We are all still reeling from the events last week in Newtown, Connecticut. The brutal killing of 27 people, including 20 young children, is heart breaking. That day I had spent the morning in my son’s kindergarten classroom as he was honored as the week’s VIP. We shared pictures, I made latkes and his teacher read a wonderful book the other kids made for him. I didn’t have time to take in the news that morning before arriving at the school other than knowing there was a shooting somewhere, and I’m glad I didn’t. I don’t know if I could have made it through that hour knowing all those details.

Returning to the Temple office afterwards I turned to the news. Every hour following the episode, as new details emerged, was gut wrenching. For days afterwards we all have walked around in a haze of disbelief, of anger, of sadness, of despair. And now we watch the first of the funerals for the adults and children the same age as my youngest son (He turns six on Sunday). Brutal.

More details will continue to emerge over time about what happened, and a more complete picture of what occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary will be made. Already we have begun to engage in a collective soul searching as to what led to this tragedy. Already people are offering up and debating many different and seemingly contradictory issues that lie at the heart of this massacre: access to weaponry, mental illness, security, the place of violence in media, and on and on.

Hanukkah, which we concluded last week, has many different and seemingly contradictory interpretations and understandings about what the holiday is all about: It is about the miracle of the oil and miracles in general. It is about religious liberty. It is about overcoming oppression. It is about the victory of Torah and tradition over secularism. It is about anti-assimilation. It is about spiritual light in a time of darkness. And yet, it is not any one of those things–it is every one of those things.

The same is true with Newtown–it is not any one of those factors mentioned, it is all of those factors.

I have no doubt that gun control must be a legislative priority moving forward. Yes, a gun is a tool and it requires someone to operate it; guns themselves don’t kill people. But I also know that I would not have eaten so much chocolate gelt last week if I didn’t have a bowl of it sitting on my dining room table. There is something to be said about access and opportunity. If we limit access, then the opportunity will be that much more difficult to take up. There is simply no reason that semiautomatic assault weapons and large magazines of ammunition need to be accessible to the general public. The President’s words yesterday are encouraging, and I hope synagogues and other faith communities join together to address this issue of pikuach nefesh, saving a life.

I do worry, too, that we are being desensitized to violence. Our country has carried out two wars in the last decade without any significant impact to our daily lives and routine. The increasing sophistication in video game technology makes realistic looking violence into a game to be turned on and off, in which one has unlimited “lives” and one progresses by acquiring bigger and more powerful weapons. Many television shows feature murders and killers, and movies as well have become increasingly graphic and violent. Violence is a part of human history and human society, true, but the means to overcome it is not to sanitize it, but to confront its realities.

And, I am concerned that as we enter into a new era of health care in this country, that we make concerted efforts to address how mental health services are distributed. How mental illness played a role in this incident we don’t know for sure, and may never know. But the fact that the shooter may have struggled with some issues (though there are efforts to completely blame or absolve the role of mental illness in this shooting), does raise the issue of mental illness in our society generally. This is an issue which touches us all, either on the personal or societal level.

These are all policy discussions which I hope we have and continue to have as we move forward. Yet underlying all of these issues, the debate over gun ownership, access and rights, the debate over mental health services and health care in general, is something more systemic and difficult to overcome–the ethic of individualism which defines our American culture.

We live in a culture where issues of public concern are trumped by individual rights. Where communal structures and governments are seen as impositions not benefits. Where we do not take responsibility for one another, we only look out for ourselves. Where we take and take, but hesitate to give. Where we are concerned so long as it affects us, and when it doesn’t, it is not our problem.

One article I read in the aftermath was about many of the shooters in these mass shootings recently are young men. What is it about our society that leads these people to do horrendous acts? To devalue another human life so much so as to end it? To become disaffected? Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel famously said, in light of human crimes, “few are guilty, but all are responsible.” To close the book on Newtown with a few policy changes and tagging Adam Lanza as an isolated case would mean we truly have not grown beyond this incident. We must ask ourselves some hard questions. Newtown deserves a spiritual response as much as a policy response.

We have basic physical needs as people: food, shelter, medicine. But also we have spiritual needs: the need to love and be loved, to feel one’s life has purpose, meaning, value. To be supported by a caring community. To have a sense of a past and a future. This is where we start. By making sure these needs are met, and by overcoming this ethic of individualism. By making sure that we are responsible for one another.

Newtown is thousands of miles away, but we start, as we always must start, with our town. There are means to meet these spiritual needs. Connection to sacred community and sacred tradition is one way.

In lighting the last of the Hanukkah lights this past Friday and Saturday, the gloom of Newtown was palpable. And yet when we lit the lights, and especially at our Temple Beth Hatfiloh Hanukkah party, when all those in attendance were illuminated by the candles on the menorah, when especially the faces of our children were aglow in sacred light, there was a flicker of hope. Hope that we can light up the darkness, that the realities of violence and fear do not have to be our future.

So what do we do in response to the shooting at Newtown? We mourn and grieve. We enact some legislation which addresses the tangible concerns. But on a much deeper level we must reinforce our responsibility for one another’s welfare and well-being. We must talk and share and be with one another. We must see every child as our child. We must construct networks of connection so no one lives in isolation. We must have an attitude of hope and not despair. We must give and receive love, and hugs, and shoulders, and an outstretched arm.

If we are all holding another’s hand, no one will be able to pull the trigger.