No answer yet.

24-25 September 2001—I don’t know how to begin this one. I’ve been trying to think of a way to shape this entry so that it all comes together, and I can’t. Everything is too large. The magnitude of the attack is nearly incomprehensible for me, as many times as I’ve seen the images repeated on television and in the newspapers and the magazines. The sheer loss of life, not even known yet after nearly two weeks, is staggering. And now we are in the aftermath, preparing for what we are going to do next.

We.

Even that word is difficult to define. I’ve been having ongoing discussions with a friend about the proliferation of stars and stripes being flown or displayed in the wake of the tragedy. Undoubtedly everyone who flies the flag is mourning the loss of the countless victims, but I think the flag-waving means more to a majority of the people who are flying it. I don’t doubt that a good percentage of these folks are simply expressing their grief, but I have a sinking feeling that many more of them are expressing their feeling that what’s needed next is retribution.

The polls are clear: more than four out of five people support some sort of military action. “We” want to show the terrorists that they will pay dearly for their actions. Our president uses phrases such as infinite justice and crusade, and “we” (a scant ninety percent of Americans, apparently) feel he is doing a wonderful job in this time of crisis.

I am apparently not one of “us.”

For a long time I felt disconnected from Judaism, from a sense of Jewish community. I remember the exact moment I became aware of my sense of myself as a Jew: It was during Yom Kippur in 1984, when I was fourteen. My mom and I had come home from the Yom Kippur morning service, as there was a little time before the afternoon service began. (The funniest thing my childhood friend Louis ever said to me was his observation that our temple was so lenient that on Yom Kippur, when we were supposed to fast, that there was a one-hour lunch break. This was not exactly true, but it was funny nonetheless.)

I remember sitting in the car in our driveway with my mom, and I told her I didn’t feel very Jewish. I couldn’t express why I felt that way back then; I didn’t have the vocabulary for it, but something was missing. My declaration broke my mom’s heart. She was inconsolable, and I didn’t understand why.

My mom grew up in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which at the time was where a lot of Orthodox Jews lived. Our family, however, wasn’t religious. My mom has a wonderful story about how her friend used to have her over for Shabbat so that she could do things observant Jews weren’t supposed to do on Friday nights; ask her about it sometime.

The point is, my mom wasn’t allowed to be an observant Jew, and she made sure I had the opportunity. Not only was I allowed, I was encouraged–and I was rejecting it.

Somehow we made peace with each other and went to the afternoon service. If you’re not Jewish, you’re probably not aware of this, but many many many more people go to High Holy Day services (Rosh Hashanah, the new year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement) than those who attend synagogue the rest of the year. The result is that many synagogues are not built to handle a congregation of that size. Our temple in Los Angeles was certainly that way, and so each year we went to services in the main ballroom of the Century Plaza Hotel in Century City. Ritzy, gaudy, and to my taste, unholy. (I still grapple with that perception; can any place be holy? A topic perhaps better saved for another time.)

The afternoon service of Yom Kippur, however, is not as well attended, at least as far as our congregation was concerned, and there was an alternative service that was held in the sanctuary of our temple, and that’s where we went that afternoon. And there, in the sanctuary, bathed in afternoon light rather than glass chandeliers, people stood up one by one and shared with the rest of us their remembrances of their loved ones. And I stood up and shared my memories of my grandfather.

That afternoon I had a glimpse of what it means to be part of a larger community, something meaningful. It wasn’t to be repeated in a Jewish sense for me for another fourteen years, when Mark and I held our first seder, but that day was a beginning. Much more so than it was during my Bar Mitzvah ceremony and celebration, that Yom Kippur afternoon I became a Jew.

The following year I gave up Hebrew school, which was one afternoon a week, because I wasn’t getting anything out of it, and my classmates were using it simply as a social occasion, and I wasn’t social with them. A few years later I stopped going to High Holy Day services. I still felt Jewish, but for the most part practice wasn’t doing it for me. (The exception was that I still fasted, and during Passover I still abstained from bread for the week.)

In 1993, however, I began a tradition that I continued until 1999. I stayed home from work on Yom Kippur, and in addition to fasting and reading, I spent the day writing out the year, examining the things I wished I had done better, or at least differently. At the end of the day, there was catharsis. In later years, there was catharsis and challah, fresh out of the oven to break the fast.

Last year I decided to try services again. While it was good to be with other Jews at a time that I was used to being alone in my house, the service didn’t move or transform me. It was merely okay. I felt cheated out of my time for reflection, but then the moment had passed, and it was time to get on with the new year.

This year, I am going to different services and hoping for something more meaningful. It is a terrible time for the world, and the incompatibility of religions has played a major part in our ongoing grief. During this period I have questioned my faith; the continuing use of Judaism and Islam as sources and justifications of violence makes me want no part of it, and yet I find that I have to believe that if we treat Yom Kippur with honesty, something good may yet be salvaged.

Atonement means nothing if I don’t dig deep into myself and acknowledge the ways that I am complicit in the ways the world is broken. The same should go for our nation. War is not the answer. No matter how many terrorists we root out, there will always be more. How many terrorists committed these horrible atrocities? Fifteen? Twenty? They didn’t even use a single gun or bomb as far as we know.

American policy has long been not to negotiate with terrorists, and yet we continue to see terrorists wreaking greater and greater havoc. Even in this tragedy, no group has stepped forward to accept responsibility. The only information the media has is a vague communication from the Taliban asserting that it is the United States’ actions in the Middle East that have brought us to this point.

Before we begin this war against terrorism, as a country we have to look deep inside and ask ourselves what part we’ve played in our own tragedy. Thousands of innocent lives were lost, and yet we refuse to see our complicity, or even to consider that we might have any complicity to bear. Fifteen to twenty people willingly sacrificed their lives to protest something they felt was unjust. Were they insane? Brainwashed? I don’t know. But if they were sane and acting on their own will, and if they were angry about the U.S.’s role in the Mideast, then that has to be taken into account somehow. I, for one, believe it has long been time for the U.S. to take a much harder line against Israel, which needs to learn to live in peace with Palestine. The occupation of the territories needs to end; too much blood has been shed for the sake of the settlers who have encroached on land to which they have no clear right. And our policy in the Mideast cannot possibly be the whole reason for the attack; there is undoubtedly more we have to learn.

Don’t misunderstand me: I don’t condone in the least what the terrorists did. I believe whoever is still alive and connected to the attacks should be brought to justice. I think it’s beyond cowardly to wage such an assault without explaining why, if the attacker wants anything to change. But at this time I cannot wave the flag and feel good about it. I am proud to be an American and am grateful every day that I have the freedom in this country to state my opinions. I cannot put it more plainly than this: I do not believe that war is the answer. We have an even larger task ahead of us, and we must not shrink from it; a lasting peace is more difficult than war, and it is to that elusive victory which we, as Americans, and I, as an American Jew, should strive.