Lucia and Leo Krim, ages 6 and 2, respectively, were murdered in the late afternoon of October 25, 2012, at the La Rochelle apartment building, 75th and Columbus Avenue, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The children's part-time caretaker, Yoselyn Ortega, was convicted of stabbing the children to death with kitchen knives while their mother Marina Krim and three-year-old sister Nessie were a few blocks away at a swimming lesson. Upon returning home, their mother and sister found Lucia and Leo dead in a bathtub at the family apartment. Ortega then began stabbing herself repeatedly in the neck and throat. She survived the self-inflicted wounds.
On February 22, 2018, twelve jurors were chosen for Ortega's trial, and opening statements began March 1 in Manhattan Supreme Court. On April 18, 2018, Ortega was found guilty of first-degree murder and second-degree murder. Ortega was sentenced on May 14, 2018 to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
This story is beyond horrific. Why am I writing about this now? Very simply because I just heard about it. I watched the close to 30 minute speech of the father of the children in the court after the sentencing. It was heart rending.
But then I thought about the one and half million children murdered in the Holocaust. That is the murder of 2 innocent children SEVEN HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND TIMES. Do I mean to minimize the horror of the murder of these two innocent children and the unspeakable pain of the families? By no means!
Let me explain: We experience time in a linear fashion. What happens today is fresh in my mind. Last week - less so. Last month, last year, ten years ago, fifty years ago, a thousand years ago? As time progresses our memories fade and we forget. Not necessarily forget in the sense that one completely can't recall the events but that one's consciousness is no longer connected to the events [see Sanhedrin 35a and Ma'amarei Pachad Yitzchak 78 - ודוק!!]. Who is talking about what happened in Pittsburgh quite recently. I will bet that not one newspaper made mention of it today. It is no longer news and thus pushed to the deeper recesses of our memories. But the people are still dead. Moreover - from a superhuman or Godly perspective, past present and future are NOW!! The Holocaust is going on RIGHT NOW. The inquisition - TODAY. That is ABSOLUTE REALITY as opposed to the fractured and partial reality that we EXPERIENCE. [We have had numerous shiurim בס"ד talking about the nature of time. See for example recent shiurim - that I link because I remember them better....- here, here and here].
So what is the lesson? That there is a lot of evil in the world - both in the micro and macro. We can choose to dedicate our lives to combating evil by spreading kindness and goodness. It is not up to us to completely eradicate all of the evil from within our midst. That is too tall an order. We leave that to Hashem. But each one of us must, in any way that we can, lessen the suffering of other people in the world, whether it is through tzdaka or chesed or other ways. That means to be a bit less focused on ourselves and more focused on others.
And of course to anxiously daven for and await the coming of Moshiach who will harbor a new phase in world history when evil is removed from the world and מלאה הארץ דעה את השם.
