Tell me why I don't like Mondays

I was 14 years old and at camp for the summer and the group of 14 teenage girls I lived with used to dance around the bunk during shower hour singing the hit track off of Boomtown Rat's greatest hits...was Boomtown Rats even big enough to have a greatest hits album? We just didn't seem to be phased by the story behind the song about a girl who had a break down, went on a shooting rampage and then hid up on a roof while she watched the madness she had caused down below and the manhunt that ensued as a result of what she had done. Monday.

A course of events of a Monday...this Monday.

7:50 a.m. in Jerusalem (12:50 a.m. EST). Molly comes into my room to wish me a happy birthday.

8:30 Monday morning Shacharit services commence. We are joined by the Israeli Rabbinic class to commemorate Yom Hashoah, a day of rememberence for those who fell in the Holocaust. The mood is solemn. The smile that one of my Rabbinic advisors notoriously greets me with is melancholy today. I try to offer a smile, its not returned. I bet if he knew it was my birthday maybe he would have allowed that moment to accept more light. We say Kaddish Yitom and move to the street outside.

9:59 a.m afellow classmate says he doesn't believe for one second that when the airraid siren is sounded for two minutes, as it is every year on this day of rememberence, that the myth that every Israeli will stop what they are doing and stand at attention, silently, until the siren ceases to sound. We stand along King David Street. The jackhammer accross the street stops.

10:00 a.m. the siren begins to sound. Car engines turn off. Everyone steps out of their cars and stands still. Eyes briefly glance at others, but quickly focus downwards...each person turns inside while the horn is sounded. The city has a chilling stillness to it. The power of Israel.

10:02 a.m. the siren stops and without any transition, the cars engines begin to roar, horns honking, people going on their way, the jackhammer resumes. We move into the college courtyard to begin our commemoration ceremony. Students, members of the faculty and employees of the Israel and World Progressive Jewish Movement take turns coming to the microphone to offer names of those close to them...blood, family friends who perished in the Holocaust. It takes me a minute to figure out what names are being read...I knew it was impossible we'd be reading all 6,000,000...but as the Hebrew continued I realized when one teacher said הספתה שלי I knew that just as she was remembering her grandmother, the other 15 people who came to the microphone were also speaking of those close to them who had perished.

11:00 a.m. the shofar is sounded, a sound that calls the Jewish people to attention, demanding that they take note of the moment, the importance with which it stands on and be aware and fully present in front of God.

11:10 a.m. we resume classes and continue on the day with a solemn undertone but trying to go about the day while also keeping aware of this day that not only remembers those who dies in the Holocaust but also is the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising...a conscious decision by the Israel governement when they decided what day to honor the 6,000,000 as a statement that these people were not weak but rather heros, even if there was little they were able to do under the Nazi regime and Hitler's attempt to carry out his 'Final Solution'.

4:10 p.m. I arrive home to take a nap before going out with my friends for dinner. The phone rings. My sister is calling to wish me a happy birthday and to tell me there was a shooting in dorm close to where she had class that day. She lives off campus and whether campus was closed or not at that point, I doubt my Lindsey would have gone on campus knowing that kid...smart kid...I'm glad to hear the news from her...means I don't have to worry.

7:30 p.m. 10 of my friends sit down at a table at one of my favorite resturaunts. The sun has gone down and I no longer feel guilty about putting my birthday in front of the memorial day in this country. The day began at sundown the prior night and ended at sundown, allowing for celebration.

8:00 p.m. I get a phone call from America asking if Lindsey is okay. I tell Mark she's fine and she doesn't live in the dorms. He says, that's great...but does she have classes in Norris Hall? He fills me in on the second event. Knowing my sister I knew she was still in her townhouse off campus, but called her anyways to get the 'inside' scoop. 32 dead. 58 injured. She's okay. Charlie's okay. Megan too. She's buggin, but she's okay. I tell her I love her.

10:00 p.m. The events both in Israel and at home have taken away most of the celebratory mood of a birthday and the test I have at 8:30 a.m. the following morning doesn't warrent a hungover. We still open a bottle of champagne at Tuvya before going home and calling it a day that makes the other 364 days of 27 having only an option of going up from what was not such a celebratory day.

10:30 p.m. I call Lindsey once more. Roommates of sorority sisters, friend's fraternity brother and friend's friend's sisters are missing, injured, dead. Is it fair to say on a day like today, if you were touched only by one degree rather of separation rather than directly that you were lucky? Is that really how a tragedy like this is measured?

12:00 midnight Yom Hashoah(Holocaust Rememberence day)...Yom Huledet (Birthday)...and Yom Ani Lo Rotzah Lgor Od Paam (Day I don't want to live again) come to an end. I struggle to sleep but anticipate the dawn of a new day.

I wake up the next morning...I wonder how many Americans who are watching the 24 hour news coverage of this horrible tragedy in Blacksburg know that the Israeli professor who was shot and killed had also been detained in a labor camp by the Nazis and ironically was killed on the day that we remember those who perished in the Holocaust, only to perish in another horrible event that makes me question how people can do such horrible things in ths world.

It's hard to try and break down the intense emotion and weight that falls upon this whole situation, but I said to both Lindsey and my mom that it was kind of ironic to think that in the year everyone was so worried about my living in Jerusalem my sister transfers to Tech in which even if this event if the 'worse shotting tragedy in American history' was not the first time the campus had endured threats of bombs and gunmen on the loose. Not a funny irony, a pathetic one. And if second ammendment advocates really did say that if the Israeli professor had been carrying a gun perhaps some of this tragedy could have existed within a realm in which less lives had been lost...well, I could try and be poetic, but I'd rather just admit that I feel like vomitting.

On the day in which Israel commemorates the largest tragedy in Jewish history and tragedy on US soil reaches a new high, I can't help but think about all these guns. I sometimes joke with Molly that I am going to miss all of the M-16's I see every day now when I get back home. I'm not a gun lover, but there is something really classy about a governement security guard with his plastic ear piece, his M-16 and all the while wearing a suit. But, what strikes me more than the thought that I should bring one of these guys home to be my husband, is the drastic difference of gun culture from where I come from and what I see here.

Here, every single bar, resturaunt, mall you walk into an armed security guard puts you to a metal test and also asks if you are holding a נשק or weapon. Army officials dressed in green and police officers in blue walk the streets, their M-16's slung over the back as widespread as the number of over the shoulder laptop packs you pass on a city block during the hustled lunch hour. Guns are everywhere, and yet there is no romantic relationship with them. Every Israeli citizen over the age of 18 knows how to use one and also knows the laws and ethics that demand an understanding of how to be among civilians yet prepared to handle a desperate situation. Too many Israelis have one degree of separation, and more often than not direct experience, with losing a loved one who fell in the line of duty. Guns are not glorified. They are necessary and I'll be shocked if I live to see the day that a distressed highschool Israeli walks into his Bible class and shoots up the students. I sometimes think there is some value in not having to be scared that someone with a loose screw from your hometown neighborhood will senselessly shoot up a university classroom in return for the reality that the fears endured here come from neighbors beyond the borders...an equally difficult reality to live within, but perhaps the distance with which one feels the need to look over his/her shoulder is a bit different.

There's not reconciling what happened at home and even if I am willing to move forward and purchase German goods, interact with German people and not automatically assume them to be Nazi's the ability to understand the Holocaust and mass genocide by the hand of modern killing technology is also impossible. The having to put traumatic events in a place that just 'accept' that this type of stuff can happen anywhere to anyone seems so haunting and something that I'm not willing to give in to, but don't know how to deny. It looms over us and leaves everyone with questions that have no answers.

Mondays in Israel aren't that bad because Sundays are the first day of the week and this American girl has always found it hard to resolve that not only is Sunday the first day of the week but it is also a day that you don't get to sit around and just watch football here. But this week, Monday was pretty bad. After looking at the Boomtown Rat's lyrics page I realize they had enough songs for a Greatest Hits album...and yet in 1979, a year before I was born, I wonder if they could have ever imagined how true their words would still be 27 years to the day that I was born that we "can see no reasons cuz there are no reason. What reasons do you need to be shown?"

I think more and more about my purpose here this year. As I continue to learn how to be with people through not just the mundane but also through joy and grief, I question my own ability to put into perspective things that can't be explained. I wonder what events in my life I will need to provide support for that are both part of the normal cycle of life but also the extraordinary that can not be anticipated and, often, not even imagined until after it has happened. Most importantly though, I am more aware than ever that no matter what we work towards in our lives, there will always be moments when we are humbled into our humanity and for moments in time we are not rabbis, students or presidents, but we are people...unable to think about anything but how a sister is coping as a member of her student body, how the families of people who lost their lives yesterday will grieve, and how the people charged with honoring their ancestors legacies who were killed in masses when violence and hatred was institutionalized and acted out in government legislation deal with their legacy...these moments...no title matters and no existential thought about meaning exists...we just feel it and must feel it...its good to remember that people in this world feel..its just really sad the ways in which decisions of some force us to have to feel in such ways.


The silicon chip inside her head
Gets switched to overload
And nobody's gonna go to school today
She's gonna make them stay at home
And daddy doesn't understand it
He always said she was good as gold
And he can see no reasons
Cos there are no reasons
What reasons do you need to be shown

Tell me why
I don't like Mondays
Tell me why
I don't like Mondays
Tell me why
I don't like Mondays
I want to shoot
The whole day down

The telex machine is kept so clean
And it types to a waiting world
And Mother feels so shocked
Father's world is rocked
And their thoughts turn to
Their own little girl
Sweet 16 ain't that peachy keen
No it ain't so neat to admit defeat
They can see no reasons
Cos there are no reasons
What reasons do you need oh oh oh oh

Tell me why
I don't like Mondays
Tell me why
I don't like Mondays
Tell me why
I don't like Mondays
I want to shoot
The whole day down, down, down
Shoot it all down

And now the playing's stopped in the playground now
She wants to play with her toys awhile
And school's out early and soon we'll be learning
And the lesson today is how to die
And then the bullhorn crackles
And the captain tackles
With the problems and the how's and why's
And he can see no reasons
Cos there are no reasons
What reason do you need to die, die, oh oh oh

And the silicon chip inside her head
Gets switched to overload
And nobody's gonna go to school today
She's gonna make them stay at home
And daddy doesn't understand it
He always said she was good as gold
And he can see no reasons
Cos there are no reasons
What reason do you need to be shown

Tell me why
I don't like Mondays
Tell me why
I don't like Mondays
Tell me why
I don't like, I don't like
I don't like Mondays
Tell me why
I don't like, I don't like
I don't like Mondays
Tell me why
I don't like Mondays
I want to shoot
The whole day down