Born in 1932, Meir Kahane was a controversial American-Israeli rabbi and activist. In 1968, he founded the Jewish Defense League in New York. With the motto of "Never Again," the stated goal of the organization was to protect Jews from anti-Semitism in all its forms. In 1971, he moved his family to Israel, founding the Kach political party, and he was elected to the Knesset in 1984 (the Kach party was later outlawed in Israel).
In 1990, after concluding a speech in a Manhattan hotel, Kahane was fatally shot by an Egyptian-born terrorist. While strangely acquitted of the murder, El Sayyid Nosair was later convicted in relation to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
On Shabbat morning, Cheshvan 18, 5779 (Oct. 27, 2018), Pittsburgh’s peaceful Jewish enclave of Squirrel Hill was shattered by gunshots as a crazed anti-Semite attacked worshippers at the Tree of Life congregation, killing 11. It was the deadliest attack on Jews on American soil. Reeling from the pain, Pittsburghers struggled to make sense of the tragedy that had befallen their city, and people around the world responded with an outpouring of love, support, mitzvahs and faith.
The life of Sarah was one hundred years and twenty years and seven years, the years of the life of Sarah. (Genesis 23:1)
All of them were equally good. (Rashi)
Sarah looked back after 127 years, and all her days, even the darkest, the weariest, even those when she was held a prisoner in the depths of evil of Pharaoh’s palace—all were good and filled with beauty.
All the pain was worthwhile, in truth, a pleasure, to become who she was, the mother of us all.
A life, after all, moves in whatever direction you place its arrow.
When your arrow points forever backward, always blaming the present on the past and scripting the future accordingly, then there is nothing but accumulated pain. What makes the story worth its struggle?
But if your arrow points forward to an unfolding destiny, a grand story of an eternal people and a world approaching its perfection, then every pain becomes the cracking of a shell, every struggle the shedding of a cocoon, as an olive releasing its oil to the press, a seedling breaking its path through rock and soil to reach the sun. What is the pain relative to the promise it holds?