Editor's Notebook
Community Views
What Do We Lose
When We 'Understand'?
Life's Lessons Learned
At Temple Kol Ami
RICHARD LOBENTHAL SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
PHIL JACOBS ED TOR
An interesting
article appeared
in the Los Ange-
les Times of Jan.
16. Susan Es-
trich (Michael
Dukakis' cam-
paign manager
in 1988 and a
law professor at
USC) titled her opinion piece
"Vigilante Justice." Using the
Menendez, Lorena Bobbit and
Damian Monroe (beating of
Reginald Denny during the L.A.
riots) trials to make her point,
she decries the recent trend of
defense attorneys "...to win sym-
pathy of juries and their ap-
proval of...unlawful vigil-
antism." `The role of the
jury," she argues, "is to
determine guilt or in-
nocence — not to
solve society's prob-
lems...The best that
can be said for Lore-
na Bobbit and the
Menendez sons is
that they were get-
ting even. That is vig-
ilantism...a teen-ager
argued that he de-
served leniency for a
killing he admittedly
committed because he
had seen so many
friends die. Can gang-
members syndrome
be far behind? What
kind of world will
it be when, in-
stead of controlling
ourselves, people are
excused precisely because
they are out of control?
The syndrome is hardly lim-
ited to the courts. African
Americans at least excuse if not
exonerate black anti-Semites,
Mr. Farrakhan for example,
with a sort of "excused because
of the good works he does in
spite of being a bigot." But even
some of us Jews do it. Witness
the efforts to soften the insane
barbarism of the murderous
Baruch Goldstein with a sort of
"excused by reason of compas-
sion for Jewish victims of Arab
attacks." Are we not soon going
to hear that a 16-year-old Cha-
sidic student was gunned down
"understandably" because his
Lebanese murderer was dis-
traught over the massacre in
Hebron? The sanitizing of the
effort usually states "well, that
doesn't excuse it, but you have
to understand how he saw it.
For at least the last five
years, ADL has worried about
America's new tolerance of in-
tolerance. For the last 20, I
have bemoaned America's los-
ing its sense of outrage and
Richard Lobenthal is director of
the Anti-Defamation League
in Michigan.
moral indignation. The two are
the same. Indeed, when every-
thing is understandable, and
thus becomes excusable, noth-
ing is outrageous; and when
nothing is outrageous, nothing
is immoral.
We saw the trend as recent-
ly as the last presidential elec-
tion, when the bigot David
Duke, and the venal and anti-
Semitic Pat Buchanan got hun-
dreds of thousands, and millions
of votes, respectively, in spite (in
some instances, because of) who
they were. Their bigotry was
not sufficient reason to rule
them beyond the pale of legiti-
macy. In Mr. Duke's case, he
tried to excuse it; Mr.
Buchanan, practicing the "big
lie" technique, simply denied it.
And we see it today, when Hobo-
caust revisionists, claiming that
the Holocaust itself is a big
hoax, argue they "only" want to
debate two opposing "theories,"
as if one is as legitimate as the
other, and, therefore, the "le-
gitimate subject for debate.
Nothing is beyond the pale of le-
gitimacy!
We Jews have nothing to
gain and everything to lose by
"understanding" outrageous be-
havior. As Ms. Estrich states
"...there's no stopping it. If bat-
tered wives are allowed to mu-
tilate their sleeping husbands
and grown men allowed to shoot
their supposedly bad parents
and angry teen-agers allowed to
beat an innocent man nearly to
death because ...(of) racial in-
justice...who can condemn po-
lice officers who overreact...?"
And if that's the case, who are
we to condemn anti-Semitism
if it's occasioned by a dysfunc-
tional family or victimization by
racism or psychological prob-
lems? So it can't be the case.
Even if it's for our own self-
interest, and it should be for
more than that, we Jews have
to call America to outrage and
indignation. We have to call for
a "pale" so that some things, big-
otry for instance, are beyond
that pale. We have to demand
that some things are unspeak-
able, bigotry for instance, and
some things are unthinkable,
Holocaust revisionism for in-
stance, and not in the realm of
"debate." And we have to be
willing to model that behavior,
as well.
The signs are there: the rise
in hate crimes, terrorism
brought home to America, inter-
ethnic hostilities; 20 per-
cent of Americans
overall hold anti-Se-
mitic views and of the
most anti-Semitic, 37
percent are black;
and, of muse, there
is rampant racism
and sexism and ho-
mophobia. Those
signs are outra-
geous, and more
importantly inex-
cusable; inexcus-
able in spite of
victimization, inex-
cusable in spite of
understanding, in-
excusable and out-
rageous, illegitimate
and beyond the pale.
And I for one don't
care why some people
are that way; I'm in-
dignant!
We can no longer afford
"innocent by reason of sym-
pathy" or "if a person is out of
control, the urge must have
been uncontrollable," anymore
than we can afford "have you
heard the one about the..." nor
even a single "you people," not
even one "all of them do...," not
even a "you have to under-
stand..." much less a "look at it
from his/her point of view." It's
come down to wrong is wrong;
bigotry is bigotry; unacceptable
is unacceptable. These too must
be the "signs upon our door-
posts" and what we "teach unto
our children"— all our children.
And if once again we must be
the "light unto the nations," so
be it.
Would I write this column for
the major dailies as easily as for
The Jewish News? Of course I
would. It belongs there more
than here. But The Jewish
News invited me, and the dailies
didn't. More the pity. To be
sure it would be denounced
more vehemently there than
here. More the pity. But the
point remains the same: We've
lost our sense of indignation and
moral outrage; and without re-
capturing it, America as a
democracy risks doom. ❑
OK, so we're all
tired of reading
about AIDS.
By now we
know that.it kills.
It kills gays, it
kills straights, it
kills babies, it
kills teen-agers,
boys and girls,
men and women.
It kills Jews, too. But we knew
this, and some of our readers are
even telling us that they are
tired of reading about it. Still,
though, there's something that
won't let us as Jews let go of
learning more.
Monday evening at Temple
Kol Ami, advisers from the
Michigan Jewish AIDS Coalition
talked to a small group of par-
ents and high school kids about
the disease. It was just "anoth-
er" night of statistics, threaten-
ing evidence and language that
I would have been embarrassed
speaking about when I was 17,
not to mention 27.
What's worrisome about all of
this comes from a couple of
We learn that
God's greatest
gift to us
is life.
fronts. First off, AIDS is now old
news. It's boring news. And even
those who crusaded for educa-
tion, for federal dollars and even
more desperately for a cure, are
admitting that AIDS is not
drawing the attention it once did.
Even among the activist seg-
ment of the national gay leader-
ship, more attention is being
paid to other gay concerns, in-
cluding the ability to serve in the
U.S. military and a continuing
rise in hate crimes against ho-
mosexuals. Older gays mourn
their friends and some feel guilt
that they survived it. Now, the
Atlanta-based Center for Dis-
ease Control reports that
younger people, both gay and
straight, are worn out from liv-
ing in a state of sexual protec-
tion and sexual warning and
now are having unprotected sex.
Teen-agers be warned. While
AIDS might be on the dusty
shelf of national attention, the
disease remains. HIV positive
means death. There is no cure.
In the Kol Ami auditorium,
most of the teen-agers paid close
attention, though some yawned,
and some said they had heard
all of this before.
Clearly though, something
was quietly happening in that
Kol Ami room. That "happening'
was the students watching their
parents learn about AIDS, es-
pecially in a temple. Last year
when Temple Emanu-El first
hosted this curriculum, this col-
umn questioned the synagogue
as a place to teach this subject.
If AIDS isn't discussed in the
home, we said, it certainly isn't
the place for a temple or a syna-
gogue.
My opinion changed for two
reasons on Monday night. One
reason, I observed and listened
as parents asked the MJAC ad-
visers questions, some hard, bit-
ing questions about sex and
AIDS. But the parents asked
them in front of their children.
The teens saw that it was OK for
their parents to publicly, through
their questions, admit they did
not know even some of what con-
temporary society considers com-
mon knowledge about sex.
So, under the roof of a reli-
gious institution, parents and
their children learned together
from volunteers who consider
this subject so important that
they were taking personal time
to teach it.
Another critical factor. The
parents and the teens were di-
vided for the final part of last
week's segment. The teens were
taken into the Kol Ami sanctu-
ary itself to learn. There they
learned more about AIDS. But
what they also learned, which is
perhaps the most important fact
about all of this, didn't come from
a health professional or a MAJC
volunteer. It came from the fact
that their parents love them so
dearly that they attended such
a function. It also came from
Rabbi Norman Roman, who took
in most of the evening as an ob-
server.
The rabbi asked his temple's
teen-agers why this was such an
important subject of study, and
why did they think it was being
studied in a house of worship.
There is no way I can do jus-
tice to the quiet strength that
Rabbi Roman used to emphati-
cally get his point across. But he
looked at the kids, these teens
he's known since they were
small children, and he told them
that we learn of AIDS in front of
God because as Jews we learn
that God's greatest gift to us is
life. Life is to be sanctified. Life
is sacred.
Rabbi Roman, like the par:
ents, took the threat to the lives
of these teens personally. The
gift that God has given all of us
cannot be taken for granted. The
rabbi knows this, and so do his
members. -
If there's any positive result
from this AIDS curriculum,
maybe it's that now the children
we know, and that Rabbi Roman
knows, will listen. ❑
.