The Liberal Gun Club Forum

In the past 336 days, there have been 355 mass shootings in this country.

This is already higher than the 2014 numbers, which surpassed 2013’s numbers. Of the 355 mass shootings in 2015, 52 of them were at schools, leaving 30 people dead and 53 others injured.

This means, from this rabbi’s narrow liturgical point of view, that there has rarely been a Shabbat over the last few years when there haven’t been names of gun victims for us, as an extended community and as an extended family, to mourn.

So many of us were raised to believe in American exceptionalism — that America is different, blessed. That sense is but a mirror image of how the Jews think of themselves — as different, as blessed, as exceptional.

Want a Jewish Response to San Bernardino Mass Shooting? Scream Bloody Murder.

Who will have to die this time? The firstborn of the head of the NRA? Will that work?

And when the Israelites are enslaved in Egypt? They scream. They cry out loud to God. And God hears their cries and their moaning.