A 26-year old named Ilya Sosansky was the seventh victim of the terrorist attack in Jerusalem on January 27 in Jerusalem’s Neve Yaakov neighborhood. Ilya Sosansky was a graduate of AMIT Technology High School. AMIT sent out an email describing the indescribable loss of this young man.

Ilya Sosansky was a beloved, popular DJ. His friends

described him as a young man filled with a joy for life,

who could cheer up anyone. Adi Yona referred to Ilya as,

“A charm, a walking smile, a good soul who only did good.”

At the end of AMIT’s email are three Hebrew words: “Hashem Yikom Damo,” meaning, may God take revenge for his blood.

How do we think about praying for revenge? It is a complicated question with sources on both sides.

On the one hand, there is a famous prayer for bloody revenge during the Shabbat Musaf service Av Harachamim that is in traditional Orthodox siddurim that channels the vengeful, bloody energy of Psalm 137 (“By the rivers of Babylon, there we say…and wept”), which climaxes by invoking a blessing “on him who seizes Babylonian babies (Babylon destroyed the first Temple) and dashes them against the rocks!” These prayers for vengeance are wholly absent from our siddur, where in the same spot in the Shabbat morning service we offer a Prayer for Peace and a Prayer for the Renewal of Creation.

On the other hand, whether we know it or not, we actually do pray for revenge three times a day, in the malshinim prayer of the thrice-daily

Amidah which is deliberately mistranslated by the Rabbinical Assembly siddur in order to take out the offensive edge.

Famously the Jewish people have been debating for thousands of years whether, at our Passover seders, when we reduce our cup of wine by ten droplets for the ten plagues, those are tears of joy (our enslavers got the punishment they deserved), or are tears of sadness (the Egyptians are also human beings made by God, and they also suffered).

The ambivalence of this seder ritual carries forward to today. Do we pray for revenge of the terrorists who murdered Ilya Sosansky, just desserts for those who spilled innocent blood? Or do we channel the wisdom of the famous Beruriah in the Talmud, tractate Berakhot, interpreting Psalm 104, that we want sin to disappear not by the sinners dying, but by the sinners changing their ways so that they are no longer sinners?

Sadly, this issue is not going away. It recurs. Just this week a 17-year old Jewish man, and a 20-year old Jewish man, were stabbed in Jerusalem. The news source reporting the story concluded: “The terrorists, 14 and 13 years of age respectively, hailed from eastern Jerusalem.”