You’d never know it from looking at her, but apparently my mother was a dangerous woman. On Tuesday, she was shot to death on her way to what must have been a sinister deed. Why else would she be killed in a horrible manner? If the gunmen who so callously ripped my mother away from me felt that they needed to put a bullet through her head in order to stop her, she must have been quite a dangerous woman indeed.

Oh, she put up a good front, though. On the outside, you’d never know my mother was this scheming devil, like these anonymous shooters seemed to have known. To her husband, she seemed like the loving woman he married fourteen years ago. To her children, she seemed like the stern but nurturing mother of her four kids. To her granddaughters, she was the doting Savta that brought them treats. And to her neighbors, she was a caring friend who would do anything asked of her.

But my question to the shooters is this: If my mother was so dangerous that she needed to be killed in order to stop her, when did she have time to do all of her nefarious planning? Was it before she saw her daughter off to school in the mornings? Perhaps it was between her prayers, recited daily? Or maybe it was when she was on her way to her classes every day, where she learned Holy Scriptures in holy sites.

I lived with my mother for twenty-three years, and she must have had me fooled but good. Here I thought she was a kind woman who delighted in entertaining guests whenever the opportunity arose. A woman who volunteered her time and money to charitable organizations of all sorts. A woman whose loss is being felt in communities spanning from her childhood home in Bensonhurst and the entire New York City area, to the home of her dreams in Israel.

Thousands of people came to her funeral on Wednesday night to mourn for her and weep over her grave, but these thousands of people must have been wrong. The men that drove by and killed her must have been right. Because only a terrible person deserves to be left so unprotected by her government, to allow her to be killed so brutally. And besides, if she were any good at all, wouldn’t her government exact some measure of justice? Of course it would.

But my mother is dead. She was shot by a passing car on the highway. And nothing was done about it. Apparently her killers were right – my mother was a dangerous woman.

Yoni Berg

On behalf of himself and the other mourning children of Sara Blaustein: Adena Mark, Samuel Berg, Atara Blaustein

June 1, 2001

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR