<p>"THREE LESSONS TO LEARN FROM VIRGINIA TECH
by RABBI JACK RIEMER</p>
<p>"[T]he murderer came into the building where Liviu Lebrescu was teaching and came to the door of his classroom. … Dr. Lebrescu put his shoulder against the door, and blocked it so that the killer could not get in, and, at the same time, he yelled for his students to jump out the window of the first floor classroom and escape. They all got out, and he stayed and kept the door closed until the killer had riddled his body with bullets, and he was dead…</p>
<p>Are you prepared to call Dr. Libescu a hero…Or are you prepared to call him a collection of chemicals—who did what he did because of the way the serotonin in his blood stream functioned, or the way his brain cells worked? Are you prepared to say that he had no freewill?..</p>
<p>I believe that Professor Lebrescue was a hero, precisely because I believe that he acted with free will. And if I believe that about him, then I have to believe that about his killer too. </p>
<p>The Talmud knows the concept of mental illness. The Talmud says that sometimes people do what they do because …a foolish spirit took over their minds but on the whole, the Torah and the Talmud insist that human beings have free will, and therefore that human beings have the capacity and the courage to do as Professor Libresco did, or they have the hatefulness and the evil to do what his killer did.</p>
<p>Professor Libresco is my proof that human beings have free will. And therefore, when people in the coming weeks, tell me that we should have pity on the killer, and that we should understand that he was ill, I am going to say no. I am going to say that the killer was a human being, and therefore, even if he had evil impulses within him, he could have, and he should have, tried to overcome them, instead of giving in to them. …</p>
<p>Let the line between illness and choice not be blurred, for if it is, then none of us are responsible for what we do in our lives. …</p>
<p>Human beings can can use their free will to do enormous evil, and they can use their free will to do enormous good…</p>
<p>Therefore … may the soul of this very good man, Liviu Libresco, who lived through the Holocaust, who helped build up the State of Israel, and who died al Kiddush Hashem, in the backwoods of Virginia this week, be a source of comfort and a source of guidance and a source of inspiration to us all.</p>
<p>For as the Psalmist says: “What is man that You are mindful of him,</p>
<p>What is the son of man that you take notice of him?</p>
<p>And yet,You have made him but little less than divine,</p>
<p>And You have adorned him with glory and majesty”—by giving him free will…"</p>