It Could Happen Anywhere

“It could happen anywhere.”

. . . but not in Borough Park. The horrific murder of a little Chasidic boy walking home from day camp brutally burst another myth of urban security: A hyper-insular, self-scrutinizing, self-protective, ultra-orthodox Jewish community should be ipso-facto immune from the ravages of the otherwise mean streets of Brooklyn, NY. Yes, even in Borough Park, so famously provincial, detached, and safe, that it is called “Boruch” Park by wags, the “Blessed” Park. Over the past four-plus decades, I have often strolled the same streets of Borough Park, shopped for books and ritual supplies, eaten kosher pizza and falafel, and remained fascinated, even a tad envious, of its arcane ambiance.

The thought that a responsible Chasidic mama would let her child walk home alone in broad daylight should not infer neglect . . . not in Borough Park. Now, we are rocked by the trauma that it could indeed happen anywhere, and even Chasidic parents need take heed.

But what about the rest of us, living daily with the perils of an ever-increasing hostile environment? Little boys and girls murdered in Florida or South Carolina or the tougher environs elsewhere in Brooklyn, the question asked by the most hypercritical among us will be, “Why does a loving family leave a child vulnerable?”

Sometime a drive-by shooting. A pervert on the prowl. A cracked-open bedroom window. A playground or a bus stop. “No lock stands in the way of a thief,” the Talmud observed. Certainly not in the way of pedophiles and child-murderers. How credulous and negligent must a parent be not to lock doors and windows and escort an innocent child down a seemingly safe street, and whatever else it takes?

It must be horrific culture shock to the folks in Friendly Village to need to gird themselves against the heretofore unimaginable: intrusion, molestation, violation, someone other than a neighbor at the open door, the fear of becoming fodder for Unsolved Mysteries.

Even we boomers who grew up in bigger cities have childhood memories of more secure times. In my Chicago neighborhood, we left our doors unlocked. We considered people who locked them snooty. Kids walked into each other’s homes unannounced. Answering the door would have been a nuisance. Moms watched out for each other’s kids; no one escaped the omnipresent eye; one strike and out for the day or worse.

When did it all change? Perhaps it was when we started living in secular anonymity, not knowing, and certainly not cherishing, the value of neighbors and neighborhood. For the “rest of us,” unlike the Chasidim of Borough Park, isolation has not improved solidarity, only denied it. It has become a cliché, but it does not diminish the truth: We do not know the people who live to either side of us.

Mobility and self-preoccupation have made most friendships ephemeral or rarely attached to the folks next door. Some of us take refuge in our churches and synagogues and affinity groups, but the best of them are momentary safety zones.

We have thus resurrected the ancient notion that a stranger is synonymous with hostility. Ironically, that has not made us safer, only more vulnerable. We nervously try to secure every breach, only to discover more of them, ever fearful that an aggressor will find another way to prey on our child in the nanosecond that the door is open or that she is picking a dandelion.

So, we surround our children with all the security we can find and with a pervasive sense of paranoia that drives them neurotic. We postpone until an undefined “later” how they will acquire their sense of freedom, with all its challenges and vulnerabilities, away from our protective eyes.

Solutions? There is only one way out, and it will be slow, generations in the making: Get rid of the self-ism. Discover your neighbors. Create a neighborhood. Establish friendships. Start doing things for others and with others. Look out for each other’s kids. Read Isaiah 58. Resurrect the virtues of trust and mutual protectiveness. In a word, act more Chasidic.

All that, and pray every day that God watch over our little ones, and that our kids remember to walk their kids from the bus stop, lock up the house, and set the alarm before they tuck in our grandchildren for a night of sweet, innocent dreams.