Take a moment to get in touch with your gut when you reflect on the tragedy that happened at the Boston marathon.
When I do, I feel a deep, terrifying void.
Oh, how I would rather think about the events, seek answers and try to make sense.
My gut is so uncomfortable about the horrors of the human condition. My gut is so uncomfortable about the senseless killing, the death of innocents, the disruption to peaceful gatherings.
Oh, please help me to stay in the feelings so that I can develop compassion and mercy. Let me feel my feelings so I can stay connected to my humanity and to those who are directly suffering. My thoughts won’t solve what happened. But our empathy and feelings can make us more connected to our fragile, connected human experience. We can be with the parents of that 8 year old who was killed, we can sit with the terror of those reverberating from the blasts, we can be with those who responded and are still responding. We can be human BEINGS together.
With love,
Rabbi Brian Doesn’t Understand
August 10, 2026
In the 18th century, in Hannipol, a small district of Khmelnytskyi Oblast, in present-day western Ukraine, there was a rabbi known as Reb Zusya. Zusya, a pious man, taught about humility and had a strange habit of referring to himself in the third person. Instead of saying, “I am hungry,” or “I don’t understand,” he would say, “Zusya is hungry,”
