Posted By James Besser
This Jewish Life: Making Terrorism Personal
The massacre at the Merkaz Harav yeshiva in Jerusalem last week is the killing in Israel that has affected me most in my entire lifetime.
My generation is unique. Having grown up with the Intifada, September 11th , and the Genocide in Darfur, my generation is all too familiar with tragedy and death. My mother always tells me that the first death that she experienced (that is outside the realm of grandparents or elder relatives) was when she was in her early twenties; I have attended numerous funerals of my friends’ parents, witnessed 9/11, and hope every day that there won’t be a terrorist attack in Israel.
All in seventeen short years. Tragedy is almost common. I hate saying it, but I expect bad things to happen in the world.
Last week in Jersualem, when eight Jewish teens were murdered, I felt tragedy in a new way. For the first time, I thought “That could be me.” I had never identified with the victims of an attack like that before.
Yes, Americans’ lives had been claimed in years past, but I wasn’t identifying with Americans. I was identifying with teens. Seven of the victims were between the ages of 15 and 18. That’s me. Those are my contemporaries. Next year I will be 18 years old at a Yeshiva in Jerusalem. Can it get any more similar?
This has not changed my mind about next year. I still intend on going to Israel for the year and studying at the Conservative Yeshiva. What this attack has changed, however, is how I look at the terror in Israel. For so long it has been a foreign tragedy; now it seems familiar—yet another familiar tragedy