Writings from Rabbi Glickman

Last weekend, our community reeled with shock. Tacoma’s police chief, David Brame, we learned, had shot his wife and then killed himself, with his two small children sitting in a car only a short distance away. It was, needless to say, a devastating, terrible crime, and the mere thought of it horrifies us all.

Events such as these are tragic reminders that bullets, like bombs, can have very far-reaching shockwaves. This time, they penetrated into the very depths of Tacoma’s soul. Chief Brame, after all, was the man charged with enforcing the law in Tacoma, and most of us felt he was doing a very good job. Plus, by all appearances, the Brames were a model American family – he, a dashing young police chief; she, his attractive and supportive wife; their children, able to grow up in a nice suburban home with good schools and friendly neighbors.

As I write these words, Mrs. Brame remains in critical condition, the children, thankfully, are being shielded from the media by their family, and we are praying for them all. In the meantime, we, the horrified and grieving community, have begun to respond. Why didn’t anyone listen to Mrs. Brame’s pleas for protection? Why didn’t anyone see this coming? Did Chief Brame’s high position afford him some “protection” that he really shouldn’t have had?

But these questions aren’t really questions at all. They are answers – answers to a bigger question, one that is far more profound and far more human than we may realize. The question we’re really asking is: What does this horrible tragedy mean?

We go about our daily lives, worrying about our daily little concerns when, seemingly out of nowhere, a horrible tragedy occurs. It hits us hard – like a brutal punch in the gut on a day when we least expect it.

That’s why we try to find meaning. After all, people don’t just come up to you and punch you in the stomach for no reason. There must have been something that provoked this; there must have been some way to prevent this attack; there must be something we can learn from it. Yes, we cry, there must be a moral to this story.

Sadly, there isn’t. This tragedy wasn’t a fairy tale with a neat little moral a the end, it was a murder-suicide, and murder-suicides tend not to have any clear morals at all. Oh, we’ve tried to find them of course, and we will surely continue to do so. Just read the papers and watch TV – you’ll find all kinds of suggestions as to what this story “really” means.

Many of the arguments are valid, of course; others are not. What they share in common, however, is their deep rootedness in the horror we share over this terrible event.

And here, perhaps, is one lesson that we really can take from this tragedy – one that is simple, yet overwhelmingly powerful: This event horrified us all.

In other times and places, an incident such as this would have seemed far more commonplace, and may not have received much notice. But here in Tacoma, and indeed throughout the United States and elsewhere, it shakes us to the core. Here, when tragedies like this occur, we often don’t know how to respond, but the fact is that we want to do something, anything we can, to help. Here, it does get our attention. Here, we all pray for Mrs. Brame’s recovery, for the welfare of her children, and that somehow humanity can learn to avoid tragedies such as this in the future.

Some say that people are naturally good; others, that people are naturally sinful. Judaism holds that we are inherently neither good nor evil, but innocent, and that we each choose goodness or evil every moment. I have always embraced that truth, and I continue to do so. Now, however, having seen our community’s response this week, I can also say that, although we are indeed free to choose good or evil, around here most people choose to be good. Yes, there are thieves, murderers, and evildoers aplenty among us, but most of us weep for children who are suddenly orphaned. Most of us are horrified to learn of a young woman shot down in the prime of her life. Most of us decry unjust violence, and we do so from the bottom of our hearts.

We reel in shock, stumbling around in the darkness wrought by this evil deed, trying to find something firm to grasp, or even a faint ray of light to show us the way out. There, in that darkness, we find one another and, realizing that we are not alone in our search, and we take hands and hold on tight. We have made what is perhaps the most important realization of all – that here in the darkness with us are others who share our horror at evil, and our commitment to all that is most precious in life. Thus, we continue, hand-in-hand, to find our way together.

And as we do so, we continue our heartfelt prayers that Mrs. Brame and her children find healing, comfort, and peace. Kein y’hi ratzon – so may this be God’s will.
 

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