The limits of grief. You are the children of the Lord your God, do not cut yourselves or shave

the front of your heads for the dead for your people holy to the Lord your God. Out of all

the peoples on the face of the earth, the Lord has chosen you to be his treasure possession.

These words have had a considerable history within Judaism.

The first, you were the children of the Lord your God,

inspired the famous statement of Rabbi Akiva,

Chaviva, Dumb, beloved is man because he was created in the image of God,

Chavivin Israel, but beloved are Israel in a deeper sense for there called the children of the old present.

As for the phrase Lottit Godadu do not cut yourselves, this was imaginatively applied by the sages

to divisions within the community. A single town shouldn't have two or more religious courts

giving different rulings.

The plain sense of these two verses, though, is about behaviour at a time of bereavement.

We commanded not to engage in excessive rituals of grief.

To lose a close member of one's family is a shattering experience.

It's as if something of ourselves had died too. Not to grieve is wrong inhuman.

Judaism doesn't command stoic indifference in the face of death.

But to give way to wild expressions of sorrow, lacerating one's flesh, tearing out one's hair, is also wrong.

It is, the terrorist suggests, not fitting to our holy

people. It's the kind of behavior associated with idolatrous cults. How so and why so?

Well, elsewhere in Telach were given a glimpse of the kind of behavior the terror has in mind.

It occurs in the course of the encounter between Elijah and the prophets

of Bal on Mount Kymour. Elijah had challenged them to attest, let's each make a sacrifice and see

...