EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK A Message With Meaning Ild y eyes locked on Beverly Dunn's cover sheet as I scanned the daily stack of faxes responding to the terrorist attacks on America. "My husband and I," she wrote, "will hold this letter forever in our hearts." Those words referred to a compassionate letter the Walled Lake woman received from Israel. And they piqued my interest in the letter, which was included. I received the fax last Friday, 10 days after the Sept. 11 air hijackings that destroyed the World Trade Center in New York City, struck the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., and left a jetliner in ruins on the Pennsylvania countryside — claiming upwards of 7,000 lives in the shock- ing process. The last line of Beverly Dunn's cover sheet was especially moving: "May everyone who reads this letter find strength and hope." So I began to read the letter, which came ROBERT A. from Beverly and Milton Dunn's daughter-in- SKLAR law, Shelley Dunn, and which was shared at Editor the family's Rosh Hashanah dinner table in Walled Lake. The Sept. 14 letter was written three days after we, as a nation, lost our innocence — and our imagined shield against enemies who lurk in the shadows. Shelley and Steven Dunn and their four children — Moshe, 17; Elana, 16; Rebecca, 12; and Chava, 6 — live in Beit Shemesh, between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Which Way Now? Getting straight to the point, Shelley wrote to her Detroit family: "I am sorry that you have 'joined the club.' We here know only too well of the terror that one experiences after such an attack. Of course, the magnitude of this event is by far the worst in history. Yet we here in Israel have experienced thousands of deaths at the hands of ter- rorists over the years." "How do we go on?" she then asked. It was a question I had heard countless times since that life-altering day when planes became missiles, dreams crumbled and faith faced the ultimate test. I didn't expect her answer. Shelley Dunn "Well," she wrote, "we have a very strong belief in God, that no matter what happens, even though from our perspec- tive it is so horrific, things happen to us for a reason and that somehow, it is for the best. I pray every day that we will never be put to the kind of test the families of those victims are now experiencing." I don't know how something so horrific "is for the best." But I know we can't lose our faith in God, ever. To do so would be to do what Adolf Hitler wanted, and what Osama bin Laden wants now I know the civilized world doesn't believe that killing your- self and other people is the way to glory. And I know we can't foretell tomorrow, or count on making amends then for mis- deeds today. That is why we must live each day with a spirit of loving-kindness, always reaching out to others and giving of ourselves to make the world a better place. A Humble Attitude As Israeli Shelley Dunn, hardened to suicide bombers and ter- rorist attacks in the Jewish homeland, wrote in her letter: "It is plain and simple. Be ever so grateful for the blessings we have — our children, our spouses and our health. Never take any of it for granted, even for a second, because in one second, as we have seen, it can all change. Try to learn and grow from all the challenges that God sends us every day — challenges to help us become the best human beings we can." She urged us to learn from the American calamity, to share our feelings and to help kids touch the special warmth of fami- ly. "In the meantime," she wrote, "we here are trying to do the same. Otherwise, we go nuts from it all." How ironic that Americans, who for so long have consoled and stood by Israelis, now draw such support. This shift in roles played out dramatically for the 81 Detroiters on the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit-sponsored IsraelNow and Forever Solidarity Mission, which happened to be the same week as the suicide hijackings. The Novominsker Ray, Rabbi Yaakov Perlow, who leads the New York City-based Agudath Israel Torah, addressed the irony on Sept. 13 in a national broadcast heard locally at the Kollel Institute of Greater Detroit. Oak Park's Susan Tawil recounted what he said: "We've been worried all year about Eretz Yisrael (the land of Israel), but we thought we were secure here. But it's not the same world anymore. Evil forces have destroyed the entire con- cept of civilization. We have to internalize this." Indeed, we do. We thought we were immune to such cruelty. We thought the wickedness of militant Islamic extremists could never infil- trate our veneer of security. We thought that our values as an ethnic melting pot, and that our stature as a light of freedom unto all nations, would be enough to repel evil invaders. But we were wrong — dead wrong. We were too trusting, collectively, and too naive as indi- viduals. West Bloomfield's Steven Silverman, a 10-year-old student at Hillel Day School of Metropolitan Detroit, wrote in a letter to President Bush: "I don't understand how this nation could let commercial jets be hijacked." I don't either. I'm still stunned by how easily 19 hijackers executed three-fourths of their bold and intricate plan to destroy America's will by attacking major national symbols. Like Steven, I "just think it's sick that terrorists could fly into a building with 50,000 people working there on a normal day by 11 a.m., and kill all those innocent people." Steven Silverman But I take delight that the purest form of good will — people helping people — has radiated east from the heartland of Detroit Jewry since almost the instant of the fateful attacks. We are a caring community. And I'm confident that Jews, Christians and Muslims alike will tap the well of goodness that unites most Americans, and derive the "strength and hope" Beverly Dunn wrote so elo- quently about in her inspiring letter. May Detroit Jewry gather in peace, and with purpose, at the Federation-organized unity rally and memorial service at 4 p.m. this Sunday, Sept. 30, at Adat Shalom Synagogue in Farmington Hills. And may the event help heal the deep tear in our hearts. E JARC'S EXPLOSIVE FALL FUNDRAISER CELEBRATION WINNER! 2001 Tony Award Best Theatrical Event • For ticket information call the JARC BLAST Hotline 248-538-6610 ext, 418 mo nsnoon Fa i 0, 4 H 0 14 53 4&e.4:1 1,6 12i Gxt:2010 . vet 9/28 2001 5