Life and Death, Joy and Sorrow

Monday morning, shortly after 8:30am, I was sitting in Hebrew class, my first class after the nearly 2 1/2 week Pesach break, wishing I was still curled up in bed. The teacher was asking us something in Hebrew, but I didn't quite catch it. I looked at my friend Kristin, who was sitting beside me, and she whispered "the news." I shrugged my shoulders. I tend to take an "ignorance is bliss" approach to the news. I thought maybe the teacher was referring to something about Holocaust Remembrance Day, which that day was. One of the Korean students responded, and the teacher repeated her answer so we could all hear it. (Half the class is Korean, and they all speak so softly, at least in Hebrew, that no one can hear what they say.) I heard her say "bin Laden," and I was a bit confused. What did bin Laden have to do with the Holocaust? (Clearly, I was only half-paying attention.) Then, to make sure we all understood, the teacher repeated the news in English (an extremely rare occurrence in Hebrew class). Bin Laden was dead? The classroom broke out in a buzz of English and Korean as we all processed the news. I looked at Kristin again, and in disbelief, I asked her, "Haven't we already killed him like ten times?" (I was actually thinking about Hussein and the public airing of his hanging which interrupted my Friday evening TV viewing a few years ago and how later there were rumors, maybe even confirmations, that we actually killed his double.) Kristin shrugged.

Bin Laden was dead. In a split second, I was back in sophomore honors English, where at around 9:45am on 9/11/01 our teacher took us to the library to watch the news coverage of the attack on the Twin Towers. We watched in utter disbelief and complete terror as they re-played the footage of the planes hitting the buildings over and over, as if it was on some sort of loop. We could see little specks falling to the ground - people jumping to their deaths. And then, one of the towers collapsed right before our eyes, live on TV. Most of us had just come from Chamber Singers, and someone suddenly said, "What about our trip?" Our choir was scheduled to go to NYC in just a couple of months, right before Thanksgiving. My eyes were still fixed on the TV, waiting for the scene to change, for someone to say it was just part of some cruel movie. Even when I realized it was indeed a terrorist attack, my 15-year-old brain couldn't understand what that meant. Why would it affect our trip plans? Why would it affect anything? Al-Qaeda, Taliban, bin Laden, Hussein - these weren't part of my vocabulary. At best, I had a vague recollection of what they were. I'm not so sure I even knew what the Twin Towers were before that day.

By the time my thoughts had returned to the present, just a few seconds later, the teacher had already moved on. It was as if she had just announced the date of the oral exam, not the assassination of the US's most wanted man.

I wasn't able to get online to check the news until a few hours later, after Hebrew class and after the Holocaust Remembrance Ceremony hosted by Rothberg. I skimmed a few news stories reporting the ambush on the compound and the DNA confirmation that it was indeed bin Laden. I found a link to the text of Obama's speech. And then I turned to facebook to see what the reactions were of my friends back in the US. Since arriving in Israel, I haven't really followed my newsfeed; it is pretty much impossible to keep up with everyone half a world a way so I don't really try. But that day, I wanted to see what people were thinking and saying, mainly because I wasn't so sure how I felt. I found mixed responses: many were joyously celebrating the death of bin Laden, but others were denouncing the death of anyone, even someone as evil as bin Laden. While I was disturbed at the sort of enjoyment some seemed to get out of the news, I was equally appalled by the sense of righteous indignation that others seemed to be displaying. I don't mean to criticize anyone; we are all entitled to our own thoughts and feelings, especially in response to something like the death of bin Laden. But as someone who is currently living in the Middle East, I can tell you that we (for the most part) feel neither joy or sorrow at the death of bin Laden. While some of my friends here have joked about it now being safer to live in Israel that the US (although I still maintain that Ohio is pretty much the safest place to be - I mean, who is going to attack a bunch of cornfields?), the truth is, none of us see the point behind it. Yes, bin Laden was a bad man and the world is probably better off without him. His death, however, does not solve anything. Al-Qaeda still exists and will continue to exist. A new leader will emerge and vengeance will be taken, most likely on US soil. We're supposedly fighting over "there" (the Middle East) so we won't have to fight over "here" (the US), but the assassination of bin Laden will probably lead to bringing the war back home, even if it just momentarily.

Despite the news of bin Laden's death on Monday, we were all reminded that murder doesn't solve anything as we observed Holocaust Remembrance Day. Hilter and the Nazis celebrated the death of 11 million people - 6 million Jews and 5 million Roma (gypsies), homosexuals, developmentally delayed persons, African-Germans, Jehovah Witnesses and others - but in the end, life triumphed over death. On Monday, we mourned the loss of those 11 million people, but we also celebrated their lives. Most of them will remain nameless, faceless to me, their stories never reaching my ears, but that does not mean I can't cherish their lives, each as an individual. I remember one day in the Holocaust class I took in undergrad wondering, "What if Einstein had died in the Holocaust?" Einstein was, after all, a German-born Jew. Suddenly, almost in a panic, I realized that dozens, hundreds, thousands of Einsteins did die in the Holocaust. Who knows what those who died might have accomplished if they had lived? Many had already made important contributions before they were murdered. And so I celebrate their lives, not just what they did for society but also for who they were as children of God. And I mourn their deaths, the potential that was snatched away from them, the potential that we as a society were denied, the love that they had to share.

On Monday, I chose to celebrate the lives and mourn the deaths of those 11 million souls, and to celebrate the anniversary of the birth of my father. I chose not to celebrate nor mourn the death of bin Laden. I chose them over him.