Dancing on the shores of the Red Sea

[drwex]

Billy Graham died this week, age 99.

They say only the good die young. Seems about right.

One of the great teachings I find in the Passover story is when G-d admonishes the freed slaves for celebrating the drowning of the Egyptian army. How can you dance when my children are dying?

One can take from this the idea that all people are children of G-d and deserve respect and compassion (Graham seems to have missed this memo). One can take from it that even people who commit great evils (check!) deserve compassion and respect. One can take from it that we are not fit to judge the fates of others; that it is up to us to live our best lives and leave G-d to sort it out in the end.

I know there are those who take these lessons to heart and follow them better than I. I can't celebrate Graham's death, but I can at least be grateful that he can no longer directly harm people like me, my family, and others I care about.

Anyone know if it's actually illegal to dance on someone's grave? Asking for a friend...

Comments

[redbird]

That is just the right shape of odd question that I googled, finding nothing useful in the top few hits (and lots of stuff like "what does this idiom mean?" I suspect it depends where the grave is; it might come down to trespassing laws, since most graves are on private property. (If the cemetery is generally open to visitors, your friend could probably do it once, after which whoever runs the cemetery might tell them to leave and not come back, and they could be arrested if they did it again.) Also, given how laws hang around, it's more likely to be illegal on Sunday, because there might be lurking, usually unenforced laws against public dancing on Sunday.

[tpau]

one of the things that one can ALSO take from it is that the Jews who stayed as egyptians and were part of the egyptian army died there.... that is what we were taught....

[rintrahroars]

I've personally always had some trouble being HAPPY someone died. Or wishing for someone's death. More often, I'd like someone to experience a life-changing event, and have them completely change [the offensive behavior] and become a better person. Being happy is not the feeling I aspire to when someone whom I despise dies. But feeling relief? That's it.