Op inion

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Inhuman Costs

e are not going to pretend to under-
stand why a young man would walk
into a crowd of people coming home
from prayers and blow himself up. We
do not have any counsel worth sharing on why a
crowd of other people, living across a "green line" a
few miles away, would begin celebrating when they
heard the young man had killed 10 people, includ-
ing several infants and boys and girls.
There is nothing in our experience as Jews that
would lead us to comprehend such madness. We place
too high a value on life to be able to get inside the
heads of people who are taught that it is more blessed
to die a terrorist martyr than to live like a saint.
We also know, sadly, that our Jewish
nation cannot sit by and do nothing in
response to these barbaric acts. We wish we
could counsel the leaders to stay their
hands, but we cannot give that advice because we
don't believe it. We know that — no matter how care-
ful our soldiers try to be — the retaliation will be
cruel, that it will kill and maim victims just as inno-
cent as those who died in the Beit Israel neighborhood
last Saturday. We know it would be better to talk than
to shoot and bomb, but we also know that the desire
to talk will be misunderstood, that it will be seen as a
mark of weakness and that it is most likely to bring
even more of the suicide bombers into our streets.
We want, almost desperately, to believe that some
third party — the United States or Saudi Arabia —
can bring a halt to the violence by somehow forcing
us and them to step away from a legacy of hate. But
we know that the deaths — more than 1,200 since
Sept. 28, 2000 — and the thousands of wounds to
children and women and men have simply fresh-
ened a resolve to hate.
We would like to believe that "their" leader has
some real power to turn a valve and shut off the flow
of weapons to those who live for the terror they can
create, but we can't even be sure that he has such a

power any more or that he
knows how badly he failed
when he unleashed terrorists.
We would also like to
believe that "our" leader does
have an effective plan for
protecting us, but as the vio-
lence has grown in response
to almost every step he has
taken, we don't see how that
belief can be justified. But
we don't have another solu-
tion to urge on him, so we
have to accept his call for
increasingly harsh
action to show the
other side that we
are not cowed,
even though we know that
harshness will mean more
deaths on both sides.
Those of us who live thou-
sands of miles away cannot really understand what it
must be like to go shopping, for instance, or take our
children to Shabbat services knowing that a man or
woman might suddenly cry out "Allahu Akbar,"
"God is great" in Arabic, and blow himself or herself
and us to kingdom come.
We can recoil in shock and horror when we see the
bits of blood and bone being collected for burial, but we
don't really put ourselves in that place every day, so we
don't know how raw our emotions would be or how bit-
ter we might become in demanding revenge. We are
busy mourning our own young American soldiers dying
in a land 10,000 miles away as they search for the rem-
nants of a different terrorist force, and we have only so
many hours in the day to allot to tragedy.
We would like another great miracle to happen,
for some force that we cannot anticipate to extin-
guish these flames of war. But we know that will not
happen until the people on both sides agree, at the
deepest level, that this madness is only that, an

EDITO RIAL

Related coverage: page 14

Jews And Culture

s

Atlanta

arah Hughes performed beautifully in cap-
turing the women's figure skating gold medal
at the Winter Olympics last month. Now
everybody is looking for a piece of the 16-
year-old superstar, including the Jewish community.
With chests swelling with pride, Jewish "detectives"
have reported that Hughes' mother is Jewish and her
two brothers became b'nai mitzvah. Unable to say —
and seemingly unconcerned — whether she practices
the religion, they're ready to count her in.
Secure in that knowledge, Jewish supporters boast
that three of the top four finishers in the competi-

Jason Green is managing editor of the Atlanta
Jewish Times, sister publication of the Detroit Jewish
News. His e-mail address jgreen @atljewishtimes. corn

insanity, and not a force that can accomplish any-
thing that will make the future brighter.
Despite what some have said in recent days about
how a striving for peace might actually have made
peace less likely, we know that the route to laying
down arms must be mapped by people and their
leaders who are committed to peace above all else.
From our distance, it has long seemed that some-
thing could be done to meet the legitimate needs of
both sides that reasonable people could sit down
with other reasonable people and find a common
ground. But now we think that we never did under-
stand how vile was the poison just below the sur-
face, how high the flames of hatred had leapt. We
fear they will be a long time in burning out.
While the conflagration continues, we can suggest
patience and fortitude and courage and prayer. We
may feel helpless, but we must never be hopeless.
And we remind ourselves never to forget that those
are real human beings, not demons, who are dying
on both sides. O

I say we are. And it's not necessarily a bad
tion — Hughes, silver medalist Russian
thing.
Irina Slutskaya and fourth-place finisher
Jew come in all shapes and sizes. A quick
Sasha Cohen — are all Jewish. These
look at the 2001 American Jewish Identity
"experts" are pretty sure that Michelle Kwan
Study, produced by the Center for Jewish
can't read Hebrew.
Studies at the City University of New York,
Jews surely have arrived as a force at the
reveals some interesting results. Only 51
Winter Olympics.
percent of Jews surveyed said they were
But does it matter? Does it matter that
Jewish
because of their religion, while 40
JASON
former Enron Chief Financial Officer
percent responded they are Jewish because
GREEN
Andrew Fastow is Jewish? How about shock
Contributing their parents are Jewish.
artist Howard Stern?
Being "Jewish" means completely different
In a culture where more than half marry
Editor
things
to different people. For the Chasidic
outside the faith, Jews are looking for role
Jew,
it
might mean keeping kosher, not
models who break the stereotype. We're not
working
on
Shabbat
and spending time at syna-
all lawyers and doctors and financiers. Some of us
gogue
daily.
For
the
cultural
Jew — a "bagel Jew" as
may even be crooks.
one
woman
in
my
office
is
fond
of saying — it
But it raises an interesting question: Are we at a
might mean acknowledging heritage or celebrating
cultural divide — split between those who are prac-
ticing the religion and those who are connected
GREEN on page 36
with its traditions by lineage?