excerpt from an email I sent to my brother about the Virginia Tech shooter

Hmm, interesting.
What boggles my can of worms is the fact that when people try to dissect this abnormal and extreme behavior, they are (as it seems to me) relating to it from their own perspective, or from their own society's legitimate perspective. There are societies in the globe today that would not react in such horror and disgust to incidents of innocents being murdered randomly. They might even choose to glorify it and dream of becoming the next ones to commit murder.

We try to understand this from a "all of humanity" point of view, which often is unrealistic, at least in my opinion. Calling him a murderous psycho draws a very clear line between us and the perpetrator. It puts our fears and inability to understand and cope at a safe distance from the humanity of the murderer.

The analysts, psychologists and other professionals who are trying to come up with their best analogies and explanations are using their own perspective towards modern society and, more important in this case, morals as a reference or starting point to whatever they come up with and decide to publish in the papers.

I don't know. I sometimes try to understand such an outrageous event by imagining what went on inside the killer's head, maybe even trying to feel empathy towards his reasons.
It's common to say "oh this guy was nuts" or "this guy had XYZ syndrome" or any other psycho-analytical term, but I always feel that doing so is sometimes counterproductive, in that it shallows the depth of our understanding (nice wording, eh?). It prevents us from reaching new, albeit abstract opinions about what may have caused this, and how it can be prevented in the future.

OR :

Maybe it's all because I've never studied this stuff and want to appear as smart as those who did. In any case, he was nuts, and it sucks that he was able to walk around for like 3 hours shooting up the place, leaving and coming back. That's just crazy. What's more important than why he did it, is what the relevant authorities are going to do to prevent this in the future.

here's news

I Went to LA last weekend, had a Seder dinner, and got married (!)

Yup. And I'm not even into bondage or anything freaky like that( actually that's not true).
Just wanted to do it for the satisfaction of cheating the Israeli Rabanut (the state's religious authority, unseperated) on August, when I smash a glass cup (aka light bulb) with my right shoe.

Sarah and I are having a woman Rabbi marry us in my kibbutz, and according to the word on the orthodox street there's as much room for a woman in the rabbinical institute as there is room for an orange on a Seder plate.
Guess what we threw in on our Seder plate last weekend.

Not that I need any piece of paper to commit to my love, it's just that marriage is somewhat of a spectator's sport, and our families needed something to talk about (I'm being mischievous).

Actually I really wanted to get married. You get a bunch of gifts, everybody is happy for you and you get to update a bunch of statuses online. Also, you get tax deductions and shit like that.


cool.