On Tucson

I am going to go back in time a bit. November 22, 1963. Many of you may remember what happened on that date. While the world was watching, a man with a gun took aim at the President of the United States and brought his promising life and America’s promise to an end. It was a Friday. My Rabbi, Robert Kahn, after shedding his many tears that day, wrote the sermon of his life. It was entitled, “Weep, Americans, Weep”.

On January 28, 1986, another Friday, the world watched in awe and then horror as the Shuttle Challenger began its long climb into the sky. 73 seconds into its journey, it burst apart sending our hopes and dreams crashing to the ground. I wrote a sermon that afternoon with tears in my eyes and hope in my heart that we could transcend the moment to remember the dream.

And here we are this Shabbat in the shadow of such a terrible tragedy in Arizona. I shall not follow the trend of many of my colleagues and use this moment to chastise some in our country. Remember at the holy days, we read a passage that says “some are guilty…all are responsible.” We are responsible, you and I as well and we are charged with a mission this Shabbat.

We need to be called to transcend politics in our response to the shootings in Arizona, lest the politics of our reactions to this tragedy turn us even further against one another. We need to honor the heroism demonstrated by so many ordinary people during this senseless and evil attack on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, which killed six people and wounded 14 others. We need to be called to use their example to find the best in all of us and become better people ourselves. We need to be called to end the ideological blame and battles that were already distracting us from learning the many lessons of this horrible event. We need to be called to make our public discourse better.

Why does it always seem to take something like this to move us, however briefly, toward civility and mutual understanding? Why is it usually in the worst of times that we step back, lower our voices and look for our common humanity?

The carnage in Arizona has stopped America in its tracks. We who disagree on politics and policy are not each other's enemies. We should have known that all along. Yet for whatever reason, it takes the darkest national moments for us to share a collective deep breath and question the way we have been talking to each other and treating each other.

Think back to another dark moment -- September 11, 2001-- to one moment in particular. Maybe you've forgotten it.

After the planes slammed into the towers in New York, after the plane crashed into the Pentagon, after the plane went down in that Pennsylvania field, something spontaneous and remarkable happened on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. Members of Congress from both political parties -- men and women accustomed to arguing bitterly with each other, questioning each other's motives and undercutting each other's efforts -- stood shoulder to shoulder and sang. They lifted their voices, and all of those voices blended together as they sang "God Bless America."

For a brief moment it seemed that things might be on the verge of changing. That pettiness and smallness and rote vindictiveness might be put aside for the common good.

Not that everyone in the Congress, or everyone in the nation, would suddenly agree on every political matter. That will never happen, and it wouldn't be healthy if it did. But on that terrible day, we were jarred into recalling that we are one nation, and that the many fine and strong things that bind us should far outweigh the tiny things over which we tend to bark at each other.

The feelings of fellowship that were on display on the steps of the Capitol late on that September day were not to endure. The members of Congress who represent us went back to the old ways, as did most of the rest of us.

Why is it that only in the bad times do we recognize how much we depend on each other? This week there have been, in the Congress and beyond, many voices of uncommon understanding and compassion that have risen since the shots rang out at the Arizona grocery store. A consensus seems to be forming: We can do better.
It would be a shame if we were to forget that. Phil Jackson, the enormously successful basketball coach, has a theory that he likes to talk about both in public, and in quiet private conversations. He has made himself something of a student of the philosophies of the world, some of them modern, some of them ancient. One of them stands out enough that he chooses to verbalize it at certain times. He says that we should not look at a glass and regard it as half full. We should not look at a glass and regard it as half empty. Rather, Jackson says, we should look at the glass and imagine that it is already broken.

Why is it that only in the bad times do we recognize how much we depend on each other?

if we imagine the glass -- if we imagine life -- as being shattered before it really is, then we can remind ourselves to regard it as precious and to treat it with care and tenderness.

In the weeks and months that lie ahead, we may go back to our unremitting acrimony if history is any indication. When that happens -- when the national discourse turns consistently ugly and harsh again -- we would do well to recall these January days when the glass was smashed into pieces. And how, in our anguish, we reached for the best in ourselves and tried to recognize the best in others.

One of the most controversial and divisive figures in American political history once said something that, regardless of what you thought of him, should echo today. Richard Nixon, in his first inaugural address, said:

"To lower our voices would be a simple thing. In these difficult years, America has suffered from a fever of words ... from angry rhetoric that fans discontents into hatreds, from bombastic rhetoric that postures instead of persuading. We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another -- until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices."

We won’t overcome oppression, division, hatred, and violence just by being nice and polite, or by making sure we don't get too passionate. Instead, hatred can only be overcome with the power of love, and violence can best be defeated by the boldness of nonviolence that is aimed at winning people over, rather than winning over them. Sometimes "civility" is the best we can do; but ultimately, our violent differences, and even our more serious disagreements, are most effectively and deeply responded to with love.

If any good at all is to come from the heartbreak in Arizona, we'll remember to listen to each other, even and especially when we are predisposed to disagree. And, amid our lowered voices, to learn.

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Thank you to many of the bloggers on the Huffington Post site who inspired these words. Write on!