Rabbi Daniel Cotzin Burg
April 12, 2008

My favorite moment of the Oscars each year is the “In Memorium” montage, an annual homage to some of the most (and least) memorable actors and the roles they played during their lifetimes.  I am confident that of all the actors who will be memorialized at next year’s Academy Awards, there is one who will truly stand out: Charleton Heston.  This past week, Hollywood bade farewell to one of its finest actors.  He starred in over 100 films, one of the few deemed worthy to lead a cast of thousands. It’s appropriate that we mention Heston at this time of year because for Jews, it is Heston’s portrayal of Moses, larger than life and with his resonant voice that is the most memorable.  For so many of us he was Moses as he stood before Pharaoh and cried out “Let my people go!”

But there is another role, of course, for which Charleton Heston was equally famous: from 1998 to 2003 he served as president and spokesman for the National Rifle Association.  Over the course of his term, he helped to champion Second Amendment rights, raising enormous amounts of money and securing the NRA’s place as one of the most successful lobbying groups on Capitol Hill. 

And so, today, I would like us to consider two images of Charleton Heston.  The first is from the movie “The Ten Commandments,” Heston standing, beard flowing, staff in hand, arm outstretched, and parting the waters of the Red Sea.  The second image, equally iconic perhaps, is that of Heston holding a Revolutionary War musket over his head and proclaiming, “From my cold dead hands!”

So let’s think about that second image a bit.  And as we do let’s consider someone else who recently lost his life.  One week ago on Shabbos as we sat in shul, five hundred teenagers packed into Haven of Rest Missionary Baptist Church on South Chicago Avenue.  They were gathering to pay final respects to the family of Chavez Clarke who was the twentieth of twenty-three Chicago public school students killed since September and the twentieth victim of gun violence in particular. By all accounts, Chavez (whose friends called him Chad) was an amiable kid with a  kind heart who had been honored multiple times for academic achievements and who was looking forward to his high school graduation in June.  Chad, it seems, was simply walking with his brother when he was gunned down, another innocent victim in the growing yearly tally of gang related deaths.  Last year, as you know, we set a record with 34 school-age deaths.

In response to the bloodshed, some are staging protests and rallies; others are pushing specific anti-gun legislation.  Still others are calling for better safety education, improved police presence and stricter enforcement of curfews.  Whatever the response, whatever your individual politics, one thing seems clear: there are too many children dying and everybody agrees they shouldn’t be.  Meanwhile, as the city of Chicago grieves for these teenagers, the nation prepares, this month, to commemorate the one year anniversary of the Virginia Tech shooting and the nine year anniversary of Columbine.  It seems that, indeed, “April is the cruelest month” (T.S. Elliot, The Wasteland).

For its part, our Jewish tradition approaches the issues of violence and weapons with a great deal of anxiety and caution, Jewish law coming to mitigate against what it views as our baser human instincts.  For example, the Torah limits vigilantism by establishing arei miklat, specific cities of refuge, offering protection from blood vengeance.  The Talmud is clear in its discomfort with Roman games that glorify violence, and later Jewish law codes go into great depth with regard to the sacred value of human life.  Even defensive killing is forbidden unless one is fairly certain that his or her life is in imminent danger.  It is interesting to note that if you were to look at artistic depictions of the four sons in various haggadot, you would discover that it is the rasha, the wicked son who is most often portrayed with a weapon in hand. 

And yet, in a manner of speaking, the scene of Moses at the Red Sea depicts, no less, Heston with a “weapon” in his hand, than does the scene of him at that NRA convention.  God says (Exodus 14:16):

‘And you raise your staff and lift your arm over the waters and split them….’

"…and the Children of Israel will walk through the waters on dry land.’”

The staff of God becomes the instrument of salvation, enabling the survival of an entire people.  But the other side of that equation is the reason we diminish our cups every Pesach, we do not rejoice at the downfall of our enemies.  The same staff that permitted the Hebrews’ escape sealed the Egyptian army’s fate as well. 

Why then do many of us feel comfortable, even proud of the staff in Moses’ hand but uncomfortable with the gun?  To put a finer point on it, let me ask you this question:  How would you feel if someone walked into your neighborhood Starbucks, a machine gun slung over his shoulder?  Now consider the same scenario at a coffee shop on Ben Yehuda Street in Jerusalem.  My bet is that in the latter scenario, you would feel safer.  In the former, you would probably run out and immediately call the police.  One explanation is that we know Israeli citizens face a real danger to their very existence each and every day.  Consider S’derot or Ashkelon where rockets fall with every rising and setting of the sun.  Guns in Israel are not about glorified violence, firing bullets into the air in a show of false machismo.  The pride we feel when we see an Israeli soldier with a weapon goes hand in hand with the knowledge that somehow that weapon helps secure our homeland from the kind of persecution and violence that our people have endured for centuries.  The Israeli army, not accidentally, is called “Tzva Haganah L’Yisrael,” the Israeli Defense Forces.  In a very real way, the Israeli with a gun can more easily be likened to the first image of Charleton Heston, burnishing the staff of God to ward off the ensuing attack, to save his people against all odds, than to that other image.  The hope (albeit the somewhat naïve hope, but the hope of Israel nonetheless) is that guns in the living hands of responsible and trained individuals are a last resort.  This is what the IDF calls “Tohar Haneshek,” purity of arms – a flawed policy from a strategic perspective, an essential one in the eyes of God.

I want to be careful here, because there are plenty of gun enthusiasts who have nothing but respect, even awe, for their firearms.  These gun owners have a deep appreciation for human life, they hunt sober, they use trigger locks and keep their weapons unloaded and the bullets locked away when not in use.  It is not fair, accurate or helpful to portray all (or even most) gun owners, in any country, as bloodthirsty savages.  But, neither can we forget about Chavez Clarke or the dozens of kids who are lost every year in this city, the hundreds who are lost every year in this country, to gun-related violence. 

So, with your permission, I want to share a personal story, one about which I have rarely spoken.  When I was a teenager, right around Jackie’s age, I was hanging out at a friend’s house.  We were bored with video games and looking for something else to do, so my friend went to his father’s night stand and pulled out a 45 caliber semi-automatic pistol.  He passed it to me and we took turns playing with it.   I remember, vividly, the weight of the weapon in my hands, the texture of the grip, the tension against my finger as I pulled the trigger.  I am fairly certain, that had that gun been loaded, had my friend’s father forgotten to remove the clip or a bullet from the chamber, one of us would be dead.

In the coming days, the Supreme Court will continue deliberating over the first Second Amendment case in sixty-nine years.  I don’t know if Washington D.C.’s handgun ban is the answer, but I will say this: children should not be playing with guns – any more than they should be smoking, shooting heroin or riding in a car without a seatbelt.  As Jews, we know that the preservation of life is of supreme importance.   As human beings, we understand that moral societies must always strive to keep children out of harms way.  As Americans, we acknowledge that the Constitution protects the younger generation from an array of dangers, and that we dare not be silent when there are those who would use that constitution as a chisel with which to chip away at those essential protections. And as Chicagoans, we must act to make sure that our schools, all our schools, are places for learning and exploration, and that the students in each of those schools are given the best chance possible to live a full and purposeful life.  And no one, not at Crane Tech, Lane Tech, Holmes, Walter Peyton, Kelvyn Park, no one should have to walk home from school in fear of being struck by an errant bullet.

In 1934, standing at ANZAC Cove on the Gallipoli Peninsula of Asia Minor where, during World War I, thousands of Australians and New Zealanders lost their lives, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the military commander and founder of the modern Republic of Turkey gave a speech of commemoration.

He said: "Those heroes who shed their blood and lost their lives … you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours… You, the mothers who sent their sons from far away countries, wipe away your tears. Your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land, they have become our sons as well."  On that blood-drenched soil, on that twenty-fifth day of April, Ataturk recognized a great and terrible truth: that to our fellow human beings, we are in death what we too rarely achieve in life – family.    And so it falls upon us, whether their names are Joseph, Miguel, Karlton, Channon, or Chavez – whether the South Side, the North Side, the West Side it does not, it cannot matter.  We are family, and our children are dying.    

So I offer this challenge to us, to each of you.  Here are three things that you can do in the coming weeks and months to save lives:   

First, after Shabbat go to www.commonsensesaveslives.org. There you will find a petition to support the city’s efforts to enact “common sense gun legislation.”  This is not a ban on hunting rifles or even handguns.  You will be supporting a ban on assault weapons, background checks for gun owners and licensing for gun dealers.  Consider that in the Chicago area, less than 1% of gun dealers are responsible for 48% of all guns used in Chicago crimes – including those used on and by children.

Second, gun laws that restrict access are no guarantee against youth violence.  Much needs to be done in combating poverty, child-neglect and other systemic causes of gang affiliation.   On Monday evening, June 16th, Anshe Emet and Na’aseh will be hosting a convention for Lakeview Action Coalition, an organization to whom our congregation is a dues-paying member.  Spend one and a half hours with us as we fill this sanctuary with hundreds of people, celebrate real victories and tackle important issues, systemic “triggers” that fuel the gangs and the gun-runners. 
 
Finally, parents, talk to your kids (and teens, talk to your parents) about guns and gun safety.  If you own a gun, take the necessary precautions.  But don’t assume that just because you don’t own a gun that your son or daughter’s friends’ parents don’t either.  If my friend and I, two Jewish kids in suburbia, could get their hands on a weapon… well, you do the math. 

Albert Einstein once said: “Our death is not an end if we can live on in our children and the younger generation. For they are us, our bodies are only wilted leaves on the tree of life.” Here it is, poetically captured: one of the great truisms of human existence: though all death is sad, the sadness of loss can be mitigated by the knowledge that there is a younger generation, that what we have planted in our lifetime will be nurtured and cultivated by those who will come after us.  And then we look to our morning newspaper and are reminded that some trees are felled with leaves just barely unfurled and that we can only live on in our children if those children are permitted to live on. 

Of the two “weapons” once clutched in Charleton Heston’s hand, only one remains.  The time of prophets has passed and we are left with the cruder tools of war.  It is up to us to make sure that these, too, are used in the pursuit of the holy, to defend life and only when necessary.  This April, as the natural world renews itself, let us renew our convictions as well.   As we celebrate the season of our deliverance, let us pray that this year our freedom and the freedom of our brothers and sisters will be more complete, for freedom from slavery is just the beginning.  For our sake and for our children’s sake, it is freedom from fear, from hate and, yes, from violence, that we must pursue.