When Tragedy Becomes a Statistic

Whether celebratory or tragic, we all have our own list of “where were you when” moments, times when we remember with perfect clarity where we were and what we were doing as truly landmark events unfolded around us.

Growing up, my mother would often tell us where she was and what she was doing when she heard that President John F. Kennedy had been shot. The milkman had just made his delivery when the news broke. He sat together with my grandmother at her kitchen table, and they cried together.

For my generation, undoubtedly, 9/11 is that moment. For me, it was my second day at Yeshiva University. I had just sat down in the Beis Midrash when news began circulating that a plane had struck the World Trade Center. To be honest, having grown up in Boston, I didn’t yet fully appreciate what those towers represented and just how significant they were, so I continued learning.

It was only when the second airplane hit that we realized the magnitude of what was unfolding. Rabbi Yosef Blau, the longtime mashgiach of YU, banged on the bimah, stopped everyone’s learning, and led hundreds of students in reciting Tehillim. It was a powerful and unforgettable moment.

Beyond 9/11, one of the most consequential “where were you when…” moments in my lifetime occurred on April 20, 1999.  Dressed in dark trench coats and carrying an arsenal of guns and homemade bombs, two 12th-graders walked into Columbine High School and murdered twelve students and one teacher, wounding many others.

At the time, it was the deadliest school shooting in American history.  It robbed students and schools of their innocence, creating a new sense of fear and anxiety every time a parent would kiss their child goodbye in the morning. 

Sadly, in the years since Columbine, the United States has witnessed far too many similar tragedies. In 2007, a student at Virginia Tech killed thirty-two people. In 2012, a gunman entered Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, murdering twenty children and six adults. And, of course, so close to home, in 2018, seventeen students and staff members were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

These tragedies are only the most widely remembered examples. Mass shootings occur with disturbing frequency across the country, and gun violence claims lives in communities every day. Because these events happen so often, they can begin to blur together. Sometimes they barely register before the next news cycle arrives.

Just last week, 2 teenagers were killed and five others were shot in North Carolina at 10am in a local park and a man in Louisiana killed eight children, ages 3-11.  As of April 20, 127 people have been killed, and more than 435 have been injured in mass shootings this year and this was the 116^th mass shooting in the United States thus far this year.  Already, there have been 36% more mass shootings compared to the same time last year.

Why am I sharing these examples and statistics with you?  Because tragically, and at this point predictably, one or two things happen with each new shooting.  First, each of these incidents quickly becomes politicized as both sides filter it through their narrative of the ailments facing our country and what corrections need to take place.  Second, we become desensitize and stop noticing.  Shootings have become so ubiquitous to our way of life that when we hear of one, oftentimes we simply give a shrug and move on to the next news cycle. 

Increasingly lost in the statistics is the simple reality of what has occurred: a human life has been taken.

In marketing, they call it habituation.  If people see the same message over and over again, they begin to tune it out. Marketing habituation occurs when consumers quickly ignore a company’s advertising simply because it is repeated too frequently. 

A cheetah might once have symbolized speed and power. But after dozens of companies used the same image to convey the same message, it stopped capturing anyone’s attention.

That is why marketers constantly look for ways to disrupt our expectations. They tweak familiar images and messages to force us to notice again. A speed-limit sign might suddenly read “57.” A sign might be hung upside down. In one study, a researcher found that a panhandler raised more money when he asked for 37 cents instead of a quarter—simply because the unusual number made people pause.

Just as we can become habituated to marketing signals, we can also become habituated to tragedy.

In Sefer Devarim, the Torah describes the Mitzvah of Eglah Arufah, the broken-necked heifer. The ceremony is performed when the body of a murdered person is found and the killer is unknown. The elders of the nearest city break the neck of a heifer and declare: “Our hands did not shed this blood nor did our eyes see it done” (Devarim 21:1–9).   The rabbis ask an obvious question: would anyone suspect the city elders of murder? (Mishnah Sotah 9:6). Why, then, must they make such a declaration?

The answer is profound. When a murderer is never identified and no trial takes place, it becomes all too easy for society to simply move on. The ceremony of Eglah Arufah forces the community to stop, confront the tragedy, and publicly acknowledge that a human life has been lost.

It is the Torah’s way of preventing habituation. It ensures that even when justice cannot be carried out, indifference will not take its place.

On April 12, 1999, just eight days before the Columbine massacre, Elie Wiesel spoke in the East Room of the White House and warned about the danger of indifference. He said:

Of course, indifference can be tempting -- more than that, seductive. It is so much easier to look away from victims. It is so much easier to avoid such rude interruptions to our work, our dreams, our hopes. It is, after all, awkward, troublesome, to be involved in another person's pain and despair. Yet, for the person who is indifferent, his or her neighbors are of no consequence. And, therefore, their lives are meaningless. Their hidden or even visible anguish is of no interest. Indifference reduces the other to an abstraction.

Our country faces many challenges.  Each is complex and none has any easy or quick fixes.  But, while politicians and activists debate the best approaches to keeping us safe and secure, it is important for us to never forget, at the most basic level, that each case of murder was a life extinguished.  It was someone with a family, a wife, husband, child, or best friend.  It was someone with a future and limitless possibilities.  Each example isn’t just a statistic. It was a human life.  And each is a tragedy.  Plain and Simple.  Let’s never forget how sad that truly is.