food for thought

this is from dry bones, a link to whose website is on this page. whatever one may think of the situation in the middle east, i think kirchen's point is valid.

liviu librescu z"l

From The Times
April 18, 2007

Liviu Librescu
One victim of the Virginia massacre left an incomparable legacy

"The last person to see Professor Liviu Librescu alive appears to have been Alec Calhoun, a student at Virginia Tech who turned as he prepared to leap from a high classroom window to see the elderly academic holding shut the classroom door. The student jumped, and lived. Minutes later, the professor was shot dead.

There is no meaningful distinction between one relative’s grief and another’s sorrow as the bereaved converge on Blacksburg from as near as Roanoke and as far as India. But it is worth reflecting on the significance of Professor Librescu’s life of quiet heroism, which encompassed the Holocaust, a career of internationally admired teaching and research, and a final act of sacrifice that saved at least nine other lives.

The son of Romanian Jewish parents, he was sent to a Soviet labour camp as a boy after his father was deported by the Nazis. He was repatriated to communist Romania only to be forced out of academia there for his Israeli sympathies. A personal intervention by Menachem Begin enabled him to emigrate with his wife to Israel, from where he visited the US on a sabbatical in 1986, and chose to stay. The appalling ironies of his murder by a crazed student after a life of such fortitude and generosity will not be lost on anyone who hears his story.

Yet neither should those who mourn him forget the role that America played in his life. As for so many other survivors of the mid-20th century’s genocidal convulsions, the US was for this inspiring teacher both a beacon of hope and a welcoming new home. Founded on the idea of liberty, it also made, for him, a reality of that idea. Let those he saved now make the most of it."

more on professor librescu from the new york times, abc news, the independent, the guardian, the jerusalem post

bio from the virginia tech website

hokie tragedy

i've been thinking and thinking but i am just not sure what to say today - the massacre at virginia tech is so awful, yet so distant. just thinking about all that pain and fear, but going nowhere near feeling it.

i've been against guns for as long as i can remember. at the same time, when i was about 6 i wanted a cap gun and my parents refused. my mother tells me that i nibbled my toast into the shape of the weapon and went off to play with my bread-gun. nu, of course we should be concentrating on the problems before they get to the gun stage. preventative measures - not exactly a priority generally in the usa, eh? instead they feed us who is the real father of anna-nicole's baby and a radio jock fired for racist language. a student went on a shooting spree in virginia. what about the carnage in baghdad? every day you could be blown up while trying to shop for food. where and how today are we teaching the respect for and value of human life? don't get me started.

*deep sigh*

rest in peace those who have been murdered. as for us - how can we rest until we figure out what we should be doing for tikkun olam right now!