Virginal

Tonight, with the news of the cosmonauts' tragic death...

Why does it hurt so much? Why does it feel so close home?



Indeed, one of the fallen cosmonauts is an Israeli.

Still, in Israel death is a frequent traveler. In many guises, not only by terror attacks and fighting. Car accidents have caused more deaths than all the wars together.



All over the world, or rather all over the Western countries, people of all ages get killed daily in car accidents in monstrous numbers, and the national flags keep flying high.

So why?



Is it only because we've grown used to the old ways of death to the extent that we fight them even less than we fight the weather?



It seems to me that we have come to accept death on Earth as part of our human flaw, as our Achilles' heel. That the flight into Space, the liberation from the chains of the Gravity Laws, symbolize the liberation from Death itself. Isn't Space itself ad infinitum?