In the small hours of Sunday morning, I woke up and looked at the news. I saw there was an active shooter – I type those words so easily – at Brown University on Rhode Island; a good friend of mine teaches there, and his daughter is a student. I emailed him at 2am, hoping he was OK, that they were all OK; he replied right away, reassuring me of his and his family’s safety. Others were not so lucky: two people were killed and nine injured in the 389th mass shooting in the United States this year. That number is not an error. Three hundred and eighty nine.
Day broke at last, the first day of Hanukah. I grew up in New York in a culturally Jewish household that celebrated Christmas: we had a tree, and everything. Decades later, I consider the fear and avoidance that prompted this shift, and so I have begun to shift back, towards a menorah, with candles I bring back from Zabar’s on my native Upper West Side.
And so then, the news from Australia. From Bondi Beach, its name synonymous with pleasure, where a father and son opened fire on a crowd of Jews celebrating the holiday, murdering 16 of them, injuring 40, the latest in a terrifying string of attacks on Jews as they, as we, celebrate our holiest days.
That evening in Islington, North London, at 4pm there was a menorah-lighting I planned to go to, hosted by Chabad – the same Jewish organisation that hosted the celebration at Bondi Beach. I didn’t go. I couldn’t face it, that’s the truth. I felt weary in my bones. But my son went, bringing back a report of joy, light and extremely heavy security. The Islington rabbi knew the rabbi, Eli Schlanger, who was killed in Australia. We are a small tribe. When he came home, we lit our own candles in our window; we must keep calling in the light.
Another six hours or so passed. I woke in the night again. I looked at my phone again and saw that the director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele, had died; had been, it seemed, murdered in their home. I don’t know Rob Reiner, of course I don’t. But even if my home was avoidant-Jewish, a talisman of my childhood were the recordings of The 2000 Year Old Man that Reiner’s father Carl made with the great Mel Brooks, and you can’t get much more Jewish than that. Carl’s son went on, in his quiet way, to become a pathbreaking star of a television show, All in the Family, that changed the cultural and political landscape; he was one of the greatest film directors of his generation; and he was a tireless political campaigner who actually got things done. For gay rights, for public health — and lately on behalf of democracy pure and simple.
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The people who died, they were strangers to you. You are safe. Why do you feel such overwhelming grief?
I’m writing all this down because maybe you, like me, feel overwhelmed with sorrow and exhaustion – while at the same time recognising, perhaps with a shadow of guilt, that hey: you’re OK. The people who died, they were strangers to you. You are safe. Why do you feel such overwhelming grief for men and women you did not know, who shared your faith but perhaps did not, who directed movies that millions watched, not just you?
That is how I feel. But today, I’m going to decide that it’s OK to feel this way. We feel because we care, and wish for an end to suffering. And so this grief is what makes us human, and helps us not give in to hate. What can I do? Be kind to the next person I meet. Check in with someone. Ask questions. Study the world. I will promise never to think again that my grief is inadmissible. That denial of emotion, of fellow-feeling, is what leads, no kidding, to slaughter. The world changes one small step at a time. Even in the darkest times we must put our candle in the window. Happy Hanukah. Merry Christmas. Keep all the lights shining.
Photograph by Matthew Chattle/Future Publishing via Getty Images