OTHER, VIEWS

Searching For Answers

and our way of life.
Who can assess the darn-
age to our psyche from view-
ing hours and hours of video
footage of destruction and
its aftermath? What is the
toll of this macabre, mod-
ern-day ritual of instantly
and repeatedly experiencing
world tragedy on the enter-
RABBI E.B.
tainment centers in our liv-
"BUNNY"
ing rooms?
FREEDMAN
Iffy colleagues in
How does one comfort a
the rabbinic
Other Views
9-year-old who can't sleep
community at
because he sees exploding airplanes
the Jewish Family
and buildings well after the television
Service and the grief support special-
has been shut off? What is the appro-
ists throughout the community all
priate ritual for family members
agree that last week's horrific attacks
mourning an empty body bag? What
were truly transformative.
shall
we fear in the future? Tall build-
As caregivers, we try to help bring
ings?
Airplanes? Government build-
ourselves and others back to normal,
ings?
Large
crowds?
but we are all unsure what the new
Shall we get off an airplane that has
normal is or will be. Even those in our
Arab-Americans on it? Is it safe to go
community old enough to remember
to Walt Disney World with our chil-
Pearl Harbor, the Holocaust or
dren?
Kristallnacht have no context for deal-
The answers will not come from
ing with the borderless, faceless enemy
military
intelligence and not even
that last week declared war on America
from the collective intelligence of great
intellectuals and thinkers. No, it will
Rabbi E. B. "Bunny" Freedman is
come from a completely different side
director of the Jewish Hospice and
of the brain. The answers can come
Chaplaincy Network in Southfield.

"Faith makes you truly alive.
It fills every day with good
when troubles come, as they
surely will. Take comfort in
your_ aith. For faith is the
light by which you find your
way out of darkness."
— Rabbi Nachman of
Bratsthv
chasidic master, 1771 1810

-

only from the deep wellsprings of faith
within each of us.
FAITH! I don't necessarily mean
religious faith. We each, religious or
not, have inherent reservoirs of faith.
Faith in humanity. Faith in the good-
ness of the world around us. Faith in
America, in her people and their way
of life. Faith in our collective response
to tyranny and evil. And yes, for those
of us who are religious, faith in God
and God's ultimate control of our des-
tiny and the fate of the world.
Good people, loving people, create a
system of faith at the core of their
souls that helps them through times of
darkness and despair. People of faith
can turn away from cynicism, despair
and hatred. They recognize that it was
only a small band of fanatics who ini-
tiated the horrors of this week.
But it was the multitudes of human-
ity that responded with selflessness,
altruism, with love and compassion.
They responded with donations of
blood. Firefighters gave their lives.
Armed services mobilized. Good peo-
ple prayed, stayed calm and cried over
the loss and pain suffered by strangers
... they had faith.
Professional caregivers and rabbis
don't have especially smart answers to

the questions above and the thousands
of questions that are too unspeakable
to cross our lips.
There is no intellect and no intelli-
gence that tells us how to react or how
to persevere during cataclysmic times
like these. There is only faith. Each of
us has our own system of faith created
well before this tragedy or any other
tragedy. Faith becomes the light and
the beacon that Rabbi Nachman talks
about. That faith leads us to solid
ground amidst turbulence and chaos.
As a religious person, I find myself
turning to that little obscure prayer
said by some congregations after
Aleinu at the end of every davening.
This prayer, actually a collection of
passages from the Bible, is often
skipped or mumbled through. Last
week, it was jumping out of my siddur
and speaking to me:

Do not fear sudden terror or the holo-
caust of the wicked when it comes. Evil
people plan conspiracies and they are
annulled. They plot and it does not hap-
pen because God is with us ... as God
says, until your old age I will uphold
you, I made you, and I will uplift you
indeed I will rescue you.
— The Daily Prayer Book.

A Middle East Party

giant parry.
"We're ecstatic," said a
n Stockholm, people
Lebanese.
"Bull's-eye," com-
stood outside the gates
mented
Egyptian
taxi driv-
of the U.S. embassy
ers as they watched a rerun
with long burning can-
of the World Trade Center
dles to express their sorrow. In
collapse. "It's payback time,"
Berlin, they placed flowers at
said a Cairo woman.
the embassy. Austria's parlia-
Other Egyptians expressed
ment flew a black flag. A
a
wish
for President George
Kenyan newspaper recalled
DANIE L PIPES
W.
Bush
to have been buried
Osama bin Laden's bombing
ecial
Sp
in
the
buildings
or exulted
in that country three years ago
Corn mentary
that this was their happiest
and stated that "Few nations
moment since the war of
will understand America's grief
1973. In Lebanon and the West Bank,
as deeply as the Kenyan nation."
Palestinians shot guns into the air, a
And so it was around the world, as
common way of showing delight. In
news was received of the catastrophic
Jordan, Palestinians handed out sweets
events in the eastern United States.
in another expression of joy
Peoples and governments in most places
Even outside the Middle East, a good
responded with the grief and humanity
many Muslims said the United States got
one would hope for at such a moment.
what it deserved. Nigerian papers report-
There was, however, one major and
ed that the Islamic Youth Organization
conspicuous exception to this solemni-
in Zamfara province organized an event
ty, and that was in the Middle East,
to celebrate the attacks.
where the day's events prompted a
"Whatever destruction America is
facing,
as a Muslim I am happy," came
is
director
of
the
Philadelphia-
Daniel Pipes
a
typical
quote from Afghanistan.
based Middle East Forum. He can be
A
Pakistani
leader said that Washington
www.DanielPipes.org
reached via

Philadelphia

I

d

9/21

2001

34

is paying for its policies against Palestinian,
Iraqi, Bosnian and other Muslims, then
warned that the "worst is still to come."
To be sure, most governments were
on best behavior, decrying this and
bemoaning that. But even here, there
were cracks. In Syria, the restrained
message of condolence came from an
anonymous "official information
source" rather than (as is normally the
case) from President Bashar al-Assad.
In Iran, the milder of the newspaper
analyses portrayed the airplane crashes as
America "paying the price for its blind
support of the Zionist regime." The
worse of them actually accused Israel of
organizing the attacks, in a supposed
effort to deflect world opinion from its
own conflict with the Palestinians.
And then there is Iraq, where the
state-controlled media cheered on the
violence, commenting with satisfac-
tion that the "the American cowboys
are reaping the fruit of their crimes
against humanity" It also announced,
with unabashed delight, that the
myth of America was destroyed along
with the World Trade Center."
Why this unvarnished rage against

"

the West, and against the United States
in particular? Because two extremist
ideologies maintain a grip on much of
the Middle East and even beyond.

Palestinian Nationalism

Often portrayed as having the relative-
ly benign goal of creating a Palestinian
state alongside of Israel, it actually has
the far more virulent one of destroying
Israel and replacing it with a
Palestinian state that stretches "from
the river to the sea."
The sheer strength of Israel had long
tamped down the hold of this ideology
over Palestinians and other Arabic
speakers. It arose with new vigor thanks
to the Oslo process, which made Israel
appear weakened and demoralized. As a
result, even the mild American appro-
bation of Israeli policies toward
Palestinian violence over the past year
has engendered a rare fury against the
U.S. government, the American people,
and all their works. Delight in
American deaths is the natural result.

DANIEL PIPES on page 35

