Meir Ettinger – And The Living Will Take This to Heart?

בס”ד
The news said that another Jew had been murdered –
Meir Ettinger writes about the reactions and lack of reactions in the wake of the recent attacks.
4 Nisan 5778 – 20/3/2018

And The Living Will Take This to Heart?

The news said that another Jew had been murdered. I think it was a stab. And like all the last ten times, I was surprised. It caught me completely unprepared, just like yesterday and last week. And with all the shame, I struggle to make a face that is not surprised. And invent something quick in response.

I used to think that the word 'reaction' was like a back word. Yes, the place where you are stabbed from the back. And you suddenly had to respond. Because when I face reality, I can see what is in front of me. To reach out for peace or to rise and kill. But when I run away from reality. The knife reaches the heart, from the back.

And like all of you, I'm looking for what to do and how to react. Because it is so clear that we have to do and the question is only what. In the meantime, a market has been opened for immediate solutions to declarations and proposals. Some seem disconnected from the world of practice, and most of them are too attached to it. That a person's death takes place somewhere in the space between the body and the soul. And the pain zigzagged between his legs and his heart. And it is always hard to decide what is more important to do now to study or to teach, and if it is possible to do both together.

They say that the dead ordered us to live, I'm not entirely sure of it, I hear them ordering the taste of life. Even a little mockery of life, even with a tone of disdain. The sources say something like "He who gives life to his heart," because death is less compatible with reason - is primitive and outdated and does not understand the language of blood. Only cats live to live, people live to die. Someone offered such an advertisement "self-sacrifice - the taste of life." That when they are themselves they fade away. A few gallons of blood and a small hole in the pitcher. When I was a kid they told about people who were bigger than life, and today I ask if they really existed. A famous cliche says the dead do not suffer. And the sorrow and the pain is only of the mourners. And it's not a cliché that's the very essence of life.

There is a verse that plays for me once every few days. Right from the beginning of Shoftim. "These are the nations that the Lord has put to the test of Israel." "For the generations of the children of Israel to teach them war." "Only in the past he will not know." Poor generations will come who did not know what the war was. So God took pity on them and left them a little. Sometimes I really understand the idea and sometimes I really do not. We are the generation that did not know war. And no one in his eyes gave in without a fight. And like a child who fell asleep in third grade. We are stabbed in the back so that we wake up, and run to enroll in a school for bow studies.


Lately I've been getting more and more aware that I'm a leftist. Because I, too, like everyone else, released steam, squeaked a tweet and here I am also writing a blog. And still think it will not help ... Some say that you move slowly, it may settle with the brain, but I like the left heart burning like a steam engine, and even after all the explanations do not accept the standard deviation. Which determines how many liters of blood this year will be in statistics. And when you hear their blood calling to continue life. My ears hear to stop. To stop life and most importantly not to continue. I do not manage to brag about not breaking. I believe we should just make it over. Like you, I do not want to get used to it either.


I do not want to get used to complaining and complaining. Send an accusing finger and open an investigation. And whoever continues normal and does not break, his heart will turn to stone. And we'll be so heavy, heavy. And since we chose to settle down, it's so hard to get up and walk on. Even if we already understood that we had chosen to sit just in the middle of the road. If not really on the railroad tracks. And when Choni the circle asked whether it was possible to sleep for seventy years, it became clear to him that it was possible and possible, even while walking.

I finished writing, though I did not say anything. That's how it is when you talk in your sleep, a moment after you wake up to a stab. And ahead of the next attack. I have only one wish. Not to be stabbed from the back. Let me face the war. Not running away and not forgetting. Not trying to chase life that is already disappearing, but looking for someone to give it as a gift. That way I will know that in the next attack, the knife will reach the heart, and maybe something will move there.