“Why?!”<\/em><\/p>\nCan there be any answer to that question in such a story as this?\u00a0The guy who confessed\u2014Levi Aron\u2014has said only that he saw the flyers about a missing boy and panicked. This doesn’t help me understand a thing about why he did what he says he did next, first smothering the child to death and then hacking up his parts and hiding them.<\/p>\n
Why has this story<\/em>\u00a0of all stories awakened our outrage? We read about kids getting abducted and murdered all the time. When does it ever make any sense? When is it not outrageous?<\/p>\nLast night, Mira’s friend Tobaron wrote asking for a Kaddish for Leiby.<\/p>\n
Today, Mira’s mom was beside herself about Leiby. Mira was visiting, and she called me to ask if we could make the Kaddish together at Rebecca’s house. I grabbed my horn and drove over. Mira and Rebecca and I sat together talking for hours, trying to make sense of any of it. We didn’t get very far.\u00a0Rebecca commented, “The story about Leiby is too much. Inside me, it’s raging. But there are many Leibys\u2026 The bastard didn’t touch us, and yet he killed us. He killed something in each one of us.”<\/p>\n
We nodded.<\/p>\n
We shook our heads.<\/p>\n
What sense does any of it make? What do you say? What do you think? What do you do?<\/p>\n
We did what we do these days\u2014we recorded a Kaddish. The three of us held hands while Mira recited the Kaddish. Rebecca and I joined in for the key passage, which Mira modified to suit the occasion, as she often does:<\/p>\n
\u02bboseh shalom bimromav
\nhu ya\u02bbase shalom
\n\u02bbalenu v’\u02bbal kol ha-yeladim,
\nv’\u02bcimru amen<\/em><\/p>\nmake peace in the high places
\nHe will make peace
\nfor us \u2014 and for all the children,
\nand we say, amen.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Then I played “Kaddish,” and I felt the sadness of the piece\u2014of this occasion\u2014more intensely than I have for quite a while. Mira and I have both confessed lately to a feeling of being “all kaddished out,” but when something like this happens, I am right back to a feeling I’ve had numerous times during this project, of feeling strangely grateful that we have something useful we can do in a time of grief.\u00a0And it did feel ever so slightly useful, this Kaddish.<\/p>\n
A kaddish for a little boy who was excited to walk home alone for the first time, whose walk ended in senseless tragedy. A kaddish for all the children whose good days turn horribly, unaccountably tragic, and for their families who will never, ever understand why.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A kaddish for a little boy who was excited to walk home alone for the first time, whose walk ended in senseless tragedy. A kaddish for all the children whose good days turn horribly, unaccountably tragic, and for their families who will never, ever understand why. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[216,253],"tags":[695,698,342,696,692,693,470,169,694,254,697],"class_list":["post-3624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kaddish-in-two-part-harmony","category-podcasts","tag-abduction","tag-brooklyn","tag-children","tag-infanticide","tag-leiby-kletzy","tag-levi-aron","tag-moms","tag-murder","tag-orthodox","tag-ritual","tag-senseless-tragedy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3624"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3627,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3624\/revisions\/3627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}