Candlelight Vigil for Boston Bombing Victims

The Rock, Northwestern University

April 22, 2013

On July 31, 2002, my girlfriend was killed in the cafeteria bombing at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Even before I lost Marla in that terrorist attack, I had spent the year living in Israel, and I already was familiar with a poem by Yehuda Amichai, the first national poet of the modern State of Israel.  The poem is called “The Diameter of the Bomb”:

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,
with four dead and eleven wounded.
And around these, in a larger circle
of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered
and one graveyard. But the young woman
who was buried in the city she came from,
at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers,
enlarges the circle considerably,
and the solitary man mourning her death
at the distant shores of a country far across the sea
includes the entire world in the circle.
And I won’t even mention the crying of orphans
that reaches up to the throne of God and
beyond, making a circle with no end and no God.

After the bombing at Hebrew U, I spent the year grieving in Jerusalem, then decided to return to a place where I felt safe and comfortable, a place where my brother and his wife and three children already called home.  That place was Boston, and over the next seven years it became my adopted home.  During that time, the woman who would become my wife, Claire Sufrin, joined me in Boston, and we danced at our wedding in Newton, just a few blocks from the marathon route.  My parents also relocated to Boston, and my father is now buried there.  My brother and his family, my mom, and many dear friends are all still there.  For me, Boston is a place of joy, a place of family and friendship, a place of love.  For me and for so many others, that was shattered last Monday.  But not only if you’re from Boston, or if you’re a marathon runner.  For all Americans, for all caring human beings, this was a shattering moment.

In the Jewish tradition, the week following someone’s death is a time of intense mourning called shiva, or “shiva”.  During “shiva”, the mourners sit on low chairs, they do not bathe or shave, they forget vanity and concentrate on their loss and the person who has been taken from this realm. These mourners are visited by friends and loved ones who say to them, “Ha-Makom yinachem et-chem betoch sh’ar aveilei Tzion v’Yerushalayim”.  May the Omnipresent One comfort you among all of the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.  Tonight, we say to those in Boston who are mourning, Ha-Makom yinachem et-chem – May the Omnipresent One comfort all of you.

At the end of shiva, Jewish law tells the mourners to get up – literally – from their low chairs and walk outside.  The mourners walk around the block, making a circle to symbolically re-enter society.  They come back into the world, but they see the world with a slightly different lens.

After coming out of this unprecedented week of terror and resilience and further terror and further resilience, of pain and suffering, of love and joy and heroism – our world is different.  We now invite the city of Boston and the people most deeply affected and hurt by this attack, those who are injured or who have suffered immeasurable loss, to come out from shiva, to re-enter the world, and to know that we will walk with them around the block, we will be here to comfort them, and we will help them to walk again and to run again.

I want to close with a psalm. 

For thousands of years, the psalms have offered a liturgy of comfort.  In the Jewish tradition, we recite psalms in moments of peril or fear, we recite psalms when we are sitting with a dead body before it is buried, and we recite psalms for those in need of healing.

One psalm in particular has often brought me a measure of comfort during times of fear and grief and pain.  It is Psalm 121, which I will read first in Hebrew, then English, and then close with a Hebrew melody from its opening lines.  I recite it here and now with the hope for the speedy and complete recovery of all those who were wounded last week in Boston.

Psalm 121

A song of ascents.

I lift my eyes to the mountains - from where will my help come?

My help will come from the Lord, Maker of heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot falter; your guardian does not slumber.

Indeed, the Guardian of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps.

The Lord is your guardian; the Lord is your protective shade at your right hand.

The sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night.

The Lord will guard you from all evil; He will guard your soul.

The Lord will guard your going and your coming from now and for all time.