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

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