The Jewish community is once again plunged into mourning, grieving the loss of a young woman from our community who died tragically this week.
There are so many dramatic statements I could make here, but you are probably as tired of hearing them as I am of uttering them.
And yet the nightmare continues as the death toll rises. 75 dead since Rosh Hashana. 23 suffered from mental illness. 52 were victims of drug or alcohol abuse. All were less than 35 years old.
There are no tears left. We grieve dry-eyed, as we try to abate the torrent of death that continues to sweep through our midst.
As a people, we are reluctant to admit weakness or to ask for help. In this latest tragedy, the young woman was getting help for the issues that plagued her and had a strong support system yet, here we are, once again, mourning one of our own.
We try. We try so hard. We do our best to get help for those in need, but not all stories have happy endings. It doesn’t mean that our efforts are pointless.
It just means that we have to keep trying.
We cannot throw up our hands in frustration and let the darkness win. We need to soldier on, fighting day by day, empowered by the knowledge that the success stories dramatically outnumber the losses, no matter how devastating they may be.
At Amudim, we have no choice but to keep fighting, hoping against hope that there isn’t going to be a number 76.
By: Zvi Gluck
Zvi Gluck is the director of Amudim Community Resources, an organization dedicated to helping abuse victims and those suffering with addiction within the Jewish community and has been heavily involved in crisis intervention and management for the past 15 years. For more information go to www.amudim.org.
