Too Close For Comfort

I have not blogged in a very long time. Today’s events – a shooting in my community left me with too many thoughts, some of which I share here.

It is a beautiful spring day and I am working outside.  No sooner do I send a selfie to my family, sharing the backyard views than my husband calls.  There is an active shooter in the local supermarket.  Three shot, one dead, two critical.  Shooter is still at large, and I hear helicopters and sirens and our community facebook group says schools on lock-down, shelter in place.  I come inside, lock all my doors, alarm the house, and look out on the cardinals visiting my blossoming trees and cry.

            I have lost track of how many shootings there have been in the US in the past week or so.  On some of those days, my husband would arrive home and report the news of the latest shooting, it barely registered, part of the numbing effect of too much and too frequent tragedy.  In all cases, the shootings happen to others, other people, other communities. Yes, it was frightening, but it was an abstract fear – a general concern about the state of the country, the lack of safety in far-off places.

            Today, it became personal.  I had been planning a shopping trip to two stores adjacent to the supermarket and was thinking of how to break up my workday and run errands.  Now all I can focus on is how we can feel safe – if this can happen here, it can happen anywhere.

            I am fairly well versed in trauma, as a clinical psychologist who has worked in the aftermath of 9/11, and hurricanes, and other tragedies.  Before today, I recognized that in every shooting there were casualties and those present were certainly traumatized.  Now, I know that the trauma impact of these events is so much broader. 

            I am not an expert on gun control, but it seems that these shooting events are not common in other parts of the world, and wonder why?  What could we learn from the policies and culture in those places?  

            I do know that if we do not decrease the gun violence in this country, the costs will be devastating.  Not just in lives lost, but in lives destroyed by traumatic anxiety, by chronic mourning for a lost sense of safety.  The local media is discussing how difficult this shooting is for a community where “this does not happen”.  That is how every community feels when violence invades -and even communities that live with too much violence on a daily basis may respond to a particular event with  this does not happen here”.  

            Something needs to change.  In today’s violence one life was lost, but as children throughout the county are in lock-down, as family members from across the globe check in on us, as the images of police cars fill the tv screen, it is clear that many more lives have been harmed, contaminated with fear, touched by trauma.  Each time something like this happens, we are naturally thankful to be alive, but the reality is – we cannot live like this.

Pain, Prayer and Finding Focus

Friday night I made my way to shul, wishing Shabbat Shalom to those I met on the way.  I walked through the concrete stanchions that were installed several years ago, and up the stairs to the main entrance, noting a professional security guard in addition to one of our trained shul security volunteers. I began davening mincha, the afternoon prayer, and as I stood to answer those saying Kaddish, I realized how focused I was on the layout of the shul.  All I could think about was whether, if I lay down under the pew, I would be protected from gunfire.  My mind began calculating how many pews lay between me and the men’s section.  Our shul has a stepped woman’s balcony and I imagined that I would be more protected the higher up I sat, as there would be more pews in front of me should a gunman enter.

We began Kabbalat Shabbatand the usual calm I feel as the singing begins was slow in coming. Instead, I found myself considering whether I should change my regular seat in shul to be closer to an exit.  I realized that I was only imagining scenarios involving attacks from below me, only to consider that violence could originate from any direction.  Not surprising, it was harder than usual to concentrate on the prayers, to welcome the Sabbath with the reverence and peace it deserves.

I went to shul Shabbat morning as well, and I found myself a bit less focused on uncertainty, more able to flow with the routine of the prayers.  As I had been all week, I was heartened to hear of acts of kindness, concern and connectedness.  I was glad to be in the company of others, even if we shared sadness and worry along with our prayers.  I reminded myself of the psychological tendency I teach others about after trauma – we remember the salient terrible outliers – not the everyday.  We can’t help but think of the loss of 11 souls in shul, the visuals and stories of the past week engraved in our minds.  We don’t give a thougth to the non-events, the thousands who were blessed with time at worship, work, or learning, all in safety.

I suspect I am not the only person who struggled to find their concentration this Shabbat.  I can only imagine those mourning in Pittsburgh, those who lived through violence first-hand, whose neighborhood it invaded.  I was and am miles away, but still impacted.  I share my experience to help us all realize how normal it is to have a powerful response to a horrific and abnormal event.  I share my experience because we need to think about our friends and family and fellow shulgoers and children who may be feeling tentative and who may be worried about what their feeling. They need to hear it is okay to feel not exactly okay so soon after such violence and tragedy.

What can we do, for ourselves and for each other?  We can remember and we can mourn.  We can think about what how we optimize safety. But we should not allow our focus to zero in on only this.  We need to see a bigger picture.  Mr. Rogers famously advised children to look for the helpers.  Think of all the first responders, all the neighbors who cooked for shiva houses, all the people of faith (all faiths) who stood up this week to be counted amongst those who will not let victims stand alone.  We can help our children consider all who safely attended their schools and shuls.  We can celebrate the beauty of a Shabbat shared, and with God’s help, many, many more to share with family and friends and community.

 

It is the tradition in many shuls to invite a child to close the Shabbat morning service with the singing of Adon Olam,  Master of the Universe.  I looked again at the pews and the layout of my shul, and thought about the past week as a small voice sang out the prayer’s final words: v’im ruchi, giviyati, Adoshem li, v’lo irah –body and soul, the Lord is with me, and I will not fear.  We all joined in.

 

The Tragedy of Tree of Life: Helping Children Cope

Reading the outpouring of prayers, support, alongside the deep sadness of the tragic violence visited upon the Jewish community of Pittsburgh and the Tree of Life Synagogue. I am thinking of the thousands of Jewish children and teens who will be heading to Sunday school this morning, back to their Jewish day schools on Monday and with their families, attending tefillot next Shabbat in their local synagogue. How do we manage our own grief, anger and fear while offering comfort and wisdom to those children and teens, who like it or not, are watching us 24/7?

This is one of those times when unable to promise safety, we may forget that there is much reassurance and support we can and should offer. We can tell our students about the real efforts underway to make our places of learning and praying safe. We can talk about all the wonderful, good, caring people in the world who are reaching out with words of comfort. We can share our faith and belief.

But more important than what we say will be the listening we do. All children and teens will find the events in Pittsburgh disturbing. Some will be particularly distressed. We need to offer opportunities for our children and our students to share their tears and their worries. We need to tailor programs and discussions to best meet the very different developmental needs of children from pre-school age through adolescence. Large group programs, such as memorial services or assemblies can be powerful and comforting, but they offer no opportunity for adults who care for children and teens to observe which student(s) amongst those assembled is most in need of support.

Last evening, after we doused our Havdalah candles and wished each other shavuah tov, I opened my email to find my colleagues at Azrieli Graduate School and Yeshiva University offering resources for schools and institutions that are struggling. We stand ready to serve in anyway we can help. In times of sadness, loss, uncertainty, it is so important to have the comfort of established routines and to experience the opposite of powerlessness – to feel that we can actually make a difference in some way. As adults think about how we can help, we can also think about how engaging our children and students in acts of kindness and assistance may help them as well.

 

May our words and our efforts serve to comfort and strengthen. May our commitment to a world welcoming and safe for all people be a light on this dark day.

 

Rona Milch Novick, PhD

Dean, Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education and Administration

Yeshiva University

Chainsaws, Osama Bin Laden, Bullies, Revenge and Cycles of Violence

      That unique sound that announces a breaking news bulletin came over the TV just as we were turning in last night.  At first, my blood pressure and anxiety rose.  Was it more deadly weather?  Some horrific violence?  With the commentators explaining that the President was about to issue a special address to the nation, and the news that Osama Bin Laden had been killed in a raid, I relaxed.  Hearing of the spontaneous celebrations at Ground Zero, in front of the White House, at a baseball game, I dozed off before hearing the president’s speech. The prior Friday, on a panel with Dr. Dorothy Espelage and Dr. Ray DiGussepe, at St. John’s University’s conference on bullying, the topic of anger, revenge and retribution was discussed.  As the commentators shifted this morning from pure elation to concerns about possible acts of terrorism in retribution for the Bin Laden killing, my thoughts turned to chainsaws and cycles of violence.

A chainsaw has a motor that causes a chain that includes small sharp blades called teeth to rotate. These teeth have multiple cutting edges and are placed all along the never ending chain.  Chainsaws can do a lot of damage.

      I understand the sense of justice served and the relief that comes with Bin Laden’s elimination.  I, like so many others, was distressed that he was still at large, wielding influence and spreading terror.  I know it is very different, but I can’t help that it reminds me of how often victims of bullying, and especially parents of victims, voice their desire for justice, and revenge.  They want to give the bully a taste of their own medicine, usually in the form of physical aggression.  I was asked, at the conference mentioned above, what advice I give to parents of victims who want to encourage their children to violently respond to aggression. 

      I am either a pragmatic pacifist, a cynical pessimist, or both.  I don’t believe the myth that a good solid punch to a schoolyard bully will put an end to aggression (there is no data to support the claim) any more than I believe we have turned the page on terror with the elimination of Bin Laden.  Like the chain saw that has teeth all along the chain and can keep cutting, I am afraid that there is way too ample a supply of violence and aggression in the world.  I know Bin Laden needed to be addressed, and I am relieved he is gone.  It is, I worry, too simplistic to think that is all that was necessary to change the world.  Heightened alert states and warnings to prepare for retribution make it hard to feel that the violence is over.

      Built into each cutting tooth of a chainsaw is a depth gauge which rides ahead of the tooth and limits how deep it will cut. Depth gauges are critical to safe chain operation, and if filed too low they will make the saw dangerous and hard to control.  We may, as individuals and countries, need to use cutting aggression at times.  But we may also need gauges monitoring how far we go, so the lines between bully and victim, terrorist and terrorized never get blurred.  I have no question that the search for and elimination of Bin Laden was fully warranted, and the courageous Navy Seals, and all our armed forces who worked for years to accomplish it are to be celebrated.  The work of eliminating aggressors and terrorists, unfortunately, is, I suspect, as unending as the revolving chain that gives the saw its bite.