The humanity amid the horror

There is a particular horror in violent attacks on holy days and in holy places.

- By SHARON BROUS

This is terror in its purest form, rendering a people not only fearful to express their faith, but also to forever associate those sacred days with loss and sorrow

The holiday of Simchat Torah, the Jewish celebration of the joyful embrace of Torah, will be permanently tied to images of death and destruction after the attacks of Oct. 7, 2023.

And now, just over two years later, another Jewish holiday has been linked with terror: Hanukkah, the miracle of the persistence of light in dark times, as Jews gathering to celebrate on a beach in Sydney, a crowd of children, parents and elders, were gunned down without mercy.

I'm tired of looking for the silver lining after such tragedies. I no longer want to hear, after a mass shooting, of the remarkable ways a community came together. I don’t want platitudes and pieties.

I want justice. I want accountability for the rhetoric and the policies and - in our own country - the obscenely easy access to weapons of war that endanger us all. I don’t want to celebrate resiliency; I want to see reform.

But as a spiritual matter, I urgently need the silver lining. I need the hints of humanity that remind us that what is is not what must be. The quiet insistence that there is more light than darkness in this world, that tenderness and love can prevail over even the most virulent hatred.