I am proud to be a part of the Brady Campaign for preventing gun violence. The following is a speech I gave last night at our local chapter’s annual vigil.

It’s been a tough year. Election years in the US are always difficult, and this year was no different. For my Jewish community, the past 14 months have been heart wrenching, ever since the horrible attacks on October 7, which led to an unspeakable war. It got to the point in late summer when I stopped watching the news.

For those of us concerned about gun violence, it’s been an especially distressing year. Fear mongers in our nation have long made crime a major talking point. Their emphasis is on urban crime and violent criminals invading middle class neighborhoods. Their goal has been to frighten susceptible voters.

We have been left reeling by this misguided emphasis on what we know is but a small part of the problem. Gun violence prevention is not simple, and glib sound bites don’t help. And we also know that guns have been the leading cause of death for children for nearly 10 years, and these deaths are not limited to specific areas of the country, either geographic or economic.

When it comes to gun violence, after the monstrous school shootings, the ones I find most distressing are when a child finds a loaded gun and kills a sibling or playmate, or even himself.

Just this week, a seven-year-old in California killed his two-year-old brother. They were in the family truck, and the mother was standing outside the vehicle when the older brother found the loaded and unlocked gun in the glove compartment.

Loaded, unlocked, and within a child’s reach. A recipe for disaster. You should know that for more than a year, I drove around with a brand new gun lock in my back seat. I tried to give it away dozens of times to gun owners. No one wanted it. They were polite but firm, certain that they had no need for one. Not one person said they already had one.

But here’s the thing about being in the business of prevention. It’s not easy to know if you’re successful. Did any of those people stop and think after speaking with me? Did they unload the gun in their nightstand that evening? Or move it to the top shelf in the closet? Maybe even buy a lock for it?

I will never know. But the not-knowing shouldn’t stop us. A movement like ours lives on hope — hope that we are making a difference, saving even one life.

My tradition teaches that if you save a single life, it is as though you have saved the entire world.

Tonight is our vigil of remembrance for the lives that have been lost. Tomorrow, we must cease from mourning and once again begin the holy work of saving lives.

There is a famous Israeli writer named Amos Oz.  His theory of the teaspoon has, for me, been life changing. He wrote the following:

“I believe that if one person is watching a huge calamity, let’s say a conflagration, a fire, there are always three options.

 “Run away, as far away and as fast as you can and let those who cannot run burn.

“Write a very angry letter to the editor of your paper demanding that the responsible people be removed from office with disgrace. Or, for that matter, launch a demonstration.

“Bring a bucket of water and throw it on the fire, and if you don’t have a bucket, bring a glass, and if you don’t have a glass, use a teaspoon, everyone has a teaspoon.

“And yes, I know a teaspoon is little and the fire is huge but there are millions of us and each one of us has a teaspoon. I would like to establish the Order of the Teaspoon. People who share my attitude, not the run away attitude, or the letter attitude, but the teaspoon attitude – I would like them to walk around wearing a little teaspoon on the lapel of their jackets, so that we know that we are in the same movement, in the same brotherhood, in the same order, The Order of the Teaspoon.”

I would very much like to create an Order of the Teaspoon, made up of people like me, like all of us, who are willing to do our part to make the world a better place.

Whether or not you choose to wear a tiny teaspoon pin, you are the people I admire most: The ones who are willing to take up the mantle of doing the right thing, even though it is hard, even if they have no more than a teaspoon.