March For Our Souls (March 23rd 2018)

After sitting in a session at the L’Taken seminar on Gun Violence Prevention in DC, I texted Ellen to say that the phrase “Gun Control” was out and that the phrase “Gun Violence Prevention” was in. She texted me back to congratulate me for catching up on the last five years! I didn’t know! Apparently, neither did some of the aides of the Senators and Congressmen whom we met, who themselves used the phrase ‘Gun Control.” I actually really like the phrase Gun Violence Prevention because who can be against that? Many people might be against gun control, but no sane person can be against the prevention of gun violence. Some certainly can and are, but those aren’t people with whom we can have any kind of dialogue. So, since the topic is so emotionally charged, starting with our assumptions and trying to clarify them seems to be an eminently sensible way to go if there is to be any meaningful dialogue.

With this issue of gun violence prevention, my starting assumptions are Jewish and are also personal. The Jewish ones are actually hard to figure out. At the L’Taken seminar, students were provided with sample Jewish texts to support a case for gun violence prevention, but I actually found the texts to be sorely lacking in nuance.
The first text clearly quoted from Exodus 20, saying, “You shall nor murder.” That’s great, that’s clear and it’s easy for teenagers to pick up on. But gun owners could say, “That’s right, and I’m not going to allow anyone to murder me, which is why I own a gun.” In fact, Jewish tradition clearly teaches that there is a time when it is not just right but obligatory to kill someone – when they’re going to kill someone else. This law of rodef, the law of the pursuer, clearly says that if person A is going to kill person B, then person C is obliged to kill person A. A potential killer forfeits their life, according to Jewish tradition. I can easily see a gun owner using that source as a reason against limiting gun ownership.

Another text that they provided really startled me. Genesis Rabbah (21:13) comments on the Biblical verse that “God placed the Cherubim and the flaming sword at the East of the Garden of Eden” with the idea that at the very spot where the Cherubim stood with flaming sword, there was Gehenna created. To clarify some terms, Cherubim are not cute cuddle angel babies but are divine beings who draw close to God. The prophet Ezekiel describes them as terrifying beings with pairs of wings and four faces – one of a lion, one of an ox, one of a person and one of an eagle. They had hooves like a bull that were gleaming like polished brass. This is not a nice, friendly image. Gehenna is even more complicated. Rabbinic Judaism differs from Biblical Judaism in a number of ways, including in its understanding of life after death. In Torah, once a person died they joined their ancestors, which seems to be a way of saying they join the family story, or they were buried in the same cave. There are moments in the rest of the Bible that suggest some kind of life after death, such as when Saul summons the prophet Samuel from death. But there is nothing concrete in any way like the way the Rabbis described life after death, which includes the concept of
Gehenna, which is essentially purgatory, a place of cleansing before moving onto the perfect life after death.

So, this text says that the entrance to purgatory was at the place where God planted these terrifying divine beings to block the entrance back to Eden. When I read this with the students in D.C., I admitted to being very surprised that it was included. None of them could work out why it was there. I suggested that maybe it was saying that we now live in a world of violence, and there is no way back to a world free of violence, so we have to minimize the violence in our lives. Or perhaps a sword is one thing, but a flaming sword is overkill, the AR-15 of swords, basically. I was totally disappointed to read the Religious Action Center’s perspective on why they provided this text – according to them, it envisages a world without violence. Now, I’m certainly one for pushing creative readings of texts, but that’s just not there in the text. For that message, we need Isaiah’s vision where everyone shall turn their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks (Is. 2:4). Even then, though, that’s clearly talking about a vision of universal peace where, to quote, nation shall not lift up sword against nation. One could extrapolate from there and say that even better would be where, to quote from the prophet Micah (4:4), each person shall sit under the vine and their fig tree and none shall make them afraid. But extraordinarily that text wasn’t quoted for the students! And that, to me, seems to be the strongest basis of gun violence prevention legislation – the fact that people shouldn’t have to live in fear. Yes, we can quote, as the Religious Action Center does, the idea from Talmud (Sanhedrin 4:5) that one who takes a life is as though they had destroyed the entire world, but your average gun owner doesn’t own a gun in order to specifically take a life but rather to prevent their own life from being taken. The Talmudic dictum of pikuach nefesh, preservation of life, could easily also be invoked.

And that’s all true for gun ownership in general. To be honest, I think American culture is so intimately bound up with guns that it would be impossible to ever separate the two. BUT, that does not excuse us from trying to prevent gun violence. Here are some basic facts. Every day, eight young Americans under the age of 19 die from gun violence. A firearm used in the home is 22 times more likely to be used to an unintentional shooting, homicide, or suicide than it is for an incident of legally justifiable shooting. Nearly 30,000 Americans die each year from gun violence. The overwhelming majority of Americans approve of common sense measures to minimize gun violence. In 1994, Congress passed the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act, which banned the manufacture, transfer, and possession of semi-automatic assault weapons and large capacity magazines. During the ban period, the number of gun massacres – that is, incidents in which 6 or more people were killed – fell by 37 percent. After the ban lapsed, the number skyrocketed, with an astonishing 183% rise in massacres and a 239% increase in massacre deaths. That is one reason why I profoundly support tomorrow’s March For Our Lives – because there is absolutely no need for a regular civilian to own a semi-automatic weapon. There is literally no moral defense for such gun ownership.

The second reason is more personal. This is a movement by children, who are afraid to sit under the vine and their fig tree, or the school desk. They want to know that the adults hear their fear. Sure, there’s a valid question as t why the concerns of the African-American children who have been publicly speaking about gun violence in their community has gone unheard. Nonetheless, while that must be addressed, we are here now, at an extraordinary moment of the youth telling us they feel unsafe, and the adults being called upon to hear them and respond.

Yes, nuance may be missing. Yes, the entire discussion about gun violence prevention may be far more difficult, even from a Jewish perspective. But, I will go so far as to say that Judaism is very clear that weapons of war do not belong in the civilian realm, and an AR-15 and every similar weapon is unequivocally a weapon of war. That, then, is the relevance of swords into plowshares and spears into pruning-hooks. We are not soldiers. We are not potential soldiers. Anyone who says that they should have a semi-automatic weapon to defend themselves from a corrupt government firstly is a fantasist who doesn’t understand America’s military might, and secondly is openly saying that they would kill US armed forces personnel if need be. Both of those are offensive intellectually or morally. We are civilians and we should be allowed to sit under our vine and fig tree without weapons of war around us.

So, that’s my starting position. That’s my Jewish and personal starting opinion. So, tomorrow, I march to support the younger generation to show them that we hear their fear, and I march because I think weapons of war have no place in civilian society. This isn’t just a March For Our Lives – it’s a March For Our Souls. It’s a March to try to demilitarize American society. When Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marched with Revd Martin Luther King, he said he was “praying with his feet.” I’d like to think the same tomorrow, which is why we will gather for formal liturgical prayer tomorrow morning, and then will walk our prayers from midday at the Roundhouse. I hope you will join us for a different kind of prayer experience, one in which we pray that God will heal this land of the scourge of militarization, and where everyone may sit where they choose, and not be afraid. And let us say, Amen.