wfn.org | Terrorist tragedy casts new light on Jewish celebration of Rosh

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Note #6851 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

Hashanah, Yom Kippur
18-September-2001
01333

Terrorist tragedy casts new light on Jewish celebration of Rosh Hashanah,
Yom Kippur

Rabbi Lerner, pastor and editor, renews call to "awe and repentance"

by Jerry L. Van Marter

LOUISVILLE - Sundown on Sept. 17 marked the beginning of the Jewish
celebration of Rosh Hashanah - the new year 5762 on the Jewish calendar. The
two-day celebration celebrates the creation of the world and calls people of
faith to repentance and reminds them of their responsibilities to God.
During these days, Jews reaffirm their faith, examine their past deeds and
pray for forgiveness.

          Rosh Hashanah also begins a period of "10 days of awe and
repentance," which concludes on Yom Kippur (Sept. 26-27), the Day of
Atonement and the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. The theme of Yom
Kippur is to ask forgiveness of others and to forgive others for wrongs
done.

          It is in the context of this deeply religious time, jarred by the
events of Sept. 11, that Rabbi Michael Lerner of San Francisco, editor of
the highly respected journal Tikkun, has written the following reflection:

A World Out of Touch With Itself:
Where the Violence Comes From

by Rabbi Michael Lerner
				
	There is never any justification for acts of terror against innocent
civilians - it is the quintessential act of dehumanization and not
recognizing the sanctity of others, and a visible symbol of a world
increasingly irrational and out of control.

	It's understandable why many of us, after grieving and consoling the
mourners, will feel anger -- and while some demagogues in Congress have
already sought to manipulate that feeling into a growing militarism (more
spies, legalize assassinations of foreign leaders, increase the defense
budget at the expense of domestic programs), the more "responsible" leaders
are seeking to narrow America's response to targeted attacks on countries
that allegedly harbor the terrorists.

	The perpetrators deserve to be punished, and I personally would be happy if
all the people involved in this act were to be imprisoned for the rest of
their lives. Let's not be naive: these are evil people who planned this and
perpetrated it, just as are many who are engaged in acts of terror against
Israel. They should not be excused or forgiven for their acts.

	Yet in some ways this narrow focus allows us to avoid dealing with the
underlying issues. When violence becomes so prevalent throughout the planet,
it's too easy to simply talk of "deranged minds." We need to ask ourselves,
"What is it in the way that we are living, organizing our societies, and
treating each other that makes violence seem plausible to so many people?"

	We in the spiritual world will see this as a growing global incapacity to
recognize the spirit of God in each other - what we call the sanctity of
each human being.

	But even if you reject religious language, you can see that the willingness
of people to hurt each other to advance their own interests has become a
global problem, and its only the dramatic level of this particular attack
which distinguishes it from the violence and insensitivity to each other
that is part of our daily lives.

	We may tell ourselves that the current violence has "nothing to do" with
the way that we've learned to close our ears when told that one out of every
three people on this planet does not have enough food, and that one billion
are literally starving.

	We may reassure ourselves that the hoarding of the world's resources by the
richest society in world history, and our frantic attempts to accelerate
globalization with its attendant inequalities of wealth, has nothing to do
with the resentment that others feel toward us.

	We may tell ourselves that the suffering of refugees and the oppressed have
nothing to do with us - that that's a different story that is going on
somewhere else.

	But we live in one world, increasingly interconnected with everyone, and
the forces that lead people to feel outrage, anger and desperation
eventually impact on our own daily lives.

	The same inability to feel the pain of others is the pathology that shapes
the minds of these terrorists.  Raise children in circumstances where no one
is there to take care of them, or where they must live by begging or selling
their bodies in prostitution, put them in refugee camps and tell them that
that they have "no right of return" to their homes, treat them as though
they are less valuable and deserving of respect because they are part of
some despised national or ethnic group, surround them with a media that
extols the rich and makes everyone who is not economically successful and
physically trim and conventionally "beautiful" feel bad about themselves,
offer them jobs whose sole goal is to enrich the "bottom line" of someone
else, and teach them that "looking out for number one" is the only thing
anyone "really" cares about and that anyone who believes in love and social
justice are merely naive idealists who are destined to always remain
powerless, and you will produce a world?wide population of people feeling
depressed, angry, unable to care about others,  and in various ways
dysfunctional.

	I see this in Israel, where Israelis have taken to dismissing the entire
Palestinian people as "terrorists" but never ask themselves: "What have we
done to make this seem to Palestinians to be a reasonable path of action
today." Of course there were always some hateful people and some religious
fundamentalists who want to act in hurtful ways against Israel, no matter
what the circumstances.

	Yet, in the situation of 1993?96 when Israel under Yitzhak Rabin was
pursuing a path of negotiations and peace, the fundamentalists had little
following and there were few acts of violence. On the other hand, when
Israel failed to withdraw from the West Bank, and instead expanded the
number of its settlers, the fundamentalists and haters had a far easier time
convincing many decent Palestinians that there might be no other
alternative.

	Similarly, if the U.S. turns its back on global agreements to preserve the 
environment, unilaterally cancels its treaties to not build a missile
defense, accelerates the processes by which a global economy has made some
people in the third world richer but many poorer, shows that it cares
nothing for the fate of refugees who have been homeless for decades, and
otherwise turns its back on ethical norms, it becomes far easier for the
haters and the fundamentalists to recruit people who are willing to kill
themselves in strikes against what they perceive to be an evil American
empire represented by the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

	Most Americans will feel puzzled by any reference to this "larger picture."
It seems baffling to imagine that somehow we are part of a world system
which is slowly destroying the life support system of the planet, and
quickly transferring the wealth of the world into our own pockets.

	We don't feel personally responsible when an American corporation runs a
sweat shop in the Philippines or crushes efforts of workers to organize in
Singapore. We don't see
ourselves implicated when the U.S. refuses to consider the plight of
Palestinian refugees or uses the excuse of fighting drugs to support
repression in Colombia or other parts of Central America. We don't even see
the symbolism when terrorists attack America's military center and our trade
center - we talk of them as buildings, though others see them as centers of
the forces that are causing the world so much pain.

	We have narrowed our own attention to "getting through" or "doing well" in
our own personal lives, and who has time to focus on all the rest of this?
Most of us are leading perfectly reasonable lives within the options that we
have available to us - so why should others be angry at us, much less strike
out against us?

	And the truth is, our anger is also understandable: the striking out by
others in acts of terror against us is just as irrational as the
world-system that it seeks to confront. Yet our acts of counter-terror will
also be counter-productive. We should have learned from the current phase of
the Israel-Palestinian struggle, responding to terror with more violence,
rather than asking ourselves what we could do to change the conditions that
generated it in the first place, will only ensure more violence against us
in the future.

         Luckily, most people don't act out in violent ways - they tend to
act out more against themselves, drowning themselves in alcohol or drugs or
personal despair. Others turn toward fundamentalist religions or
ultra-nationalist extremism. Still others find themselves acting out against
people that they love, acting angry or hurtful toward children or
relationship partners.

	This is a world out of touch with itself, filled with people who have
forgotten how to recognize and respond to the sacred in each other because
we are so used to looking at others from the standpoint of what they can do
for us, how we can use them toward our own ends. The alternatives are stark:
either start caring about the fate of everyone on this planet or be prepared
for a slippery slope toward violence that will eventually dominate our daily
lives.

	Let's not be naive about the perpetrators of this terror. Many are evil
people, as are some of the fundamentalists and ultra-nationalists who demean
and are willing to destroy others. But these evil people are often
marginalized when societal dynamics are moving toward peace and hope (e.g.
in Israel while Yitzhak Rabin was Prime Minister) and they become much more
influential and able to recruit people to give their lives to their cause
when ordinary and otherwise decent people despair of peace and justice, as
when Israel from 1996 to 2000 dramatically increased the number of settlers.

	So here is what would marginalize those who hate the United States. Imagine
if the bin Ladens of the world had to recruit people against America at a
time when:
	
* America was using its economic resources to end world hunger and
redistribute the wealth of the planet so that everyone had enough.

* America was the leading voice championing an ethos of generosity and
caring for others - and it required that as the standard for its own
corporations

* America was restructuring its own internal life so that all social
practices and institutions were being judged "productive or efficient or
rational" not only because they maximized profit, but also to the extent
that they maximized love and caring, ethical/spiritual/ecological
sensitivity, and an approach to the universe based on awe and wonder at the
grandeur of creation.
	
	Think it's naive and impossible to move American in that direction? Well,
here are two reasons why, even if it's a long shot, it's an approach that
deserves your support:
		
* It's even more naive to imagine that military assaults, more spies or
repression can stop someone willing to lose his life while hijacking an
airplane, letting loose a bio-chemical assault, or using new technologies to
wreak havoc.

*  The response of people to the World Trade Center attack was an outpouring
of loving energy and generosity which shows the degree to which people
really do care about each other. If we could legitimate Americans allowing
that part of themselves to come out, without having to wait for a disaster,
we would not be "socially Engineering" a "new kind of humanity" but rather
empowering a part of every human being which our social order marginalizes.
There's lots of goodness in Americans.

	We should pray for the victims and the families of those who have been hurt
or murdered in these crazy acts. We should also pray that America does not
return to "business as usual," but rather turns to a period of  reflection,
coming back into touch with our common humanity, asking ourselves how our
institutions can best embody our highest values.

	We may need a global day of atonement and repentance dedicated to finding a
way to turn the direction of our society at every level, a return to the
notion that every human life is sacred, that "the bottom line" should be the
creation of a world of love and caring, and that the best way to prevent
these kinds of acts is not to turn ourselves into a police state, but turn
ourselves into a society in which social justice, love, and compassion are
so prevalent that violence becomes only a distant memory.

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