On the Kedoshim from Merkaz HaRav

I have delayed posting regarding the massacre in Merkaz. Its very painful to me every time I begin to think about it. I have even avoided as much as possible joining in on the blog discussion on the matter - emotions run too deep. There are those Jews out there who want to see everything through a universalist lens. I can never be one of them. I see the universal as well, but only through the particularism of being a member of a chosen nation.

This is my symbolic system, my truth, the way I look at the world is through the divine as communicated to me by the Torah as understood by the tradition of the Jewish people - and I refuse to make even the smallest of concessions to western sensibilities that would strip me of this way of seeing the world.

I am not a great poet but I am a great lover of poetry and the poem which best captures my feelings regarding the martyrs of Merkaz HaRav is one written by Uri Zvi Greenberg in 1948, presumably with regard to the fallen soldiers of the war of Independence: