inion
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Teach 'Em A Lesson
Dry Bones
ive weeks ago, when the planes slammed
into the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon and crashed into the
Pennsylvania countryside, the first instinct
for many of us was to want to punish the people
who had planned this horror. The worse the punish-
ment, we said to our secret selves, the better would
justice be served. Wipe out them and their compa-
triots, smash their families and tribes, reduce their
homes to rubble. Show the world that we can be just
as absolutely violent as the terrorists.
To be honest, some of that feeling remains — and
we can hear it echoed in the commentators who talk
about the need for an iron fist, that it is time America
showed it knows how to be ruthless.
What if the hard-eyed men are right?
What if all "they" can understand is brutali-
ty for brutality? What if an almost maniacal
commitment to gruesome retaliation is the best
assurance of domestic and world tranquility? What if
we could teach the mujahidin not to mess with us
because we can be as crazy and vicious as they.
And yet, and yet .. .
Somehow, that view of the world doesn't fit.
Particularly for Jews — with our history of rising
above adversity, of celebrating life and joy and the
eternal hope for repairing the world — the idea of
meeting every violence with a greater one feels
wrong. It is what has stayed the hand of the Israeli
government in the face of inhuman acts like the
bombing of a discotheque and a pizzeria.
But if not retaliation in kind, what course can we,
as Jews and Americans, try to follow?
One of the better side-effects of the Sept. 11
attacks is that this nation has taken an intense course
in the history and present conditions of much of the
Islamic world. We have learned about the extreme
F
fundamentalist madrassahs that brainwash boys
and young men in hatred supposedly based in
Koran. We have learned to pay attention to the
poverty and hopelessness of tens of millions of
people in Pakistan and Afghanistan, in Indonesia
and in Egypt.
Winning The War
Without forgiving the murderers of 6,000
Americans, we have seen the conditions that can
breed that suicidal madness.
So when we get through with the bombs,
when, as President Bush has said, "we have
smoked them out of their caves," we
are going to have to build better worlds
for those people.
That is going to mean food and
medical care and roads and stable governments.
But most of all, it is going to require education,
to provide understanding of mathematics and his-
tory and art in place of unthinking recitation of
misguided credos. If we are serious about winning
this "War on Terror," we will need to work for a
modern-day equivalent of the Marshall Plan that
may be required for several generations and that
will cost ten times more than the $88 billion that
went to rebuild Europe.
In the short run, it might be less expensive to
rebuild fortress America. But in the long run, repair-
ing the world will be cheaper — and a heck of a lot
more moral.
Last week, Abraham Foxman, the national director
of the Anti-Defamation League, described a direct
link between fighting prejudice and the Sept. 11
attacks. "It didn't begin with a boxcutter," he said.
"It began with words, ugly hateful words." And, he
EDIT ORIAL
continued, "there's only one way to fight hate. You
fight it with education, you fight it with love and
with words of love."
It is not clear whom we Americans can love now.
We don't require Israelis to love the Palestinians
who most certainly don't love them. But we are
going to have to try because, in the end, we really
don't have a choice. It is the only lesson worth
teaching "them," or us. El
The Human Connection
N
ine years ago, I slept for several weeks of
my life in a cheder atoom — a sealed room.
I followed the instructions on how to
apply duct tape over cracks in the win-
dows, around the doorframe and over the keyhole. I
carefully placed a wet rolled towel under the door
so that no air could enter from the outside. I had
come to Israel to study in a college overseas pro-
gram. The Gulf War brought me unexpected les-
sons.
All night long while the SCUD missiles fell, I sat
in a Jerusalem apartment, wearing a gas mask and
staring into a friend's eyes. With his mask on, he
looked like a sea monster, almost reptilian. I expect-
ed to see fins in the place where his hands had been.
It would have surprised me only a little. Reality felt
that weird.
The Gulf War in Israel was a time of terror.
Initially, no one knew whether the incoming mis-
siles would carry biological or chemical weapons.
We waited in the night. The terror lifted after a
week of missiles. No germs. Just dynamite.
How can we, in this time of grief and
Not this time at least.
unknowns, stay in charge of our emotions?
For me, the Gulf War was an experience
In Search Of Strength
in fear. I had never before, and have never
since, been so frightened. It was the kind of
We stay in charge of fear by clearly defining
fear that you feel in your bones. The kind
where we have power and where we are
that makes you sweat and shiver at the same
powerless.
time. The kind that makes you fight for
I have very little control over what the
RABBI
your sanity. The Gulf War was a lesson in
U.S. does in Afghanistan. I can work at the
TAMARA
learning how to control my own emotions.
local level, write letters and speak my opin-
KOLTON
It was a lesson in learning how to feel terror
ions, but in the end, the decisions of the
Community
and keep breathing. It was a lesson in train-
national government are beyond my reach.
ing my own mind not to frighten myself.
Views
But I can reach out to my son and to my
Because of the bombing of the World
husband. I can reach my friends, the children
Trade Center, I have been thinking more often than
I greet throughout the day, and my neighborhood. If
usual about the Gulf War and my Jerusalem apart-
I focus my energy too broadly, cast my net too wide,
ment. I have been revisiting what I learned as those
I will inevitably feel frustrated and empty. But if I
nights wore on and the sound of sirens coated the
tend to my own life, to the lives of all those I meet
air. Lately, I have been thinking about fear: How to
on any given day, I will realize my power to have
feel it and yet control it. How to be afraid and
courageous at the same time.
RABBI KOLTON on page 30
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10/19
2001
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