One should not sell [those of
criminal intentions] either weapons or accessories of weapons, nor
should one make any weapon for them."
Further, in the Talmud says (Bava Kama 46a): "
Rabbi Nathan teaches: From where
is it derived that one should not breed a bad dog or keep a damaged
ladder in his house? From the verse [
Deuteronomy 24:8
], 'You shall not bring blood upon your house.'"
If things that are inherently
dangerous, like rabid dogs or broken ladders, are forbidden, all the
more so should gun safety be maintained.
Finally, Judaism views weapons not as sporting goods but as necessary evils. This negativity can be felt in tractate Shabbat (63a): "
One
must not go out [on Shabbat] with a sword, nor with a bow, nor with
a...shield, ...nor with a spear... The sages say they are nothing but a
stigma, for it is written [
Isaiah 2:4
]:
'They shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into
pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither
shall they learn war any more.'"
-
What type of weapons, magazines, etc., do people reasonably need for self defense?
-
How can we make sure that
those with a criminal past or the mentally unstable cannot access
weapons? This would include restrictions on weapon ownership by those
with whom they reside.
-
We are obliged to use every
possible technological means to prevent these people from acquiring arms
under any circumstances, for example, a robust national system of
background checks.
Now there is a very small Jewish
minority who make the argument that we should all be armed, for if the
Jews of Germany had guns, then the Nazis would have never been able to
take them away. I do not think this is a reasonable comparison.
Currently, we are far more endangered by the all-too-common instances of
domestic violence, someone thinking of suicide having access to a
firearm, or an accident than the relatively rare instance of an armed
intruder much less a genocidal regime in our streets. Self-defense is
part of Judaism, but licenses, background checks, and safety are within
not just the spirit but the letter of Jewish law. The Union for Reform
Judaism has long recognized the need for gun safety legislation, passing
many resolutions to that effect.
I recognize that guns are part
of American recreation and culture, and many people want them for home
defense. My grandfather, of blessed memory, grew up in Pennsylvania and
was part of that culture. He hunted regularly and belonged to the
National Rifle Association. He told me he canceled his membership when
the NRA insisted on the right to own assault weapons. He explained to
me, "If you shoot an assault weapon in home defense, you'll take out a
wall of your house. If you shoot a deer with it, there will be nothing
left of the deer to bring home. It just doesn't make any sense."
The fact is, I believe we are
talking about basic health and safety legislation, the same way we have
laws for cars or medicines. While no gun legislation will prevent all
shootings, we know that strong gun safety laws do
reduce
the incidents of gun violence.
Gun safety legislation saves lives, unequivocally. States with more gun
control have less gun violence, and states with less gun control have
more gun violence.
Consider the 2014 study from the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research,
which looked at how gun deaths in two states correlated with the repeal
or enactment of permit-to-purchase (PTP) laws. After Missouri repealed
its PTP regulations in 2007, it saw a 25 percent increase in homicides
by firearm. Bordering states did not experience an increase, and the
national murder rate declined 5 percent. Missouri murders not involving
guns remained steady.
When Connecticut enacted PTP
laws in 1995, over the following decade it experienced a 40 percent
reduction in firearm homicides. It also raised the handgun purchasing
age from 18 to 21 and required prospective purchasers to complete eight
hours of safety training after applying for a permit with local police
in person.
In other words, a 25% increase
in one state and a 40% decline in another occurred solely because of a
change in their laws. These laws did not forbid owning a gun but
required a background check to see if you were a violent criminal or
mentally unstable.
People sometimes point out that
new legislation would not have prevented most of the major gun
massacres. They also like to say the slogan, guns don't kill people,
people kill people. As one of my high school classmates cleverly wrote
on Facebook, "You don't blame a pencil for spelling mistakes or a car
for traffic accidents; why should you blame a gun for shootings?" The
difference is that a pencil is made for writing and a car is made for
taking people from one place to another. An assault weapon is only made
for killing a lot of people at once.
Even so, even if you believe you
do need a gun for safety, which is well within Jewish tradition, why on
earth should there be no background checks at gun shows the same as at
gun stores? Why should assault weapons be permitted? Why shouldn't we
develop and promote available smart gun technology that recognizes
fingerprints in order to fire, much like a smartphone, so a child cannot
shoot another child? We must learn to say: "Your right to own a gun
ends with my family's right to live safely." "You shall not bring blood
upon your house."
Gun violence is a plague of our
own own making. Even though we have not been successful in the past, we
still must say, "This is not right. As a Jewish American, I protest."
I believe, despite all of the
past failures, that gun violence is an issue we can do something about.
We cannot eliminate it completely, but we can reduce it. Change can
begin with small steps. The proposed law is one such step.
Almost every attempt at gun
legislation has failed in the past twenty years. Nevertheless, we have
to keep dreaming of a better tomorrow, as it says in the optimistic song
by Arik Einstein: "
Ani v'atah m'shaneh et ha-olam
: You and I can change the
world. You and I, and then others will follow. It's been said before,
but that doesn't matter. You and I will change the world."
Shanah tovah.
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