I was checking my email late last night when I noticed a headline on the New York Times website: “President Obama to address the nation.” “They’ve caught Bin Laden,” I said to my husband. “There is nothing else urgent enough for an instant press conference on a Sunday night.” As I waited for the President’s speech, I realized I really didn’t know how I felt. Relief? Renewed sadness over 9/11? How are you supposed to feel when your enemy falls?
Photo by by Zola 周曙光 via flickr.com. Creative Commons License.
For me, as for many Americans, this is not a theoretical question. I was in New York on 9/11 and watched the Twin Towers get hit. Even though more than 10 years have passed, there is part of me that is still back on that day, under attack and scared. I’ve long viewed my work at RHR-NA fighting torture as my patriotic response to what I experienced. The best way to beat the terrorists was to uphold America values about freedom and the rule of law. I felt that the most fitting end for the search would Bin Laden would have involved a fair trial in an American court room, with the terrorist locked up for years and years. As the wrangling over Guantanamo intensified, it became clear that such an end for Bin Laden was unlikely. Rabbi Arthur Waskow described Sunday’s results, Bin Laden’s death in a firefight, as a “sad necessity.” But the scenes of unbridled celebration outside of the White House seemed at odds with the solemnity of the moment. I watched them and was deeply uncomfortable. For me, they transformed the moment into one of revenge. Maybe I am overreacting. Surely, those of us on the left tend to have a knee-jerk reaction to moments of patriotism. But I don’t think I am wrong. I cannot celebrate the death of another human being.
I’m not alone in my ambivalence. A quick survey of my friends shows that many of them are quoting the midrash about the death of the Egyptians at the Red Sea, when the angels are chastised for celebrating the death of God’s creatures. To actively celebrate over the death of another human being (sacred and created in God’s image) feels wrong, no matter how evil or how much they are our enemy. But others of my friends pressed that the celebration of the death of an individual enemy was different than rejoicing over the killing of innocents. The joy they felt was not one of revenge but of relief that evil had been overcome. As Rabbi Morris Allen posted on Facebook, he spills wine at seder for the suffering of the Egyptians during the plagues but not for the Pharaoh who caused their deaths. Osama Bin Laden was such a Pharaoh.
The President’s somber tone in his announcement should give us guidance for the national mood. It was not a time for rejoicing–the death of Bin Laden will not bring back the lives that were lost. It was our job as a nation not to pursue revenge but to seek justice. As activists, we translate tzedek as righteousness when we said “tzedek tzedek tirdof” and seek a more equitable world. But today we are reminded that justice is one of the pillars on which the world is built. God demands us to seek out justice.
Reflecting over the strange coincidence of the death of Bin Laden being announced on Yom HaShoah, Rabbi Menachem Creditor reflected:
I’m not sure what I mean right now. I’m relieved that an evil has been eliminated from the world. I’m mourning our lost Six Million. I’m watching the crowds on Pennsylvania Ave and Ground Zero, weeping at all that happened and is forever changed, aching for some healing and some small amount of hope. I’m still hearing the testimony from a Shoa survivor shared less than three hours ago echoing in my heart, proud to have joined as a large Berkeley Jewish community to bear witness to our collective pain. I’m lost right now. That’s all I think I can mean at the moment. We do not rejoice at the death of our enemy. The implementation of justice is not a joyful celebration. As Rabbi Cohen writes of watching the recording of Eichmann’s trial, “In this man’s eyes are reflected the ghosts of his uncountable victims…and also nothing at all.” I am riveted by the face of Bin Laden. I do not want to look into his eyes. Those eyes witnessed the snuffing out of so much life; those eyes remained willfully blind to the pain and loss he caused. I believe justice has indeed been served today. Joylessly, as is appropriate.
The reaction of the religious community has largely been along those lines as well. The Vatican called on Catholics to not rejoice but reflect on the death as an opportunity for furthering peace. The New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good reminded us: “Our response is disciplined by belief that war itself is tragic and that all killing in war, even in self-defense, must be treated with sobriety and even mournfulness. War and all of its killing reflects the brokenness of our world. That is the proper spirit with which to greet this news.” Two of the major Muslim organizations, the Muslim Public Affairs Council and the Islamic Society of North America, have framed Bin Laden’s death in terms of justice for victims of 9/11 and repeated President Obama’s call for national unity. Like the President, they also took the opportunity to remind American that the radical terrorist did not represent or speak for Islam.
My friend Rabbi Noah Farkas wrote: “It’s not the celebration on the day of the death of an enemy that exemplifies justice, but how we choose to live the day after.” Repairing the broken world is not about what someone else might do, it is about us and how we bear the responsibilities given to us. Treating every human being as created in God’s image is difficult. Feeling compassion for the stranger, because we were strangers, is not an easy choice. The Talmud (Sanhedrin 65b) insists that the responsibility for healing is in our hands, if only we could overcome our own limitations: “Raba said: If the righteous desired it, they could be creators of worlds, as it is written, “But your iniquities have separated between you and your God [Isaiah 59:2].”
Today is the day after. Let us create a world of peace.
This is precisely why we say, reverently, Baruch Dayan Haemet. Blessed is the True Judge, or Judge of Truth (depending on your interpretation,) on all occasions of learning of a death.
Well said.
I don’t know what to make of Rabbi Morris Allen’s claim that “..he spills wine at seder for the suffering of the Egyptians during the plagues but not for the Pharaoh who caused their deaths,” since God supposedly hardened the heart of the Pharaoh.
I would invite you to take a closer look at the actual story. Note, first of all, the use of very different terms, at least in the original Hebrew, that are often simply rendered as “God hardened Pharaoh’s heart.” In fact, it says, alternatively, God strengthened Pharaoh’s heart, God made Pharaoh’s heart heavy/solid him him him him that God, e.g., strengthened Pharaoh’s resolve — but only after Pharaoh strengthened his own resolve/hardened his own heart five times, after each of the first five plagues. Pharaoh was given five opportunities to do the right thing and only after those five opportunities does the text tell us that God had anything to do with it. The message seems to be that God does not determine who we will be, but takes us further along the path we have chosen for ourselves. It is up to us to determine the direction.
Thank you for your mindfulness. Well said. I pray that more people join your ranks. I apply to be one of them.
Killing that can be avoided is always stupid and beneath who we are called to be. A case needs to be made why Osama could not have been taken alive, tried, and sentenced to life in prison. That case is not made on the basis of cost or inconvenience or anything else other than direct–DIRECT–self-defense.
We know what he did but neither we nor he knows who he could have become. Nor can any of us say there was no possibility of redemption had he been afforded sufficient time; however remote, that possibility is an act God had available that those who ordered and inflicted his death have taken away. The burial at sea is just more of the same–the triumph of expediency–the curse that blights those who govern. A chance to advance civilization a bit along the path that starts at Sinai has been lost.
What if Hitler had been eliminated at the onset of his hideous crimes? Many of our people would have survived. That is what I thought of when I heard about bin Ladem.
What is important to remember is that yes, someone died, so I am not rejoicing in his death. Instead I am relieved that maybe the pressure of this war will be relieved, maybe less people will die in the future. I shed no tears for this man who is responsible for so much suffering of others. I am hoping this will slow things down a little.
Should we have given him a trial? There would be too many rules and regulations and whatever country would be burdened with doing the trial would be caught between the Western and Eastern worlds, it would be a lose lose situation.
[...] I was particularly taken by the words of Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster, of Rabbis for Human Rights, who argued: [...]
I lost my wife, Sareve Dukat, on 9/11. She worked for the NYS Tax Department and was on the 86 Floor of Tower 2 – the rest is history.
On April 27 I became a grandfather, and Sareve would have become a grandmother. On Sunday, May 1, Reeva Marian came home from the hospital to a safer world because Osama Bin Ladin was killed.
Thank you for your mindfulness. Your words were truly touching and I couldn’t agree with you more. I wish more people felt that way.