The Jewish relationship with guns has long been a complicated one. Under the gun, we were herded into cattle cars to meet our deaths in Nazi concentration camps. But by the gun, we were also able to win Jewish statehood.
Our prayer books have a prayer for peace, and Torah tells us to turn our swords into ploughshares. Yet Kohelet, Ecclesiastes, tells us there is also a time for war, and we have turned our ploughshares into swords--the Uzi, a machine gun produced in Israel is sold all over the world--including variants here in the U.S.
My feelings about guns are complicated as well.
In the early 1960's, I grew up with a private arsenal of toy guns. My father worked down the street from Mattel toys, and would regularly bring home, pistols, rifles, and machine guns; whatever a 9-year-old needed to play "war" with the other neighborhood children.
When I was older, after joining the Boy Scouts, I wanted to earn the marksmanship merit badge, so off to the summer camp firing range I went. There, a young adult with nerves of steel, before even letting us near a rifle, pounded into our heads the concept of gun safety. I quickly found that if you even accidentally pointed the rifle barrel at another person, you were dismissed from the range.
When it was our turn to shoot, we each were parceled out 20 rounds of ammunition which we carefully fit, round by round, into a wooden block holder that had holes drilled in it. I remember taking out that first single round, nervously loading it into the chamber, pulling back the bolt, and taking off the safety.
"Pop," went the rifle. I was in gun love.
It was a useful relationship. That summer, I learned everything that I ever needed to know about firearms: Only with the utmost caution could they be used safely; anything less could kill.
A few weeks after camp, my father presented me with a vintage WWII .22 caliber rifle, and a kit to keep it clean. The rifle was stored on a rack which hung over my bed.
I still own that rifle. It is now almost an antique. Thinking back now how I learned to patiently load one round at a time, and how my parents allowed me to keep a gun as well as ammunition in my bedroom, I realized, in light of the heartbreaking news of Newtown Connecticut, that my experiences with firearms were antique as well.
Firearms have advanced--one person can have the power of an avenging god. Even the inexpensive semi-automatic rifles advertised in the Sunday newspaper supplements come with multi-round clips.
We can legally load a clip with 30 bullets, but our arguments against gun control remain a single shot argument: The Second Amendment.
But hasn't a murky melange of shooting games like "Halo," easy access to semi- automatic weapons online, at gun shows, and at our local sporting good stores, as well as a growing numbness to gun violence turned an amendment that was supposed to make us safe into the very thing that makes us afraid for our children and ourselves?
Does the current way the Second Amendment is interpreted make us safer? Does it preserve or destroy? How many times do these questions need to be graphically answered on our TV's before we are ready for even a small change?
As a baby boomer who has seen since President Kennedy's assassination, life sickeningly punctuated time and again with gun violence, I am ready for change.
Hopefully, our relationship with guns will soon become simpler and safer.
Jewish law does tell us that we have right to protect ourselves. But the Torah tells us to always choose life--that what demands our attention and adherence - is the preservation of life.
Edmon J. Rodman has written about making his own matzah for JTA, Jewish love music for the Jerusalem Post, yiddisheh legerdemain for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, a Bernie Madoff Halloween mask for the Forward, and what really gets stuck in the La Brea Tar Pits for the Los Angeles Times. He has edited several Jewish population studies, and is one of the founders of the Movable Minyan, an over twenty-year-old chavura-size, independent congregation. He once designed a pop-up seder plate.In 2011 Rodman received a First Place Simon Rockower Award for "Excellence in Feature Writing" from the American Jewish Press Association."
war" with the other neighborhood children.
