Vaera 5779: Hardening our Hearts and Gun Violence

Vaera 5779

In our parsha, we read about the first seven of the ten plagues, and Pharoah's famous reaction, his heart hardening over and over.
What does it mean to have a hard heart? To say “I don't care.” Balls of fire & ice destroying the trees? I don't care. Cattle dying? I don't care. Nobody has anything to drink, to eat? I don't care. I don't care what happens to other people—it doesn't affect me. Pharoah only cares at the tenth plague, when his own firstborn son dies.
All of us have the experience of our hearts hardening, of becoming desensitized to suffering. Shootings are not news, they need to be mass shootings. There are so many shocking things going on in the world—starvation in Yemen, oppression in Saudi Arabia, you name it-that we are just used to it.
When we no longer cry, really we are like Pharoah, our hearts have turned to stone. It happens to all of us, myself included. My chaplaincy supervisor, Joe Leggieri, once said that when you no longer cry, you're not fit to be a chaplain anymore. But the truth is, it's the only way we survive. I had a friend worked in hospice chaplaincy, and who used to joke he was friends with the angel of death; when he had terminal cancer, he made the same comment. When we see suffering on such a regular way, we get used to it, even befriend it.
I have to wonder whether we have become desensitized to gun violence. When shootings fade into the background, and we just shake our heads and accept them as a fact of life, our hearts have become hardened. There was a shooting in the Wellington Mall Christmas eve—how crazy is that? Today, the final draft of the Stoneman Douglas report was released. On the one hand, it is a great sign that people are not letting this issue die, fade into memory like Columbine and Sandy Hook. I am so impressed by the students of MSDHS, who took it to the streets of Tallahassee, Orlando (Disney's Main Street), DC, and even ran for office to keep this issue alive. They refused to let it become a memory, to fade into the history books.
One of the primary recommendations of the report was that teachers should be allowed to carry guns. I am not going to weigh in on the merits of whether teachers should pack; we have an armed security guard here, and thank God for that. The problem is, if a shooter comes around, they will go somewhere else instead. We have not solved the underlying issue, we have come to accept it
We cannot afford to accept as a society the idea that deranged individuals, students who torture animals and classmates, should have access to weapons. We cannot simply accept that deranged individuals will act in hostile ways and not be held accountable. If we do, if we simply accept that the bad guys will have guns, then our hearts have become hardened. Yes, we do need to protect ourselves, to have an armed guard, but we also need to keep questioning how we have become such a violent country.
This week's parsha challenges all of us to maintain a heart of flesh, a heart which feels the pain of others, not to become complacent. Rebbe Nahman says that if we find our heart becoming desensitized, we should bang our head against the wall of our heart, we should tell ourselves to wake up, to remember this is painful, this is not right.
Torah challenges all of us to keep our hearts sensitive to everyone around us, to feel even minor sufferings of the individuals around us, and through this to create a humane society & world.
Shabbat Shalom.

Uzis and 9 year olds

Hearing about Charles Vacca, the firing range instructor in Arizona who put an uzzi into the hands of a nine year old girl (who had never held one before) and set it to automatic, with predictable results, I wonder what a nine year old was doing firing a gun in the first place. In some parts of our society, guns are approached as toys: and if you don’t get to fire one off you’ve missed out on one of life’s great experiences. Yes, gun safety is taken seriously (in general), but there really is no reason for a child to be firing a gun. The 2nd amendment, which gun rights advocates always quote, has to do with the necessity of having a militia: what is now the Reserves, or the equivalent of volunteer firefighters, especially when there isn’t much of a standing army.
The glorification of guns and violence also is in our movies and videogames. Is it really okay for children to play with toy guns? Are we sure that doesn’t send them a message about the acceptability of violence, and of using power to resolve conflicts? Why is it okay for a child, or even adult, to engage in the fantasy of killing and murdering, in a video game? How can this not be harmful to our neshamas, our souls?
The Talmud has a discussion about carrying swords on Shabbat. Apparently, at the time of the discussion, people liked to wear ceremonial swords. If they can be considered a garment or ornament, then you are wearing, not carrying, so you can go out with it on Shabbat. If it is something you carry, an implement that is not part of an outfit, then you can’t carry it oon Shabbat. The gemara concludes that it is not an ornament, but rather a disgraceful thing (Shabbat 63a).
We need to teach this distaste for guns and violence to our children. Yes, sometimes they are necessary, sometimes we do have to put on uniforms and defend ourselves, but even then we are saddened by being turned into killers. Guns are never glorious.
May Mr. Vacca's family, as well as the little girl who he gave the uzzi to, and the families of all those who have lost loved ones to gun violence, be comforted.