To the woman who I met a few days ago on Eastern Parkway, a good ten-minute walk from Crown Heights, where you live:
Thank you for taking the time to talk to me. It was an absolute pleasure meeting you. While I was on my cell phone busy dealing with issues you only hear about on the news, while simultaneously trying to walk my baby to sleep in her stroller, you had the consideration and the time to stop me and have a little chat.
A box. What is it? Four sides. A top. A bottom. All square and straight and rigid.
Lots of things can go inside a box. Presents come in boxes. Hardware devices. Kitchen appliances. Furniture. Gifts. Jewelry.
People come in boxes. Oh, they don’t?
Twenty years ago, race riots erupted in Crown Heights and an innocent Jewish student was murdered in response to the accidental killing of an African-American child. After the murder, the Rev. Al Sharpton came to Crown Heights and further whipped up an already incensed crowd, leaving some in the Jewish community to demand twenty years later that Sharpton be forever shunned by Jewry and criticizing my friend Rabbi Marc Schneier for inviting him to the Hampton Synagogue.
Healing racial tensions between the black and Jewish community of Crown Heights is imperative for the two groups to co-exist. No one disputes that. I certainly don’t. In fact, after the 1991 Crown Heights riots the Lubavitcher Rebbe, in looking toward the future, told Mayor Dinkins that the black and Jewish communities are “one side, one people, living in one city.”
August marks the 20th anniversary of the worst anti-Semitic attack in American history: a three-day nightmare that historians and journalists call the “Crown Heights riots” and that many members of the Jewish community have called a “pogrom.”
It was tense conversation. The editor at NPR (clearly Jewish) was defending the reporting about violence in Brooklyn. Twenty years ago black mobs had taken to the streets after a car accident that took the life of a black child. Jews huddled in their homes in fear. Cars were torched, Jews beaten, Norman Rosenbaum, a Jewish student from Australia lay dead, killed by the mob. Police were held back by an incompetent mayor. The media whose job was to report the facts were creating a fantasy, claiming, “there are conflicts between blacks and Jews. Tensions are high as ethnic groups clash.” I told the editor she had the story wrong. There were no attacks by Jews, it was a one way battle. Finally in exasperation I yelled at her, “Jews are dying and you are lying.”
Let’s just say we are all happy that the three weeks and nine-days are finally over. Superficially, while it seems that this happiness expresses itself on various levels in a cross-section of people – the truth is, at its core we are all rejoicing for the same reason – that is, our ability at this time to achieve through kindness and compassion what we have attempted to do through sadness and grief. But just as the seasons change, this joyous season too will pass on by unless we can effect true and lasting change; change that we have been pursuing for thousands of years and until now has been so illusive.
First of all, I would like to genuinely thank all the staff that have helped my son grow tremendously in Gashmiyos and especially in Ruchniyos over the first part of the summer. My son has really gained a lot and has noticably excelled and matured of the short four weeks he spent at camp. There is one thing however I would like to address:
I admit I am intolerant. At times I am bigoted towards others. I judge people by the way they look, the way they walk, the way they talk, and an immeasurable amount of other calculated imagery I build up in my mind about them.
Standing at the funeral last night my mind was flooded with thoughts. There was just too much to think about, what happened is incomprehensible and it defies logic. In the midst of thousands of people who came to respect the young boy there was a collective sorrow and our hearts were at a proverbial half mast. An innocent child was literally butchered. What a nightmare. There were sobs throughout the ceremony, many coming from people who did not know the boy as the tragedy shook our innermost being and our core. Life is so precious; we know that through being a parent and a sibling, and we know that as we see youngsters grow and celebrate life. There are so many joys throughout life. But then there was this. Our heart as human beings is hurting badly.
Wherever I went on this heartbreaking day, all the parents I met seemed to have the same reaction. In the face of such a horrific event, it’s the most natural thing in the world. But even in our shared grief, we need to channel our protective parental instincts in the spirit of “V’hachai yitein el libo,” and the living shall take to heart… in a healthy and helpful way.
How can we best serve our children? What is the best way to warn them of stranger danger?
From the Inbox: I can write about the pain of watching friends and younger siblings becoming moms, or the segulos I tried, but I’d rather talk about some of the upsides of the miserable reality of infertility.
While hundreds of Bocherim are about get sent on Shlichus, many are left behind. One Bocher who calls himself Zalman sent us this email from his friend’s iPhone (who is getting Shlichus).
Sitting on a plane to Melbourne, following a whirlwind 24 hours that had me driving to NY from Montreal Canada, boarding an LA bound plane on to my present location- some 40,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean- at 2:14 AM Sydney time. I look back at the last months and contemplate the journey here, a crazy, but incredible road. My internal clock is all off, so excuse the rambling tone.
I knew it was happening, I even heard the drumming, but I did not attend the annual 71st Precinct Family Day Picnic.
I don’t like the police, I think they are just a tool used to fill the city’s coffers.
There was a great buzz of excitement when it was announced that Netanyahu had been invited to deliver an address before the entire congress. It was to be his second congressional address since he was first invited 15 years ago. On the evening following his address, I was told by a friend that it was one of the greatest speeches he’d heard in his life, featuring 29 standing ovations. I eagerly went to watch the speech, anticipating a great rebuttal to Obama’s pressure on Israel to give away our G-d given land to the Arabs. To my sorrow, it was anything but.
No, I am not one of those brazen young women who walk down the streets of Brooklyn in steep necklines that beg for cover out of sheer embarrassment, or bare feet tipped brightly in red nail polish, peering out cheerfully from between flip flop separators.
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