There has never been any ambiguity of my Jewishness. There has been unease on my part with many of the organizations that claim to represent me, even look out for me. Encounters with some of the people who claim authority have not always gone in a way that generates my full respect, let alone my loyalty. Yet my a la carte Judaism, my personal observance, my consistency with tzedakah in the protocol I set up thirty years ago in response to a very adverse personal experience has been unflappable. I am old enough to have known Holocaust survivors. My most accomplished relative, a cousin of my mother's, Ivy League PhD in Chemical Engineering, retired from the C-Suite of a company that was willing to hire the most educated Jews when his preferred chemical conglomerate at the time was not. My own exposure to anti-Semitism has been a few snide remarks from classmates, decent people, one unfamiliar with Jews, the other more familiar than he desired to be. Certainly over my adult lifetime, there have been events that tied me more closely with other Jews, most notably wars involving Israel, and perhaps the need to allow exit for Soviet Jews. Yet for all this, now spanning some fifty years, I've never felt threatened, nor have I ever classified any group as permanently beyond any desire on my part for generous relations. Until this month.
I learned of the orchestrated attack on Israel from our Rabbi who announced only that there had been an attack. The day was both shabbos and Shemini Atzeret, one of four days each annual cycle when we memorialize our departed relatives and martyrs who died at the hands of enemies largely because they were Jewish. Some have been individually targeted, as the Sages of the Roman era whose story comprises the Machzor Text of the Yom Kippur Martyrology or the eleven Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics or the lynching of Leo Frank that prompted the Anti-Defamation League that still offers us advocacy a hundred years later. Others have met their end in a less selective way. Marauding Crusaders expanding beyond their Pope's mandate, grass roots pogroms, systematic extermination by Nazi initiative, and terrorism in Israel and elsewhere, all of which slaughter whoever happens to be present on a bus, school, or synagogue. The ones that happened before my lifetime become part of the history that I study, those during my lifetime, register as small criminal events that will happen from time to time. And there are usually non-Jewish parallels of larger scale, Biafra, Rwanda, Cambodia. All generate empathy, none outrage, until the current large scale massacre on our Yizkor Day.
Safe Americans whose troops have a presence many places, many justly, many more questionably, frame my concept of legitimate armed conflict. There are people in charge because they have the training and experience to be in charge. There are rules. What the world saw, and I saw with everyone else of the Hamas October 7 attack, looked very different. It was orchestrated as a one time spectacular LOOK at US, not very different than 9/11. Make the one big splash when you can because the capacity for sustained action just isn't there. Invite retaliation. And since people who do these things are always fundamentally weaker than the nations who respond to their Day of Infamy, they can expect the sympathy of underdogs. And nobody tolerates childhood deaths, or attacks on places of sanctity, make sure the mosques, schools, and hospitals house military capacity as real armies would not just barge in to profane them. And so the attack went and they called our bluff on the response. All calculated. But not entirely correctly calculated.
The only protective response from the victims would be to call that bluff and let public opinion go where it may. Simply put, buildings immune from attact lose their protection when they become a source of military operation. Hostages only have value if they can be traded. Don't sacrifice them but keep the price of that trade very high. And if military people hide behind children they will have to decide the value of their own children as collateral damage, unintended by the Israelis but human sacrifices in the mission of "River to Sea."
None of that really changed me. There are evils that need eradication. Slavery, concentration camps, overt violation of pacts intended to create a sustainable peace, piracy and the sovereign states that protect the pirates, unprovoked bombing of cities, atrocities inflicted by invaders. All appear in my textbooks that my esteemed teachers thought I should know about and learn how to think through. And sometimes to eradicate evil, soldiers need to march, bombs need to fall, hospitals and undertakers need to be paid overtime. There is a public good for not having Naziism as an acceptable alternative ideology or having slavery assigned to the history books forever, whatever the human cost.
No, this did not change me. What did was the response of different segments of the public, a few weeks of people exposing their minds, their ids, and ugliness that comes out of them. The attempt to rationalize events in America, in driving distance to my secure home, really has little analysis beyond dispicable. The sense that there are no restraints to achieve an end, people can be made into pawns and wantonly sacrificed. I encountered hoards of groups, people attending universities that would have rejected any application I might make to attend there, promoting the indefensible but finding a rationalization beneath these people's inherent intellect, though maybe not beneath their inherent character or scripting. My medical career introduced me to the concept of Sentinel events, those that prompt an investigation by an irreversible adverse occurence, and Never Events, those that any reasonable person should be able to avoid. There is no justification for elected officials or students smart enough to get admitted to those schools joining a celebration of people across the world being captured, sumarily executed, harvested for later leverage, physically violated, all while defenseless. There is nothing celebratory about this. It is a Never Event and a Sentinal Event. Trapping Jewish students in a room because they are Jews or making the Kosher dining room where the get their food inaccessible is a Never Event. Driving a car into an "Israel school" whether properly or erroneously identified is a Never Event. And peopole who should have a public education comparable to mine, a religious foundation parallel to mine, I feel floored by the willingness, indeed eagerness, of these people them to defend them when they perform these odious responses,
This changed me in a very substantial way. As I learned about Sentinel and Never Events, their investigation was always directed at improving processes, in having patients receive their needed care with maximum safety. Unmasking errors was never had a punitive intent, no matter how eggregious a situation was revealed. That is part of the dignity of medicine. The response to the Israeli attacks moves me to reconsider whether some things really need a punitive approach. Israel's government acted to their Day of Infamy as a sovereign state accepts its responsibility to "provide for the Common Defense" from our Constitution, though they do not have one. Some Never Events can be avoided with better processes. Some need expression of power. Protection and Revenge differ considerably.
But in response to the anti-Semitic uprisings, my own perspective has shifted from a person of tolerance to one who now ranks people as unworthy. Revenge no, punitive absolutely. Law firm senior partners have already made it clear that those top students who cheered the physical harm done across the world could not work at their law firms. That is what I cheer. My own alma mater lost funding of major donors. In no uncertain terms we derived considerable personal success from those universities. They made us decent, respectful people. And it is imperative to insist that the current generation of deans will insist that their current students be worthy of studying there. Delaying somebody's career is justice, not revenge. Some actions are outright criminal. They should be defended by a personal attorney, not mobs rationalizing violations of law for their cause. Locking students in a room or running a car into a building is not civil disobedience. My mind has become punitive, a step backwards from where it had been.
And I've not even gotten to my next set of votes. The President, who I have met many times as my Senator, showed me that we share the essence of character, though the consequences of what he thinks far exceeds any impact I might have. My Congressional deleagation has said nothing, particularly the leading candidates who want to obtain the two seats being vacated in Congress. This may change my vote, particularly when a leading candidate touts her Progressive bona fides. Their positions on this need to be compatible with my own sensibilities. I am different now. Propriety moves upward in my rankings, expediency downward.
Perhps the biggest transformation comes in my assessment of people. Hamas made their agenda public. It's a genocidal, uncompromising bottoming out of human dignity. I understand that, support its victims to do whatever they need to do to dispactch them, and accept the undesirable innocent harm that they hoped would keep the bigger army at bay. But they can only do what they did in their devastating way one time, then they can only be on the defensive.
That is not the case with the unmasking of American and European anti-Semitism. That is not one time. That is a daily contribution to my News Feed. They will never run out of resources if it only takes a few to target a Jewish institution, deface Jewish property, taunt children at school, or make people in public authority timid. Eradicating that is unlikely to happen. Even marginalizing it has become more challenging. The best option may be some very negative consequences to the very people who claim to be in the relentless pursuit of justice. Make a statement, make a YouTube video, keep Twitter vile. But deface property and a person who never saw himself as a criminal will obtain a lifetime criminal record. Deans of Law Schools and Medical Schools really need to deny certain people whose presence demeans those honorable professions their chance at entering those careers. Hate laws need to be made more explicit and judges need consistency in expressing public outrage with prison time for people who never expected to be inmates.
I've shifted to punitive, much the reversal of what I have been taught about the best way to make the world bettere. In that sense, the attacks of October 7 have diminished me along with everyone else.
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