Dark Day

Guest Contributor

While the Nazis turned the Jewish dead into soap, we are equally guilty of turning them into soapboxes. 

    I’m cringing thinking about the person that uses this tragedy to push an agenda. Whether a Rabbi implementing his favorite chumra, an Askin trying raise money, the self absorbed music-star-want-to-be  writing a song in "honor" of it, or those that write  “BDE”s on their Facebook pages (why not put in a emoticon while your at it). – it’s time to start growing up again as individuals and a people.  

    The tragedy is not ours but theirs, give it the respect it deserves and please do not add to the exploitation this tragedy is bound to endure.

     There seems to be a love affair between people and an unchangeable contained tragedy. A sort of relishing in the act of turning off  the complexities and reality of the everyday and focusing on a symbol that is simple and clear cut, creating a focal point that is so undisputed and universal, people can't help but rally around and connect with and thru it. The pattern is always the same tho, people rally, connect, cleanse their conscious with their tears, feel cleansed and then move on. (Lieby Kletzky who?) Just a ride in the emotional amusement park of life.

       We must be honest and identify and separate our horror, anger  and our fear from feelings of loss and true empathy. If we were are so empathetical as people why are we not out feeding the hungry and visiting the sick on a daily basis?  Why are we not more understanding of those living around us and more patient to those that annoy us? Why is it that we open our hearts so readily to the dead who do not infringe on our greater selves, our lifestyle or our steak dinner? Is it empathy we feel, or the new age idol of to feel enthused, alive and connected in any way we can as long as we control the relationship and its obligations. 

       There is no lofty virtue in connecting with the tragedy of an untimely death. We completely remove the individuality of the dead – there is not interplay between the I and the other – just two totally independent beings one the victim and the other the survivor- that is their only relationship, what value is there in that?  If we could be empathetical to those who remain around us in the land of the living on a day to day level, on an individual level, on a personal level,  that would be something.

        All our hearts are broken, this does not make us better this makes us humans on the most basic level, thank G-d we still have that. – Please think about this while you go back to playing candy crush after posting “BDE”.