Who in the Islamic and Palestinian communities will say what must be said —that until that education is undone, the world can neither justify nor afford giving these children control of their collective destiny?

i) I believe in the Hereafter, in monotheism, in Revelation and in the authority of religious tradition. So did, it likely seems, the people who murdered thousands and themselves last week. That means that they and I belonged to the same subset of the human race, the community of the religious. It means that I have special responsibility for them. It means that, as a believing Jew, I must accept complete responsibility for the consequences of my own beliefs and, as a rabbi, of my own teachings. I must be eternally vigilant regarding both the implications of what I intend and the implications of how I am understood.

I pray this article meets that test.

Tuesday was the Jewish New Year, a day simultaneously of forgiveness and accountability, when the Books of Life and Death are open. May we merit inscription in the Book of Life.

Rabbi Robert Aryeh Klapper is the Orthodox Rabbinic Advisor at the Harvard Hillel.