The shooting in Poway California, fortunately, left only the balance of one fatality, Lori Gilbert Kaye. Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein intervened bravely and lost two fingers of his hands but, thank God, he is presently in good health, otherwise.

A major massacre was averted thanks to the timely reaction of a community member who with a gun in hand drove away from the individual who was later identified by his name John Earnest.

Of course, when you compare this murder with what happened in Sri Lanka just a few days before with a balance of about 250 killed, Poway looks like a minor event.

On the other hand, just a few months ago, The Tree of Life Synagogue in Squirrel Hill suffered an attack that killed 11 people, in addition to those injured by that fact. Again, " Chabad of Poway" suffered less when we compared with the events cited.

I would like to highlight several points. " The shootings, the shooter" the designations used in English for these events are lukewarm, antiseptic expressions, dictated perhaps by the subsequent legal judgment that must be made. But we should be clear that it is not about shots or those who fired them, these events constitute cold-blooded killings, executions without previous judgments. They are the expression of maximum cruelty: the extinction of the life of another human being.

On many occasions, I reflected on the biblical injunction that demanded the universal donation of a coin, the half Shekel, for the needs of the House of God, which at the same time served for a census of the Jewish people. Two purposes were obtained through a single action, because counting the coins simultaneously established the number of Hebrews in the desert. There was no count of the people, there was a count of the coins. I think that there is a deep lesson involved. The Torah teaches that human beings cannot really be counted as if we were dealing with a flock. Every human being is a whole world.

The world was created for him and for her. Everyone perceives the reality from their own perspective, through their own thoughts
and experiences. The Mishnah teaches: Why did God create only one man in the beginning? To illustrate that in the beginning humanity consisted of only one human being and whoever killed him would be killing all humanity would have destroyed all the human beings in existence. This teaching is for all history: " to kill a human being is to kill all humanity." One of the most respected members of the synagogue where I am currently praying cites his late father who used to tell him
in Yiddish: “& quot;  yoren tselt men nit, gelt tselt men" &quot” ; we do not count the years, we count money " It is not just a jocular saying.

It includes wisdom that teaches that not every year of a person life is equivalent. There are days that have great content, meaning, and purpose, while others pass without leaving a trace. There are those who can achieve laudable goals in days, while others allow days and months to pass as if they had not existed. There are people who justify their trajectory on earth through a single timely meritorious action.

Just as you cannot add the pain of patients sitting in the antechamber of the doctor, because everyone feels only their own pain, similarly you cannot add lives, each life is everything. Actually, you cannot add the years of the person’s life. Each year has a different significance.

The accent, therefore, should not rest on the fact that only one lady died in Poway. A whole universe, in its entirety, was extinguished that day. Lori Gilbert Kaye is gone.
Jewish tradition teaches that the word is very powerful. To speak badly of another person amounts to murder, idolatry, and incest. Are we facing an exaggeration? Perhaps. But, maybe we are not. Those preachers who, in the name of a god who demands revenge, incite hatred and even murder, with their words become co-responsible for the crimes. There cannot be a god that demands at this point of History, to exterminate those who disagree with a specific religious confession. Or with an alternate interpretation of an ancestral tradition.

It is intolerable to allow the dissemination of ideas about the superiority of some sectors of human society over others that are based on skin color, ancestral descent or language. The results are visible and unforgivable.

Our tolerance has to have a limit. When the Hebrews came out of Egyptian bondage, they immediately went to Mount Sinai where they would receive the Torah. Freedom can also lead to debauchery. The Law must set a framework for human behavior and that includes action, but also the word that can lead to the destruction of other human beings.

Ask Lori’s husband, the doctor who held her in his arms in the last moments of life without being able to help her. Ask him if he feels consolation because only the partner of his life was murdered, and nobody else was.

Poway, Sri Lanka, Squirrel Hill, the Twin Towers represent unequal events but they are basically the same because the value of human life is infinite. You cannot add to the death of people. The crime is horrendous even before counting the number of victims.