They call it a "terrorist" attack because it is terrifying. A beautiful, late-summer morning: You kiss your loved ones goodbye and go to work, and then the world blows up in your face. It happens in other countries every day – countries like Rwanda and Israel and Azerbaijan. But it doesn’t happen here.
It does happen here. It happened, and then again, and again, and again. Thousands of wounded. Thousands of dead – more, as New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said, "more than any of us can bear." (CNN press conference, 9/11/01)
And now, we wait for the next explosion to rock the world utterly transformed in the short time since we awoke on Tuesday morning,
Terrorism: Yes, we are terrified. We are devastated by grief, filled with rage, consumed with hatred. The call goes up for revenge.
Who is responsible? These attacks, Britain’s Prime Minister, Tony Blair, reminded us, were "perpetrated by fanatics, utterly indifferent to the sanctity of human life." European Union External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten affirmed, "This is an act of war by madmen." Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi condemned "these monstrous criminals who have demonstrated a vile and brutal affront against humanity." (CNN online, 9/11/01) World leaders agree: the terrorists are "other;" they are not really human. And the word in the street is that those responsible must die.
Arlington Street Church: a beloved community of memory and hope. Arlington Street Church: "Gathered in love and service for justice and peace." What word do we have to take to the street?
Dr. Deepak Chopra, his wife, and son were traveling on three separate airplanes on Tuesday morning. Arriving safely from New York, debarking at his destination, Dr. Chopra learned of the disaster unfolding. His family was still in the air. He writes, "My body went absolutely rigid with fear. All I could think about was their safety, and it took several hours before I found out that their flights had been diverted and both were safe.
"Strangely, when the good news came, my body still felt that it had been hit by a truck. Of its own accord, it seemed to feel a far greater trauma, [which] reached out to the thousands who would not survive and the tens of thousands who would survive only to live through months and years of hell.
"And I asked myself, Why didn’t I feel this way last week? Why didn’t my body go stiff during the bombing of Iraq or Bosnia? Around the world, my horror and worry are experienced every day. Mothers weep over horrendous loss, civilians are bombed mercilessly, refugees are ripped from any sense of home or homeland. Why did I not feel their anguish enough to call a halt to it?
Dr. Chopra continues, "All this . . . anguish seems to have religion at its basis. . . . Can any military response make the slightest difference in the underlying cause? Is there not a deep wound at the heart of humanity? . . . If all of us are wounded, will revenge work? Will punishment . . . [heal] the wound . . . ? [Or] will an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and a limb for a limb leave us all blind, toothless, and crippled?" (Namaste, The Deeper Wound, 9/12/01)
Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, begins tomorrow. In this time of terror and grief, hatred and revenge, let us turn to our wise sisters and brothers – those who survived the Holocaust – for counsel and comfort, and for help in making sense of senseless violence.
In Poland, between May and July of 1943, Stella Backenroth Wieseltier’s grandparents, mother, brother, and father were all murdered by the Nazis. Stella, too, was on one of the trucks going to a killing ground, but she was pulled down by a member of the Judenrat. "You are too young to die," he announced. "You can still serve the Third Reich." As she stood there in a daze, a member of the Gestapo named Landau gathered around him a group of children who had been dragged out of hiding. He had a pocket full of lollipops. He asked them if they would like lollipops, and, if they wanted one, to open their mouths. They did, and one by one, he shot them in their open mouths. Stella fainted.
Somehow, she escaped and found refuge in a cellar under a stable on the premises of her dead grandfather’s oil fields. The cellar was six feet long, four feet wide, and five feet high. It was filled with water and rats, as well as four other adults. They survived there for nine months, until the war, at last, was over.
Two years later, in the fall of 1945, there was to be a hanging of Nazi war criminals. Stella decided to go for the occasion. She wanted revenge – revenge for every Jew whom she had buried with her own hands, for each child shot, for her parents and grandparents and brother, for the world of her youth that was so brutally murdered. She traveled all night to assure herself a choice seat.
The hanging began. The noose was placed around the neck of each criminal. The chairs were kicked out from underneath, the bodies dangled, the crowd cheered. Stella closed her eyes in horror.
"My God! What am I doing here?" she said to herself. "Cheering death? Death begets more death, hatred more hatred. It will never bring back my family." Stella’s revenge was short-lived; it had lost all its sweetness.
In that moment, Stella said, she sensed that she had once more joined the human race that must exist somewhere, someplace – a world that she had once known. (Yaffa Eliach, Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust, pp. 226-229)
What does it mean, in such a time as this, to say no to more hatred, no to more death? What does it mean, in such a time as this, to cast our lot with those who throw their weight, in love, to life?
It means saying no to fear, not giving in to paranoia, not giving in to the paralysis of grief. We could stay at home and cover our heads and, yes, we would be safer than we are walking the streets. But it would mean that terrorism had won. It would mean refusing the gift of life which we are offered anew, each day. To live, we have to risk living.
The courage to throw our weight to life means insuring, with the way we live our lives, that we carry forward the unfinished work of our dead, means affirming that they did not die in vain. Thousands of people were murdered on Tuesday morning, people with lives just like ours, people who loved good food, funny stories, the night sky . . . who loved their families and friends. As we begin to hear and tell just a few of their stories, we are reminded that it could have been any one of us. Their deaths remind us to cherish life – not to call for more death, but to cherish what we love of this fragile, ephemeral moment called life.
Today, nearly ninety percent of Americans want violent revenge. Stella Backenroth Wieseltier, a voice from the Holocaust, invites us to ask, Is more destruction, more death, a fitting memorial to our dead?
Moses said, "See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil. . . . I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Therefore, choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live." (Deuteronomy 30:15, 19)
My friends, how we respond to evil is a matter of faith. Yes, it was people of faith that caused this destruction. But it is also people of faith who reach for one another, pull the living and the dead from the wreckage; people of faith who treat the wounded and bury the dead; people of faith who clear the wreckage; people of faith who will rebuild. The choice is ours: People of faith will now further destroy, or help to heal. And our faith calls us to be missionaries of love and service, justice and peace.
I close with these words adapted from the work of Adrienne Rich:
Our hearts are moved by all we cannot save;
so much has been destroyed
We have to cast our lot with those
who age after age, perversely,
with no extraordinary power,
reconstitute the world.
(from Natural Resources, adapted)
