Rabbi Gary S. Creditor
March 21, 2003
I would like to imagine that I could sit down with Mr. Fred Rogers and talk with him to make sense out of these days. It is so confusing. Sometimes I don't know whether we should stand up and cheer, sit down and cry, rise up and protest, or find another posture and remain mute. I don't know what to make of the colors of yellow, orange and, God forbid, red. Should I invest in duct tape and plastic sheeting, and how much bottled water should I store? Earliest in my life, President Eisenhower seemed like a father figure; JFK was the bold pioneer; Johnson came to be mistrusted; and I took to the streets against him because of Viet Nam and preached against Nixon who betrayed our sense of the presidency with Watergate. So how do I react to a president with whom I instinctively agree on the issue of Iraq and yet has alienated most of the world? I say, because of the highest regard for his insight, whose simplistic language for children made things so eminently clear, where is Mr. Rogers when I really need him? What would he say in days like these?
I think the first thing he would say is that things are never as simple and never as complex as they seem.
Invading Iraq is not a simple matter. It is a sovereign country. It has not fired a missile from there to here. We buy its oil and ship it food and medicine. The United Nations did not legitimate this action and the Congress did not authorize it. It has taken fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, wives and husbands away from their families and put them on a battlefield of unknown dimensions. It has taken them away from jobs and wreaked havoc on the economy. We don't know how much this will cost, where it will end, when the troops will come home, and if terrorists will be let lose upon the world and us. As Jews we have the additional fears for the welfare of Medinat Yisrael, so much closer to the battlefront and Scud missiles and other lethal weaponry. Invading Iraq is not a simple matter.
Invading Iraq is not a complex matter. There really is no need for the existence of weapons of mass destruction by anybody. The subtext of the past decades is the decreasing of such weapons by the United States and first the USSR and now Russia. The only purpose of such weapons is to attack and fatally destroy the object of the attack. Despite an inadequate presentation by this administration I do firmly believe that Iraq has such weapons. They are not easy to find. They are not easy to detect when well hidden. This is ample circumstantial evidence. And Iraq under its current leadership has acted with unrestrained abandon in its invasion of Iran, its invasion of Kuwait, its gassing of the Kurds, its gassing of the Iranians, of its indiscriminant firing of Scuds at civilian targets in Israel who was not a combatant. Coupling Iraq's history with its capability uniting it with ample opportunity is frightening. Invading Iraq is not a complex matter.
I think the second thing that Mr. Rogers would say is that there are ways of dealing with the bully in the schoolyard. You and I have all encountered someone like that. Just redefine what you mean by schoolyard.
Sometimes we tried to avoid them. If I stay away from him, he will stay away from me. Better, if I don't look his way, he won't even see me. Or maybe we tried to negotiate out of the way. Or maybe we went to the teacher who was monitor for the day when he wouldn't leave us alone. Or, sometimes, you didn't get a choice. Depending on the circumstance, we were forced to stand up to the bully, win, lose or draw, or forever be bullied. Usually it was only win or lose. Sometimes others would stand up with us in the schoolyard. And other times we stood alone. But we still stood up. The last scenario was supposed to be the last. A higher sense of humanity, or God's teaching in Deuteronomy wherein we call out to the city for peace before attacking, directs us to avoid a fight.
The parallel with Iraq is clear even if it is not perfect. What has changed for all to see is that September 11th proved that nowhere on this planet can you run and hide from those who would harm us. "There is no ocean wide enough or mountain high enough or valley deep enough." There was no negotiation possible enough. And the United Nations proved to be as impotent as its predecessor, the League of Nations. For over two decades Iraq has bullied different parts of the world: Iran, Kuwait, Russia and France economically, and even Israel through its public support of terrorism. The bully cannot control the schoolyard forever.
I think that the third thing that Mr. Rogers would do is teach a difficult word: appeasement.
How do we feel strong? How do we feel weak? When should we give in? When should we resist? I will tell you what haunts me from the 20th century. That after Mein Kampf, after Kristallnacht, maybe even earlier, that no one called his bluff, that no one stood up and assassinated Adolf Hitler. The die was cast. By not standing up when the price was minimal, control of time and fate was relinquished to him. And the world paid the price for Neville Chamberlain and Munich. And the Jewish people paid the price in the decimation and destruction of European Jewry. The voices of appeasement now, those who can protest here but done in Baghdad would have been killed, do not study history. The British leadership have learned from history. They remember Dunkirk and the blitz. And we need remember December 7th and September 11th. The choice, though imperfectly presented by our President, was either appeasement now or the piper later. And later would have been too late. I don't know how to rewrite this for children's understanding.
Lastly, Mr. Rogers would say that war is terrible, even a just war, a righteous war.
War is terrible. Soldiers die. People die. Animals die. War is never to be glorified, even if it can be dignified. I am disgusted by the lack of sobriety by the media. There is great pain, anxiety and fear by so many, near to and far from the battlefield. The television networks have turned this into a circus, losing sight of horror, dread and death, in the pursuit of ratings and returns. And, in this context, I think that he would have understood tomorrow's special maftir reading about the Red Heifer, the Parah Adumah.
It was different from all other rituals. In order for a person to be pure and thus permitted to eat the Passover sacrificial offering, the Red Heifer was slaughtered and burnt, its ashes mixed with fresh water and sprinkled upon him by means of a hyssop branch. The person sprinkling, who came in touch with this mixture began by being pure, but became impure. The person upon whom it was sprinkled began as impure and became pure.
War is like the Parah Adumah. Good human beings, men and now women too are trained to kill. The highest source of ritual impurity is a corpse. War makes corpses. War takes pure human beings and makes them impure. And yet, the dream and prayer that I harbor in my heart, is that the second part of the equation is equally true: that the impurity of war can purify our world, cleanse it from evil, remove the threat that madmen can wantonly destroy us, protect Medinat Yisrael, and give hope that civility and peace can reign.
Is that too much to hope for?
May this be the last Parah Adumah.
March 21, 2003
I would like to imagine that I could sit down with Mr. Fred Rogers and talk with him to make sense out of these days. It is so confusing. Sometimes I don't know whether we should stand up and cheer, sit down and cry, rise up and protest, or find another posture and remain mute. I don't know what to make of the colors of yellow, orange and, God forbid, red. Should I invest in duct tape and plastic sheeting, and how much bottled water should I store? Earliest in my life, President Eisenhower seemed like a father figure; JFK was the bold pioneer; Johnson came to be mistrusted; and I took to the streets against him because of Viet Nam and preached against Nixon who betrayed our sense of the presidency with Watergate. So how do I react to a president with whom I instinctively agree on the issue of Iraq and yet has alienated most of the world? I say, because of the highest regard for his insight, whose simplistic language for children made things so eminently clear, where is Mr. Rogers when I really need him? What would he say in days like these?
I think the first thing he would say is that things are never as simple and never as complex as they seem.
Invading Iraq is not a simple matter. It is a sovereign country. It has not fired a missile from there to here. We buy its oil and ship it food and medicine. The United Nations did not legitimate this action and the Congress did not authorize it. It has taken fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, wives and husbands away from their families and put them on a battlefield of unknown dimensions. It has taken them away from jobs and wreaked havoc on the economy. We don't know how much this will cost, where it will end, when the troops will come home, and if terrorists will be let lose upon the world and us. As Jews we have the additional fears for the welfare of Medinat Yisrael, so much closer to the battlefront and Scud missiles and other lethal weaponry. Invading Iraq is not a simple matter.
Invading Iraq is not a complex matter. There really is no need for the existence of weapons of mass destruction by anybody. The subtext of the past decades is the decreasing of such weapons by the United States and first the USSR and now Russia. The only purpose of such weapons is to attack and fatally destroy the object of the attack. Despite an inadequate presentation by this administration I do firmly believe that Iraq has such weapons. They are not easy to find. They are not easy to detect when well hidden. This is ample circumstantial evidence. And Iraq under its current leadership has acted with unrestrained abandon in its invasion of Iran, its invasion of Kuwait, its gassing of the Kurds, its gassing of the Iranians, of its indiscriminant firing of Scuds at civilian targets in Israel who was not a combatant. Coupling Iraq's history with its capability uniting it with ample opportunity is frightening. Invading Iraq is not a complex matter.
I think the second thing that Mr. Rogers would say is that there are ways of dealing with the bully in the schoolyard. You and I have all encountered someone like that. Just redefine what you mean by schoolyard.
Sometimes we tried to avoid them. If I stay away from him, he will stay away from me. Better, if I don't look his way, he won't even see me. Or maybe we tried to negotiate out of the way. Or maybe we went to the teacher who was monitor for the day when he wouldn't leave us alone. Or, sometimes, you didn't get a choice. Depending on the circumstance, we were forced to stand up to the bully, win, lose or draw, or forever be bullied. Usually it was only win or lose. Sometimes others would stand up with us in the schoolyard. And other times we stood alone. But we still stood up. The last scenario was supposed to be the last. A higher sense of humanity, or God's teaching in Deuteronomy wherein we call out to the city for peace before attacking, directs us to avoid a fight.
The parallel with Iraq is clear even if it is not perfect. What has changed for all to see is that September 11th proved that nowhere on this planet can you run and hide from those who would harm us. "There is no ocean wide enough or mountain high enough or valley deep enough." There was no negotiation possible enough. And the United Nations proved to be as impotent as its predecessor, the League of Nations. For over two decades Iraq has bullied different parts of the world: Iran, Kuwait, Russia and France economically, and even Israel through its public support of terrorism. The bully cannot control the schoolyard forever.
I think that the third thing that Mr. Rogers would do is teach a difficult word: appeasement.
How do we feel strong? How do we feel weak? When should we give in? When should we resist? I will tell you what haunts me from the 20th century. That after Mein Kampf, after Kristallnacht, maybe even earlier, that no one called his bluff, that no one stood up and assassinated Adolf Hitler. The die was cast. By not standing up when the price was minimal, control of time and fate was relinquished to him. And the world paid the price for Neville Chamberlain and Munich. And the Jewish people paid the price in the decimation and destruction of European Jewry. The voices of appeasement now, those who can protest here but done in Baghdad would have been killed, do not study history. The British leadership have learned from history. They remember Dunkirk and the blitz. And we need remember December 7th and September 11th. The choice, though imperfectly presented by our President, was either appeasement now or the piper later. And later would have been too late. I don't know how to rewrite this for children's understanding.
Lastly, Mr. Rogers would say that war is terrible, even a just war, a righteous war.
War is terrible. Soldiers die. People die. Animals die. War is never to be glorified, even if it can be dignified. I am disgusted by the lack of sobriety by the media. There is great pain, anxiety and fear by so many, near to and far from the battlefield. The television networks have turned this into a circus, losing sight of horror, dread and death, in the pursuit of ratings and returns. And, in this context, I think that he would have understood tomorrow's special maftir reading about the Red Heifer, the Parah Adumah.
It was different from all other rituals. In order for a person to be pure and thus permitted to eat the Passover sacrificial offering, the Red Heifer was slaughtered and burnt, its ashes mixed with fresh water and sprinkled upon him by means of a hyssop branch. The person sprinkling, who came in touch with this mixture began by being pure, but became impure. The person upon whom it was sprinkled began as impure and became pure.
War is like the Parah Adumah. Good human beings, men and now women too are trained to kill. The highest source of ritual impurity is a corpse. War makes corpses. War takes pure human beings and makes them impure. And yet, the dream and prayer that I harbor in my heart, is that the second part of the equation is equally true: that the impurity of war can purify our world, cleanse it from evil, remove the threat that madmen can wantonly destroy us, protect Medinat Yisrael, and give hope that civility and peace can reign.
Is that too much to hope for?
May this be the last Parah Adumah.
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