Newtown, One Year Later

One year ago tomorrow I walked into the Oriole Lane Elementary School to speak with first graders about Hanukkah (one of the students is the daughter of a cycling friend of mine, and his daughter's teachers were looking for a Rabbi to speak about the meaning of the holiday). I had just heard about the Sandy Hook shootings while I was in my car driving to the school.

As I walked into the school office to sign in as a visitor I found a shaken principal and staff who were reeling from the news they had also just heard. My friend's wife escorted me from the office to the classroom where her daughter and other first graders (the same age as the 20 students who were gun downed, along with 6 adults, in Newtown just a few minutes earlier) were waiting with great anticipation to see the hanukkah menorah I held in my hand kindled and play with the dreidels I had brought (as well as eat the gelt (chocolate coins I had in great supply).

I took a deep internal breath before I tried to explain to those children, who had no idea what had happened in a school a lot like theirs to children a lot like them, the meaning of Zechariah's prophecy: "Not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit, says the Lord 4:5). It was one of most challening and surreal moments I have experienced as a Rabbi; one I hope I never experience again.

It is not enough to claim as some do that we do not need more laws on the books, we just need existing laws to be enforced. It is not enough to claim that a right is unlimited. It is not enough to remain uninvolved because it "happened to them and not to me or to mine." It is not enough to merely observe a minute of silence. It is not enough when innocent lives are at risk and are taken by weapons that belong on the battlefield, not on the streets and in the homes of America.