The Evil We Cannot See

Last week's horrific murder in Brooklyn of 9-year-old Leiby Kletzky was a moment of profound sadness for not just his parents and immediate community, but for every parent and decent citizen in the world. In a safe, homogeneous neighborhood of Orthodox Jews, a child walks home on a prescribed route for the first time, and is never seen alive again. Lurking in the shadows was evil—profound evil. 

It gave me pause, and I felt compelled to contemplate the world in which we live.  We live in a technological, media-driven world where access and information is at our fingertips. Long gone are the days of innocence, when children roamed the streets of our communities in unsupervised play as I did as a child, pedaling my bike up and down the streets, my hair blowing in the wind and my heart aching with the joy of freedom. 

I don't know if there are more monsters among us today, although I suspect it is so. The permissiveness of our society and the freedoms we enjoy are all part of the blueprint that gives license to acts of indifference and cruelty. The constraints of social morality are all but extinguished by greed, self-indulgence, pornography at our fingertips and the bombardment of bad news that we daily assimilate into our lives. For all of the wonders of the 21st century, we live in a world where depravity is on the rise. 

When I was a few years younger than Leiby, we had a houseguest—a friend of my mother's that she had lived with in Philadelphia. After moving to the United States following World War II, my mother was placed in a foster home. This young man was the natural son of these kind people who took her in. Michael was a brilliant concert pianist; he was also particularly spoiled and selfish. My mother adored him, but I took an instant dislike to him. Perhaps I was jealous of my mother's obvious admiration and doting. 

One day, we went to a large shopping center to have lunch and shop. I can't remember exactly what occurred, but the result was I ran away and hid at the shopping center. I can remember hiding and watching my mother frantically running back and forth throughout the shopping center, desperately calling for me. For at least an hour, I watched as she and Michael searched for me. Finally, satisfied that I had gotten my message across, I reappeared like a miracle. If my memory serves me well, once assured that I was unharmed, my mother gave me one of the great scoldings of my life and a paddling to boot. I was lucky. There was no hovering evil present to lure me away. 

Years later, while shopping at a large indoor mall with my child who was about 4 years old at the time, I turned to speak with a sales clerk for her assistance in purchasing some linens. For what could only have been a minute, I took my eyes off my daughter. When I turned around, she had vanished into thin air.  I went into panic overload, first calling and then screaming as I ran all around the floor searching for her. The saleswoman also began to freak out, and within minutes she had called security. 

Their first response was to lock down the store (Bullocks). When that yielded no results, they locked down the entire mall. Meanwhile, I continued to fly around the store, racing up and down the escalators, shouting for Natasha. Crying and scared to death, I returned to the linen department, now cajoling my daughter to emerge like a rabbit from a hat—magically. 

With my senses strained to their highest sensitivity, I heard the unmistakable giggle of my daughter. Racing toward the sound, I found my naughty girl under a pile of bathroom rugs beneath a table. This child who was never silent had watched me panic-stricken race around the store calling her name. For her, it was a game, some kind of hide-and-seek. For me, it was one hour of gut-wrenching hell, and I guess karmic pay back. Fortunately for Natasha and me, there was no evil lurking. 

I was lucky. Was I a bad parent? Had my child been kidnapped and something horrific happened, I certainly would have blamed myself for the rest of my life. I would have failed in the most important duty of my life, keeping my child safe to grow and prosper. 

The days of children riding their bikes throughout a neighborhood unfettered or walking to the local liquor store to buy some candy, comic books or an ice-cream cone on a hot summer day are probably over. No parent will ever feel safe or willingly condone such unsupervised activities in the present climate of our world. Evil is no longer something that lurks somewhere else, but can be found everywhere and anywhere. 

My heart goes out to the Kletzky family for their unbearable loss. It is a lesson for all that we must be vigilant to the safety of our children that depend on our guidance, parental oversight and most of all, our love.

Tema Merback is the author of "In the Face of Evil: Based on the life of Dina Frydman Balbien.”