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August 13, 1999/1 Elul 5759, Vol. 51, No.45
Jews go onEditorialThe little boy clung to his mother and asked if the children had done something wrong, when on a summer morning in Los Angeles, a gunman burst into the North Valley Jewish Community Center and opened fire. Three children were wounded, one critically. An adult and one teenager also were injured.This is not what is supposed to happen at a JCC day camp in a quiet suburban area. Parents in the San Fernando Valley, as here in the Valley of the Sun and at countless JCCs across the country, send their children off for safe, fun-filled days. They never imagine a day when a nightmare becomes real, when a "bad monster," as one of the children called the gunman, comes to life, spraying young children with bullets from an automatic weapon. As we go to press, Buford O. Furrow, the alleged triggerman, has surrendered to authorities, proclaiming that he wanted this incident to be a "wake-up call to America to kill Jews." An abandoned red van, filled with ammunition and hate literature and linked to the 37-year-old suspect, has been recovered. And as elected officials pontificate about gun control and hate crimes legislation, a frightened 3-year-old plaintively asks his mother why this tragedy happened. What is most chilling about the attack, besides the young ages of the victims, is its familiarity. This is yet another in an awful string of such shootings, and just one more in the recent spate of hate crimes. Earlier this summer, three synagogues in northern California were firebombed; just last month, six Jews were shot in a hate-motivated shooting spree in a Chicago suburb. What brings some comfort, in the face of such horror, is the resilience of the Jewish people. In Sacramento, worshipers gathered for Shabbat services the evening of the firebombings. In the Chicago suburbs, Orthodox Jews refused to allow the shootings to interrupt their Sabbath observance. And in Granada Hills, Calif., the JCC camp reopened the next day at a nearby church. As one child observed, despite tragedy, Jews go on. |
