LEIBY KLETZKY AND THE END OF TRUST, JULY 2011
You were so young, trusting and innocent, Leiby.
You just went along for the ride.
A wedding was the farthest thing from your mind.
Independence is what you really sought,
Defined by walking alone for a few blocks,
To meet your mother as planned a very short distance away.
But the mind wanders.
Thoughts of freedom and future cross 18th Ave.
The wrong route into the abyss.
Who could imagine? In Borough Park everyone is family,
Ready to assist and return a young child home.
“Please misses, can you cross me to the other side?”
A common request my wife tells me who lived in Borough Park with her child.
No fear, only trust that your own kind will protect you from all harm.
But who is your own kind?
Helpful people of any dress, of course, who prove themselves kind by hindsight.
For faith, unfortunately, does not guarantee the mentch,
When our interiors are sewered by malcontent.
That same independence that walks 7 blocks the wrong way,
Finds vice open to prey on the vulnerable and innocent on that fateful day.
In games, on TV, and in the movies violence roams where it wills,
Deposits its fantasies that kill without remorse.
Like a violent game where the player scores the highest points,
And the sign lights up “Game Over, Opponent Skewered.”
Our Torah a harsh solution it gives,
When it warns that evil must be dispelled forthwith.
Modernity counters “that’s barbaric” and adds caveats and excuses
To explain that wickedness is a state of mind not a person to blame.
He cannot be held responsible for merely exercising “freedom of expression,”
Only when his demons come out and express their destruction--but then it’s too late!
Pre-empting and pro-filing we have learned,
Can often read the signs to get help for the disturbed.
But someone failed to report a Levi Aron whom neighbors claim was strange.
Didn’t his parents know, his psychiatrist intuit, his ex-wives hint
That Levi would run afoul when his self control began to cower?
But for unsere (our own) no one wishes to smear
Caution is thrown out the window and the disturbed are desposited here,
Proving that there can really be no trust where there is no responsibility
For registering doubt about one’s own plagued with mental disability.
In a culture where “beware of the stranger” is an insult to G-d’s people,
Leiby’s moment of independence should have had an escort of peers, not parents--
Yes, “Never leave your child unattended” breeds suffocation,
But to walk with friends builds confidence and secures protection.
We transform “prey” into “prayer”
When we commend Leiby’s soul to G-d’s safe keeping,
But no words can dull the pain of a mother
Whose hope for her child goes from independence to torture,
Where no amount of time can bring true healing,
Only at the end of time when Leiby and his mom are reunited.
It is true that tragedy makes friends of strangers—Jewish and not,
Who come out in volume some 8,000 strong to search and then mourn.
This is a crime so hideous and gruesome
That it rips apart all mothers and their children,
All people who love and trust in each other
What we must learn from this terrible crime is that
To be cautious of our neighbors does not mean we mistrust.
But that we heed G-d’s command to safeguard our souls,
For the chance that one of us is not well.
Leiby will never be the same.
His mother will never be the same.
We’ll never be the same because we discovered
That sickness can ferment so close to home,
Even amongst those we thought we could trust.
“And you shall expel evil from your midst,” I’m afraid,
Must sometimes include the person with his thoughts,
When it becomes clear that the person IS the sum total of his evil.
Hamakom yenachem etchem, may G-d comfort the family and all of us
From a world whose innocents are sacrificed so readily and our hearts shatter so deeply.
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