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May 2, 2011

Rabbis measure response to Bin Laden’s death

By Julie Gruenbaum Fax

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As details of the special operation that took out Osama bin Laden continue to unfold, rabbis in Los Angeles are pulling from biblical verses, Jewish traditions and their own gut reactions to help formulate an appropriate Jewish response to the news.

Early Monday morning, Rabbi David Wolpe posted this on Facebook:

“Yesterday, Yom HaShoah, bin Laden was killed. The proper reaction is sobriety, not revelry. This is a time to remember those who died, pray for those who fight, meditate anew on wickedness and redouble our dedication to justice.”

Within hours, more than 350 people “liked” his post, and more than 60 commented, most of them in support of Wolpe’s call for a more measured reaction.

He said he was motivated to write the post when he saw the circus atmosphere in front of the White House and in Times Square after the news broke late Sunday night.

“It felt like people were celebrating a football victory, and it seemed to be, while understandable, not something you cheer about, any more than people would cheer when a killer is executed. A grim satisfaction is understandable, but cheering not so much,” Wolpe said.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, disagrees.

“This is a time to say ‘mazal tov.’ It’s a time of great jubilation,” Hier said, noting God’s sense of humor in bin Laden’s death occurring on the same date that Hitler’s death was announced in 1945.

Hier sees precedent in the Jewish holiday of Purim for celebrating — drinking, eating, merrymaking — the death of a sworn enemy.

“Haman and his ilk wanted to destroy the Jewish people and are, themselves, destroyed, and that is the only time during the year where Jews must become merry. There’s no way of interpreting your way out of that,” he said.

Rabbi Sharon Brous at IKAR praised U.S. intelligence and affirmed the necessity to eliminate bin Laden but encouraged her congregants to use this as a moment for reflection, not gloating.

“We have to move beyond an impulsive reaction to his death. It might feel really good in the moment to have caught the bad guy, but that is not the best of us. There is a side of our tradition that calls for us to react with deep humility to the news of any death,” she said. “Bin Laden’s work was to destroy and undermine the sanctity of human life — he was a horrible human being. But rather than take to the streets and cheer, our work now is to start to put the pieces back together — to work toward more healing and understanding in the world, to honor the victims of his violence and to reaffirm the sanctity of human life.”

Brous quoted a rabbinic midrash in which God rebuked the angels for rejoicing when the Egyptian army was caught in the receding waters after the splitting of the Red Sea. “ ‘How dare you dance and sing as my children drown in the Sea?’ God rebukes them (Megillah 10b),” Brous wrote in a letter to congregants. The drop of wine spilled at the seder reflects this idea as well.

Brous turns to another midrash for deeper meaning. As the Egyptians drowned, an archangel challenges God, “How dare you drown my children in the Sea?” God convenes a heavenly court and finds the acts of the Egyptians so heinous that justice outweighs mercy, and Pharaoh and his army are killed.

“But in those moments, even when dealing with the worst of the worst, we recognize that there is justice but no joy,” Brous wrote.

Rabbi Jonathan Klein, executive director of CLUE (Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice), quoted the same midrash about the angels at the Red Sea to make a different point. God rebuked the angels but didn’t rebuke the Jewish people for rejoicing, because they were celebrating their newfound freedom and the complete removal of any threat.

Klein believes that the continuing threat of al-Qaeda should temper celebrations of bin Laden’s death, as multiple war fronts remain active and the specter of terror continues to drag America through a torrent of violence.

“We have a responsibility to move on and say, ‘OK, now what? Now what are we going to do?’ Are we going to be aggressive about peace in America now that we can say, ‘Ding-dong the witch is dead,’ or are we going to go back to a place of maintaining a violence paradigm that leads to more Iraqis, Afghanis and Americans dead?”

Look to the Israelis for a balanced response to such acts, suggests Rabbi Daniel Bouskila, director of the Sephardic Educational Center in Los Angeles. “In all of the years that Israel has had to engage in hunting down and killing terrorists, have we ever once seen Israelis take to the streets with flags shouting ‘Go Israel’ as a reaction to any one terrorist being killed?” he asked. “As we painfully observe another Yom Hazikaron this coming week, when families who lost loved ones in wars and acts of terror gather to mourn by singing songs and reading poems that speak of peace — not of glorifying war or taking revenge — Israeli society models how to respectfully deal with downing terrorists while confronting the pain they created.”

Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky of Congregation B’nai David-Judea believes that while gloating is inappropriate, there is room for appreciating the moment.

“The fall of the wicked is regarded in our tradition as reason to praise God in the sense that God is a God of justice,” he said.

He believes the public celebrations were visceral, temporary reactions that will give way to a more sober acknowledgment that, while momentous, bin Laden’s death was mostly symbolic.

“I think ultimately the real perspective we should have on this is that we are engaged in a battle against an ideology that is morally inverted and hateful and heinous and believes that the killing of innocent people is a legitimate political tactic. What we need to do as the ideological opponent of that view is to make the statement that human life really does matter and is sacred … and that this world isn’t a place where we can tolerate moral chaos.”

Kanefsky said he spent less time Monday morning thinking about bin Laden than trying to work out logistics to send congregants to Alabama to help with the cleanup following last week’s storms.

“In the end, that’s what this struggle is about,” he said. “This is about our values and our ideology that understands that human life matters, that love for one another matters, that mutual concern matters.”

A version of this article appeared in print.

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Bin Laden is a symptem of mankind being out of step with Gods law for this day. All,Jew Christrian and Muslem have been created by One will. All follow His will willingly or drug kicking and screaming. Groups and Governments are dismantling the world as it has been known so it can be reassembled according to the Covenant of God for this day. For this turn your hearts to Hifa and the Queen of Carmel and Acca.“Ye are the leaves of one tree the fruits of just one branch the flowers of one garden the drops of one ocean”.

Comment by Paul on 5/02/11 at 5:53 pm

Rabbi Brous misses the point of the Mideast those Egyptians drowning in the sea were foot soldiers conscripted with no choice rather than the central commander pharaoh
Hence there need be no melancholy at bin laden s death. The better analogy is to ham an the failed architect of genocide whose death is commemorated with celebration
Ironically another architect of genocide died on may 1 surely there is no need for ambivalence at his death. Pure evil an exist in the world even if we hope and ray it didnt

Comment by Ldavis on 5/02/11 at 6:20 pm

I am sort of fed up with the irresponsible quoting of the

rabbinic midrash where God rebukes the angels for rejoicing… “ ‘How dare you dance and sing as my children drown in the Sea?’ God rebukes them (Megillah 10b)

They always neglect to mention that the Israelites were at that very moment quite rightly singing the song of deliverance from the Egyptians that we continue to recite daily. The idea being that the angels are not human and humans are not angels; one of the pitfalls of holier-than-thou ideologies nagging and lecturing people to be more than human. To be sure, we mute our joy on that account after the first say of the week-long holiday, but not right away.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 5/02/11 at 6:37 pm

Normally I would agree with Rabbi Wolpe.  But, has anyone considered that being in the Assissination business is just plain wrong?  Even Eichmann got a trial first.  Consider Libya: we just aided and abetted in the attempted assassination of Khadaffi, thereby killing innocent members of his family, but not him.  Where does “legal assassination” stop?

Comment by Dan Davis on 5/02/11 at 6:40 pm

Well put, Rabbi Kanefsky. Can we not celebrate the destruction of evil and the moral clarity which allows us to defeat it?

Comment by Marc Porter Zasada on 5/02/11 at 6:44 pm

I think the way a person reacts is as personal as anything.  It deals with people’s emotions…the state they’re in at the time, and what triggers their reactions.  For the most part, as the news referred to the demonstrators as “flash mobs,” people just reacted without thinking about what was acceptable or not, to rabbis or anyone else.  It came from their guts.

Comment by Roberta on 5/02/11 at 7:38 pm

my initial reaction was that a mission was accomplished. an evil man has been taken out and there requires a lot of self control and strategic thinking to continue on this path. as i’m sure there is an awful lot of strategic thinking going on right now.

the common folk might react with smiles on their faces. however, some people who lost their loved ones might be thinking this won’t bring anyone back.

i personally would reflect upon where we’d like to be in 10 years from now and try to visualize how we plan to get there with as little loss as possible.

Comment by clifford cohen on 5/02/11 at 9:15 pm

I had the honor and privilege of attending the Yon HaShoah play at Sinai Temple - it is called From Death To Hope. Rabbi Wolpe is the chief Rabbi.My “boyfriend” of 16 years - Harry Fischman was in the play as himself - one of the 2 survivors. Directly after the final curtain call, everyone’s cell phone went off with the news of Osama Ben Laden - it was as if justice was being done for those who did not survive the Shoah. The evening was celebrated on so many levels. For me, I was now on the side of hope. Thank you.

Comment by faith goldman on 5/02/11 at 9:32 pm

I have read a lot on this topic in the past 24 hours. This is the best piece yet - he was the first to come out with it and makes the point about relief but not jubilation while also learning important lessons! It is a must read - I gopt it off twitter @RabbiYYS Bin Laden is Dead - A Time to Rejoice? http://bit.ly/9m6prt

Comment by Jonathan Trent on 5/03/11 at 2:10 am

On sober reflection, this person wonders if the aftermath, including hasty burial at sea, was handled to perfection. However, assuming the pathologists’ and photographers’ evidence is produced ASAP. re: his demise there’ll be some certainty. And,of course,it wasn’t feasible to bring him to Gitmo, and then (despite expected protests from the ACLU) make him the “heavy” in a worldwide “reality show”..

In any event, knowing that the world is no longer suffering from the presence of such a an unwelcome piece of quasi-human pollution is sufficient cause for elation, tempered always by the knowledge that removing one piece represents for control there of only a partial solution.

Comment by SpecialKinNJ on 5/03/11 at 8:50 am

We were not celebrating O.BL.‘s death, but the fact he will no longer be able to do harm.

Comment by honey bee on 5/03/11 at 11:34 am

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