By Rabbi Yerachmiel D. Fried

Dear Rabbi Fried,

We all are so horrified, frightened and disturbed by the attempted assassination of former President Trump in Pennsylvania, during a legal, justified rally as a candidate for president. It calls so much into question and makes us feel unsafe, like we’re standing on shaky ground preceding an earthquake. Is there something that Judaism teaches us about this and how to view it?

Thanks, Barbara and Charles

Dear Barbara and Charles,

You are certainly justified in being horrified by this heinous attempt to snuff out the life of a contender to this country’s highest office, no matter what anyone thinks of him or his politics. As former first lady Melania Trump so rightfully said, behind every politician is a loving family and an entire world, and one cannot forget the person beyond his or her politics, as her and her family’s lives had nearly been shattered and changed forever.

One cannot but feel that G-d was protecting Mr. Trump and the country, as he had just slightly turned his head, mere millimeters away from the trajectory of that bullet meant to take his life and plunge this country and much of the free world into an abyss of darkness. It would have potentially been gloom which would have been difficult to overcome. We all need to recognize the Hand of G-d so clearly involved.

After the horrific assassination of Israel’s President Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, I recall that one of Israel’s leading rabbinical authorities, Rav Y.S. Elyashiv ob”m, issued an important ruling. He requested that all the country’s Orthodox schools should spend extra time focusing on the Torah’s commandment that one shall not murder. The teachers should all focus on the preciousness of life and how horrendous a sin it is to take another’s life. He felt that just hearing that such a prestigious figure was murdered could potentially lessen the gravity of such a heinous crime in the eyes of all, especially the most impressionable among us, our children. This was based upon a verse in the Torah which commands us to destroy the idols of the Gentiles upon entering the Land of Israel, as seeing them will be like “pins in our eyes.” Just seeing them could justify their existence and worship. (Numbers 32:55 and Nachmanides loc. cit.)

It’s hard to calculate the effect upon the nation and the world of an attempted assassination as we just witnessed. There should be an outcry of abhorrence to counter the cheapening of life and of political candidates that results from such an attempt. All the more so if, G-d forbid, the attempt had been successful.

We are sadly living in a time when the preciousness of life has been greatly cheapened by the incessant mass killings in schools, in malls and by terrorism and war. People’s lives have become pawns in the sick minds of individuals out to make a point by extinguishing the precious lives and souls of innocents. We need to focus on the preciousness of life during times like this.

Another point of this, which requires a separate column, is that this attempted assassination is part of a bigger insidious plot to foster anarchy and take down the country. It wasn’t just an affront to an individual; it was moreover an attempt to assassinate democracy and the values this nation was founded upon. Perhaps we will discuss this in another column and will see how this is part of a trend our Sages prophesied which will take place before the Messianic times.

In the meantime, may G-d bless and heal former President Trump and may He heal our great nation.

Rabbi Yerachmiel D. Fried is dean of DATA-Dallas Area Torah Association.