I can’t believe—or, perhaps by now I can—that I’m writing about gun violence for my weekly D’var Torah for the third time in four weeks, this time for a mass shooting that took place in, essentially, the synagogue’s literal own backyard, and thus, effectively, many of your own backyards, at approximately 3rd and South Streets. Three dead—Kristopher Minners, 22, Alexis Quinn, 24, and Gregory “Japan” Jackson, 34, who police say fired the first shot—and another eleven injured.
And that was just Saturday night. Since then, with less media coverage, 29 additional people have been shot in Philadelphia with three more fatalities. Who knows, it might be more by the time you read this? We are at that point: where by the hour the number of human gunshot wounds, in our own community—because this is our community in Philadelphia, no matter the neighborhood—will almost certainly go up.
On the one hand, how can we abide this? It is unthinkable.
On the other hand, the feeling might go, what can we do?
There is one thing we can do, no matter the moment, no matter the issue: Stay. Engaged. A commonly cited adage in Jewish tradition is the teaching from Rabbi Hillel in Pirkei Avot: al tifrosh min hatzibur, “Do not separate yourself from the community.” The pull towards resignation, defeatism, and insularity is strong. Jewish tradition says not to give into it.
As I’v cited before, my teacher Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum taught me that we often overestimate what we can accomplish in one year and underestimate what we can accomplish in ten. This was evident in the fight for marriage equality, when, in 2004 state initiatives prohibiting gay marriage were reported to have successfully driven turnout for President George W. Bush; in 2008 then-Senator Barack Obama was still not ready to come out in support of gay marriage, though it was no longer a potent weapon against Democrats; by 2015, marriage equality was the law of the land. This is all simply to suggest that dramatic political change is possible and indeed has happened over the course of simply a decade.
But, in addition to working to overturn the pre-emption law, other avenues can be pursued, as articulated in this Inquirer editorial, including “increased public education, improved trauma care, and more economic development” along with “ramping up funding for gun safety research to better inform and shape policies that save lives.”
Meanwhile, while the scope of federal legislation that currently has a possibility of being passed is not ambitious, any federal legislative victory would be significant because it would communicate that change can happen, which it can.
Elections matter: there is no substitute for making sure that those who hold public office, and shape the laws, regulations, and judicial decisions that form our civic landscape, share our values. There is no substitute for, election after election, getting out the vote and ensuring that the values of the people are supported by the polls. That’s why SHS is proud to, election after election, work through POWER, the congregation-based organizing coalition, to work with other congregations across faiths, to drive voter turnout. Reach out to SHS leader Wendy Greenspan if interested in getting involved.
A final question might be, why is this Jewish? Why is a rabbi spending so much time writing about gun violence? (Not everyone has this question, but some might.) And the short answer is: because we’re human beings. And these are fellow human beings getting gunned down in our streets, in our schools, and, yes, in our synagogues. Ready access to guns changes the landscape for what it means to be a human being. The widespread availability of guns means that in an instant the lives of two or more human beings, the victims and the shooter, are forever changed. We are witnesses to this right now, and we can’t let it continue.
