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Despair vs. Joy

That\'s what it means these days, to be a Jew in post-Sept. 11 America. We must live in two worlds at once, the personal and the communal: shepping nachas over the achievements of our children and our parents, and joining with our nation in collective grief.
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October 11, 2001

Last week in New York, I attended one bar mitzvah, one 80th birthday party and, it seems, several hundred funerals.

That’s what it means these days, to be a Jew in post-Sept. 11 America. We must live in two worlds at once, the personal and the communal: shepping nachas over the achievements of our children and our parents, and joining with our nation in collective grief.

To deny the grief would make us aliens.

To deny the joy would make us monsters.

Understand, the capacity to live in this two-tiered world is no small gift. Some 60 percent of the American public admits to feelings of depression since the attacks.

Who can deny that depression is appropriate at the massive, sudden incineration of 5,000 lives?

The bombing of enemy targets in Afghanistan ended the tension over when America would respond to the destruction of the World Trade Center and at the Pentagon. But it may only have compounded the question of how this charge on a wasteland would end terrorism.

Certainly, it was depressing to find Syria, whose history of harboring terrorists is notorious, voted into the United Nations Security Council. This followed a hollow and horrifying General Assembly debate in which nations postured over the meaning of the word "terror," daring to equate American foreign policy with the hijacking of our own jets. What a charade.

And it was more than depressing — demoralizing, if not outrageous, is more like it — to witness the isolation of Israel and the public spanking of Ariel Sharon for saying what so many Israelis and American Jews fear will be true: that the cost of the war against terrorism might be paid for by Israel. American Jews, like most Israeli ones, accept the inevitability of a Palestinian state, but not at the cost of the security of Israel. The Bush administration is in a diplomatic pickle, but allowing Sept. 11 to become Palestinian independence day without guarantees of peace for the Jewish State is a bad solution.

As we observe these international events, many of us feel powerless. Anxious. Fearful for safety and national destiny. Depression, as Reb Nachman of Bratslav wrote, may be the worst killer of all, worse than a suicide bomber. Depression is the killer from within.

Don’t let them get you. So, at a time when we are afraid — of crowds in the shopping mall, and anthrax in our stadiums and mass transit — it’s all the more important to guard, encourage and practice our rightful talent for joy. It’s no trivialization of the national mood to insist upon our rights to a full, joyful life, even in times of stress. Anything less is suicide.

I didn’t hesitate for more than a minute to travel to New York for my father’s birthday celebration and cousin Reed’s call to the Torah. That minute was spent wondering if I had bought my ticket too soon, that maybe I could have got a better deal once the airline sales kicked in.

Otherwise, even the act of packing my bags helped me give vent to a kind of healthy anger. Terrorism may have made this nation suddenly a bit too vast and slightly inconvenient. But I’ll be damned if I’d make more of it than that.

At the terminal gate, we travelers participated in a kind of sham security. Anyone who has flown to Jerusalem knows what the real thing feels like, the one-on-one scrutiny that puts bad guys on notice. This endless round of showing identification is not it. Sitting at the gate two hours early, my fellow passengers and I gave each other the once-over. You could see us thinking: Who among us is a secret fanatic? Which of us could be relied upon to stand firm against terror, if it were to occur?

It was depressing to think it had come to that, but just as depressing to note the utensils that came with our regulation airline meal: silver fork and spoon, and plastic knife with a serrated blade, standard for a 3-year-old’s tea party. You gotta laugh. So I got to New York uneventfully (thank goodness). And there I felt the extraordinary sweetness of reunion in hard times.

Reed, the bar-mitzvah boy, mentioned the World Trade Center in his d’var Torah; clearly the attack is the key event of his young life. And he lit the first candle in memory of those who died Sept. 11, their lives cut down.

Then on to the Greatest Generation celebration of my Dad’s 80th year.

"Ah, Marlene," said Evelyn, a family friend. "All of us here — your Dad and Mom and Bernie and I — know what it takes to survive. You get up each day and do what has to be done."

Joy becomes infinitely more dear when you know what’s at stake.

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