Tragedy at Virginia Tech

Chabad Responds to Tragedy With Mitzvah Drive: "Hearts to Hokies" Campaign to Begin Friday
Joshua Runyan Chabad.edu
As a university and nation began the transition from shock to mourning one day after the deadliest shooting attack in American history, the network of more than 100 campus Chabad Houses declared a "Week of Goodness and Kindness" as a way to honor the memory of the slain. The goal of the effort, according to organizers, is simple: to translate the pain of grief into the healing of positive action.
Beginning this Friday, Chabad on Campus representatives will be handing out "Hearts to Hokies" pledge cards at the campuses they serve. Students will be encouraged to pledge a good deed in the merit of those lost; the collected cards will be presented later to the students of Virginia Tech. Students and others can also complete an online "pledge card" at http://www.hearts2hokies.com/
"Jewish tradition teaches that each person is created in the Divine image," stated Rabbi Moshe C. Dubrowski, director of operations for the New York-based Chabad on Campus International Foundation, in reference to the April 16 carnage at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Va., that left 32 victims dead and more than 20 injured. "All those affected by this tragedy are in our thoughts and prayers."
"The Lubavitcher Rebbe, of righteous memory, taught of the need to turn tears into action," explained Dubrowski. "In the light of this horror, Chabad on Campus urges students to increase in acts of goodness and kindness."
In the immediate aftermath of an apparent rampage by a Virginia Tech student, two Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries from elsewhere in the state - Rabbi Yossel Kranz, executive director of the Richmond, Va.-based Chabad of the Virginias and Rabbi Shlomo Mayer from the Chabad House at the University of Virginia - traveled to the site of the attacks to assist with the needs of the students and faculty.
And as Mayer and Kranz were busy on Tuesday coordinating the care of a victim's body in accordance with Jewish law - Virginia Tech professor of mechanical engineering Liviu Librescu, a 75-year-old Romanian Holocaust survivor who was shot by Cho Seung-Hui while shielding his class from the assailant's bullets - and arranging its transport to Israel for burial, their colleagues as far away as Seattle were planning Chabad's national response.
"It's terrible and no one should ever have to know such a thing," said Chaya Estrin, who with her husband Rabbi Ellie Estrin, directs the Chabad House at the Seattle campus of the University of Washington. "It's okay to mourn, it's okay to be upset, but after crying, we have to channel our grief into positive actions."
The University of Washington has had its own share of tragedy recently, following the April 2 murder of a 26-year-old researcher by an estranged boyfriend who then turned the gun on himself.
In the wake of this week's news out of Virginia, "many students are in a state of shock, they don't know what to do," said Estrin.
All the more reason, said Chana Mayer, co-director of the University of Virginia's Chabad House, to give students a chance to positively affect the world around them.
"A little light dispels a lot darkness," said Mayer. "It doesn't have to be something complicated or expensive; simple good deeds are powerful things right at our fingertips."

Statement Regarding the Tragedy at Virginia Tech
Chabad on Campus International Foundation
Every person is a world: Today many worlds were prematurely darkened
April 16, 2007 -- On behalf of the rabbis and staff of the 120 Chabad Student Centers in the United States and around the world, we express our profound shock at the senseless shooting that occurred earlier today at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia. Jewish tradition teaches that each human being is an entire world. Dozens of worlds were prematurely darkened today. The victims and their families are in our thoughts and prayers.
The Lubavitcher Rebbe, of righteous memory, taught of the need to turn tears into action. In the wake of today's tragedy, Chabad on Campus pledges to redouble its efforts to be a beacon of light on the college campus -- to provide a safe, nurturing environment to everyone who enters our doors. We urge students to increase in acts of goodness and kindness.
...let’s turn darkness to light by adding in acts of goodness and kindness
The men and women of Chabad are poised to offer any necessary assistance to the families of the victims and to the Virginia Tech campus community.
Students on other campuses seeking a safe space to discuss the tragedy, for guidance or referral, may contact their local Chabad student center. Please click here for a complete directory.
Chabad on Campus acts as a home-away-from-home, providing educational, social, spiritual and holiday programming for Jewish students at more than 120 campuses worldwide. To learn more about Chabad on Campus, please click here.
Send condolences to the family of slain Jewish professor

Thirty Three Murders
By Yanki Tauber
G‑d was murdered yesterday. Thirty-three times over.
No, this isn't my hyperbolic way of venting my sadness and rage. It's what the sages of the Talmud said more than two thousand years ago.
They pointed out that the Ten Commandments were inscribed by G‑d on two stone tablets, forming a correlation between one set of five commandments inscribed on the first tablet and the second set inscribed on the second tablet. Thus the first commandment, "I am the L-rd your G‑d" corresponds to the sixth commandment, "You shall not murder."
How so? Our sages offered the following parable: "A king entered a country and put up portraits of himself, and made statues of himself, and minted coins with his image. After a while, the people of the country desecrated his portraits, smashed his statues and defaced his coins, thereby reducing the image of the king. So, too, one who sheds blood reduces the image of the King, as it is written (Genesis 9:6): 'One who spills a man's blood... for in the image of G‑d He made man.'"
Murdering a human being is banishing G-d from our worldThere are those who would say that the problem with our murderous world today is that there's not enough religion. Others would posit that the problem is that there's too much religion. But this is not about religion--it's about G‑d.
G‑d attests that He created man in his image. The deeper meaning of this statement is the subject of much commentary and discussion. But on the most basic level it simply means that a human life is holy and divine because a human life is G‑d's way of making himself present in our world. Murdering a human being is banishing G‑d from our world.
If you believe in G‑d the way G‑d believes in Himself (is there any other way?) you don't wantonly destroy a human life. If you wantonly destroy a human life you don't believe in G‑d. It's that simple.
G‑d was banished from our world yesterday. And then banished again and again, thirty-three times in succession. It's now our job to bring Him back.
With every good deed, with every kind word, with every positive thought, we bring a bit of G‑dliness into our G‑d-depleted world. And if we do it for the sake of those whose lives were snuffed out yesterday, we resurrect something of the divine spark that was their life, in a small but deeply significant way.
It's the least we can do for them.

An Insight:
We have the right to make demands. We have the right and the obligation to demand a redemption without travail, a birth without pain. We have filled our measure of such a hundred times over.