I am positively certain that Rabbi Benjamin Blech is totally unaware of Halpern’s Rules . . . or of Halpern, either, for that matter. However, he recently wrote about the massacre in Orlando. “The Orlando Massacre: A Hate Crime against Man and God” focuses Halpern’s Rule #19 in a different and quite interesting direction.
For those who have forgotten, Rule #19 states, “There are no coincidences”.
Rabbi Blech points out that while the day of the massacre was just a normal Sunday that was turned into something horrific, for the Jewish world it was Shavuot, which commemorates one of the most important events in Jewish history, The Giving of the Torah, which contained the Aseret Hadibrot, the Ten Commandments. At that moment we were charged by the Divine to be beacons of ethical and moral behavior, a light unto the nations. Omar Mateen, who announced his allegiance to Islam while he was on his killing spree, had chosen the very day on which God first declared to the world, Thou Shalt Not Murder.
Coincidence? I think not.
Likewise, if we look at the Third Commandment, not taking the name of the Lord in vain, given on the very same day, we have another coincidence. Commandment Three says that we are not to take the name of the Lord in vain. More than 2,000 years ago Jewish leaders realized that this meant not to use God to justify false or vain actions.
All too often God’s name is used to rationalize evil – to commit atrocities in the guise of serving a holy cause, to desecrate the meaning of the Almighty’s goodness by distorting it into a justification for cruelty and brutality.
Another coincidence of the massacre being on Shavuot?
Finally, the third coincidence – the number of innocent people killed. We traditionally count the number of days from leaving Egypt to receiving the Torah, our physical journey. While we traveled we prepared to be written into history, our spiritual journey. The number of days – 49. The number of murdered – 49.
Perhaps the timing of Omar Mateen’s attack reminds us that his actions were nothing short of a spiritual desecration, a sacrilegious violation of all faith. The timing of the Shavuot massacre is no coincidence. It is a wake-up call. There are those who threaten humanity with evil horrifyingly committed in the name of the Divine.
We dare not slumber.
B’Shalom
Rabbi Stanley Halpern