Published: 14 July 2022
Last updated: 5 March 2024
The Chicago shooting in a heavily Jewish neighbourhood prompted RALPH GENENDE to reflect on Jewish attitudes to death and life
It’s a heartbreaking story. Irina and Kevin McCarthy were with their two-year-old son, Aiden, at a Fourth of July parade in the predominantly Jewish Chicago suburb of Highland Park when a gunman opened fire. The couple and five others were killed, and dozens of others were wounded. Aiden survived because his father shielded him with his body.
For many of us, news of the Chicago killings in a very Jewish neighbourhood brought the anguish of this senseless shooting even closer to home. The sense that it could have been me “there but for the grace of God”; but also the gratitude that we live in a country which does not allow its citizens to own and carry arms.
Irina’s father, Michael Levberg, picked up his grandson at the police station. He said Aiden told him, “Mummy and Daddy are coming soon”. Events like this confront us in a deeply personal way. We imagine ourselves and our own families in this moment of horror. The unbearable innocence of a two-year-old and the painful poignancy of their loss cuts sharply into our consciousness. We know what this little one does not know – that his future has changed irrevocably. The purity of Aidan’s expectation that mummy and daddy will return leaves us in the painful valley of tears. The father’s instinctive reaction to save his child reaches into the heart of every parent.
News of the shooting came to me when I returned from a talk by ex-Melbournian Sally Berkovic about her latest book, Death Duties, a moving reflection on her mother‘s death, her work with the Chevra Kadisha and intimations of her own mortality. It is a brave book challenging the ways we avoid talking about death; the taboo that still enshrouds our feelings about death and dying.
Sally opened the evening by reading the book’s confronting introductory passage: “I will lie on a cold metal table. A sheet will cover my still, naked body. It is a body that no-one, other than my husband, has ever seen. It will be tranquil in the room. Four holy women of the Chevra Kadisha, the [Jewish] burial society, will wash their hands ... In a quiet murmur, each one will say the designated blessings for the task ahead. No words, other than brief instructions, will be said. And so will begin the preparations for my burial. A simple pine coffin sits on a raised trolley in the room. It will be filled with some sawdust. Some earth from the Land of Israel will be sprinkled on top ...''
