'When I ripped my shirt, I felt my heart rip in two.' A mourner whispered these words to me as I helped her make a small tear in her blouse before the funeral of a loved one; the Jewish ritual of k'riya signifies the rupture in a world torn asunder by death. It captures the heartache, the wordless confusion as a human relationship in the physical world ends. That ending can bring on a range of emotions: emptiness, intense sadness, disbelief, anger, surprise, guilt, helplessness, regret, numbness, disorientation. It sounds odd, but I've heard a lot of these same words from people who have recently lost jobs, many of them with the federal government'jobs that were long thought to be among the most secure in America. With little warning, thousands were escorted out of their office, their belongings dropped into newly assembled cardboard boxes, after receiving a curt dismissal: 'Your further employment would not be in the public interest.' Locked out of their email, they emptied their...
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