I spoke to Reb Shmuel, our rosh yeshiva, about some of the thoughts I had yesterday, about being troubled that the attack at the Yeshiva didn’t hit me more immediately, that I was as blinded by our differences as I was and that my own mind was revealed to me as being as bad at this klal yisrael thing as those by whom I feel excluded.

Reb Shmuel told me a few things.

First of all, the people in this Yeshiva, specifically this institution, were Jew loving people. What he meant is that, while we as (small l) liberal or (big C) Conservative Jews feel and often are excluded by the Orthodox in various ways, while we feel that we are not included in their vision of Judaism and often we aren’t, these people specifically did include people like us in their vision of klal yisrael. These are not the people who I think of when I think of “The Orthodox who hate us” as I inevitably do.

Second… Reb shmuel studied in that Yeshiva, for two years, when he was a teenager. The same age as the boys who were killed.

He asked me if it had been just 8 random Israelis standing at a bus stop of various backgrounds and ethnicities, would I feel differently? I thought a minute and said I probably would… because I stand at Israeli bus stops. And if it were in America? I thought and said “It would depend on where.”

Thinking about it… I thought back to katrina and to the tsunami… the disasters of the past several years, the things that have upset people, the big events that people have cried over, that have deeply touched even the unaffected. I have hardly felt touched by any of these events. The last time I viscerally felt a disaster was September 11th 2001. And I remember feeling guilty that I felt it so strongly, having personally lost no one I knew. And I remember that my initial reaction was not even to the people, it was to the building… I couldn’t see the people until I could see the building. I had to visualize the building and then visualize the people in the building… and I felt it specifically when the first building fell. Because the people left in the second building saw the first building fall. And there was no way they didn’t know what was going to happen next.

The first problem is the number. After 3000 people dying in one day in my hometown, about two blocks from my high school, 8 feels like nothing.

That needs to change.

I keep reading biographies. I’m reading everything I can about these boys, finding them, feeling them, feeling who they were and how they were like me. One of them, it is reported, was seen alone in the beit midrash studying until 1 am Wednesday night. I can relate to that. He was buried with the Masechet he was studying when he was murdered, which was soaked in his blood. Masechet Nedarim. I haven’t studied it. I am studying masechet Shabbat.

One of the boys, Avraham David Moses, is the son of a friend of Rabbi Diamond, one of the directors of our program, and of Shaiya, one of my favorite teachers. Avraham David’s mother came to study for a year in Israel in the early ’90s and decided to stay. She studied at Pardes, where I have many friends. This morning Rabbi Diamond said to us, “Imagine your vision of a crazy right wing settler and everything that goes along with that in your mind. Avraham David’s mother and family are just about the exact opposite of that.”

We dedicated a special learning session this morning to the memory of the boys who were murdered. Rabbi Diamond taught us a psalm that had been said at Avraham David’s funeral.

One of my initial thoughts was that, like I’ve had wakeup calls to start thinking again about theology, about philosophy, about halachic theory, this is my wakeup call to start reading the news again… to integrate some of real life back into my consciousness. I’ve been in my study bubble long enough. I have to become an integrated person again. I’m not diving back into analysis at this point, I just need to know what’s going on.

But right now, this is not about that. This is not about politics or analysis or about religious fanaticism or extremism. This is about me and my relation to my fellow Jews, and to my fellow human beings. This right now is an exploration of my emotional reactions, to gauge where my humanity needs adjustment.

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I just remembered I was wrong… the last time I felt viscerally connected was not September 11th, but the Lebanon war.