what started this blog

I wrote this message, Reflections on Arevut (Mutual responsibility) and Sinat Hinam (causeless hatred) on August 2, 2009. The shooting in the bar noar gay youth club in Tel Aviv is what caused me to start this blog. The shooter has not been found.

The young people who were murdered last night in Tel Aviv at a gathering place for gay youth and buried tonight were named Nir Katz, 26 and Lizzie Tarboushi, 17, z"l.

I heard two parents on the radio today - Nir Katz's stepfather and the mother of a young man who had stepped outside when the shooter came in to the center last night. Both were incredibly supportive of their children. Nir Katz's stepfather talked about how most people in Israel are supportive as his family is - that this crime was committed by one person whose views are shared by few. He also spoke about the shootings as an act of "sinat hinam" - the very thing whose consequences we were calling to mind in our fast last week.

I spoke today about how Israel is considered a "high context society" - what happens here in the news has such a direct impact on us all. I had my ears open today to the radio - checking to see that the murders would get covered, would get taken seriously. The coverage sounded like what I know of Israel - I was even heartened by the message of Shas - that murder is against Jewish law and Jewish tradition (in case anyone wondered after last week's Torah reading).

This morning while on my way to work I stopped for a stranger who flagged me down and asked me to help him jump start his car. He got in my car and we drove around back of his house where his young daughter waited in the car, started his car and I went on my way. As we did this, I was thinking how I could not do this in the states, how fear for my safety would stop me. I live in a culture where people in certain defined ways and contexts and with exclusions, help one another and consider ourselves responsible for one another. It has its ups and downs, but that basic social contract, even covenant, the idea that we are partners in a common enterprise and attached to a common fate, that makes life here feel very worthwhile most of the time. Sinat Hinam seems to me the opposite of our Arevut, and that's part of what makes this such a painful day.

I pray for the families of those killed and injured, for a speedy recovery to all who were injured, and that they catch the person who did this soon.

Great Uncle Jack - gone but not forgotten

My grandmother had a brother who disappeared. His name was Jack - he was older than her, her closest age sibling. He had three sisters, of whom my grandmother was one. My aunt Lil was the oldest, next came Vera, who died at the age of 46 I think, the mother of my dad's cousin Clifford, then was Jack, then my grandma Zena.

One of the last times I saw my grandmother I wrote down some of what she had to say about Jack, but I'm not sure where that got to - I think it's with the stuff I left in the states because I could not bear for it to fall off a boat and instead I have no idea where it is.

What I remember - Jack went out west to fight Pancho Villa. He "fell in with a bad lot", according to Grandma, and at some point became estranged from his family. My dad says my aunt Lil was in touch with him up until about 1935 - he would have been born just before the turn of the century.

I've thought to look and only just recently tried to look - for some record of him, with no luck. There are just a few death records for Pezrow I could find online - only my aunt Grace and my great grandparents Mendel and Pearl. Not even my uncle Ken. I don't know if Uncle Ken remembered Jack - Grandma certainly did but she never expressed to me an active desire to know what had happened to him. That is, she never went looking for him.

If you know more about Uncle Jack or have ideas about how to look for him, let me know!