I didn’t really cry until the press conference. There was something about the way the surgeons
of Orlando Heath described the bombardment of bodies – at once so professional,
using precise technical terminology, and at once so human, their eyes betraying
the overwhelming horror they had witnessed, that finally brought home the
immensity of this massacre, and how much of my own life is bound up in it. And how wholeheartedly sad and angry I am.
A tale of two locations: a discotheque and an emergency
room. The walls of one are black, and
pop with colorful lights and posters.
The walls of the other are white and smeared with blood. Reggaeton music thumps throughout the disco,
while the hospital hums with machinery and beeps to the pulse of the patients. One is a place of joy and release, a place to
shed the masks of oppression we pull so tightly over our faces. The other is a place of pain and despair.
And a third place, I suppose: inside the mind of a killer so
tormented by his own humanity that he cannot allow others to enjoy theirs.
And then a fourth place: our televisions, where politicians
use this event to make hay, twisting it like the limbs of the victims to suit
their own world view, to score a few points with constituents, to feather their
nests and fund re-election campaigns even as the floors are sticky with blood.
“Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor,” says
Leviticus (19:16), that same Leviticus used by politicians and pastors and
hate-mongers to denigrate us, forgetting the verse that follows: “You shall not hate your kinsfolk in your
heart” (19:17). Those God-fearing
politicians and pastors and hate-mongers who are rightfully are horrified by
the carnage, but blind to connection between it and the homophobia, misogyny,
and dislike for difference that they themselves inculcate. Their self-righteousness stinks like burning hair.
Most modern translators understand “do not stand idly by” to
mean “do not profit by the blood of your neighbor.” And yet here they are, doing just that. All the perfumes of Arabia won’t sweeten
their hands.
At the press conference, one of the senior surgeons praised
“Environmental Services,” the hospital custodians. That long night, he explained, they cleaned
the bloody receiving bays in less than a minute to make them ready for the next
victim and the next and the one after that.
Despite the pain, there is a lot of good in the world, and a lot of
love.
This Friday night, June 17, during erev Shabbat services,
we’ll create a space for healing and for Yizkor. I hope you can join us.
