As I write this, the world is still reeling from the cowardly attack by ISIS on the Manchester Arena, which left 22 dead, 59 wounded and dozens reportedly missing.<\/p>\n
Terrorism is always cowardly. There are protocols to war. Soldiers have uniforms. Armies fight other armies and attack military targets. True, soldiers can violate the rules and commit war crimes but terrorists have no such rules to begin with. They dress in civilian clothes and target civilian non-combatants. They strike indiscriminately and may even kill those who support their cause as \u201ccollateral damage.\u201d The way of terrorists is cowardly to begin with but the Manchester attack took things to an all-time low.<\/p>\n
As cowardly as attacks in New York, Paris and Israel have been (to name just a few examples), the Manchester attack was worse because the terrorists targeted an Ariana Grande concert. I\u2019m only passingly familiar with Ms. Grande\u2019s music but I am aware that her fan base is largely composed of what we used to call \u201cteenyboppers.\u201d Ms. Grande has a critical mass of fans called \u201cArianators\u201d \u2013 girls between the ages of eight and 18. The suicide bomber knew that the venue would be packed with teens, tweens and even younger children. And to him, attacking such a population was a desirable<\/em> thing.<\/p>\n As bad as it is to target civilians indiscriminately, it\u2019s far worse to target children. Unsurprisingly, we see this from the Torah. Specifically, we see it from the prohibitions against idol worship.<\/p>\n Idolatry is anathema in all its forms. God gives us so much, it\u2019s a huge slap in the face to Him if people turn to idols. Imagine your dad giving you a new sports car for your 18th<\/sup> birthday. If you just take the keys and drive off without saying thank you, that\u2019s ingratitude and it\u2019s pretty rude. But if you run next door, throw your arms around the neighbor (who had nothing to do with the gift and is probably confused as to why you\u2019re on his lawn), yelling \u201cthankyouthankyouthankyou!\u201d as loudly as you can, that\u2019s overtly insulting to your father. When one worships idols, he not only ignores God, he attributes the goodness that God provides to carvings of wood and stone. It\u2019s the supreme insult (or perhaps the Supreme insult).<\/p>\n Idolatry is a capital offense. In the time of the Sanhedrin, it could get one executed. Even today, it\u2019s one of only three sins that one must give up his life rather than violate, alongside murder and incestuous relationships. You might think that it couldn\u2019t get any worse than idolatry but it does: the service of Molech.<\/p>\n Leviticus 18:21<\/span> states, \u201cDo not cause any of your children to pass (through fire) for Molech\u2026,\u201d Molech being the name of an idol whose service was practiced at the time when the Torah was given. While idolatry is generally prohibited, we are given an extra mitzvah specifically banning the service of Molech. As reprehensible as idolatry was in general, the service of Molech was even more heinous because it involved children.<\/p>\n In the service of Molech, the parent of a child would hand him or her over to the priests of the idol, who would hold the child in the idol\u2019s face. They would then return the child to the parent, who would pass him or her through a large fire. The commentators differ as to whether the intention of this service was to sacrifice the child in the fire or merely to pass him through it unscathed. In either case, this is a terrible thing to do. (If someone nowadays passed their child through a fire, how long do you think it would before that person\u2019s kids were taken away? It was no better an idea 3,500 years ago.)<\/p>\n Idolatry is a terrible thing \u2013 one who practices it deserves execution \u2013 but adding a child to the equation makes it what George Orwell called \u201cdouble-plus ungood.\u201d Whether the service of Molech involved child sacrifice or \u201cmerely\u201d child endangerment, the one who practiced it somehow managed to fail as a human being even more than a rank-and-file idolator.<\/p>\n Which brings us back to the Manchester attack. Terrorists in general target innocent people. They\u2019re murderers, plain and simple \u2013 the lowest of the low. But suicide bomber Salman Abedi and his accomplices managed to find a new depth to which they could sink. By targeting a venue they knew would be heavily populated with children, they took the worst thing one human being could do to another and made it worse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As I write this, the world is still reeling from the cowardly attack by ISIS on the Manchester Arena, which left 22 dead, 59 wounded and dozens reportedly missing. Terrorism is always cowardly. There are protocols to war. Soldiers have uniforms. Armies fight other armies and attack military targets. True, soldiers can violate the rules<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":384,"featured_media":57753,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_cloudinary_featured_overwrite":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[85],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-inspiration"],"yoast_head":"\n