Via Bill
Let me mince no words
in saying that from Fort Hood to Bali, from Times Square to London , from
Madrid to Mumbai, from 9/11 to Gaza , the murderers, the barbarians are radical
Islamists.
To camouflage their identity is sedition. To excuse their
deeds is contemptible. To mask their intentions is unconscionable.
===========================
I thought long
and I thought hard on whether to deliver the sermon I am about to share.
We all wish to bounce happily out of shul on the High Holidays, filled
with warm fuzzies, ready to gobble up our brisket, our honey cakes and our kugel.
We want to be shaken and stirred – but not too much. We want to be
guilt-schlepped – but not too much. We want to be provoked but not too
much. We want to be transformed but not too much.
I get it, but as a
rabbi I have a compelling obligation, a responsibility to articulate what is in
my heart and what I passionately believe must be said and must be heard.
And so, I am guided not by what is easy to say but by what is painful to
express. I am guided not by the frivolous but by the serious. I am
guided not by delicacy but by urgency.
We are at war. We are at war with
an enemy as savage, as voracious, as heartless as the Nazis but one wouldn’t
know it from our behavior. During WWII we didn’t refer to storm troopers as
freedom fighters. We didn’t call the Gestapo, militants. We didn’t
see the attacks on our Merchant Marine as acts by rogue sailors. We did
not justify the Nazis rise to power as our fault. We did not grovel
before the Nazis, thumping our hearts and confessing to abusing and mistreating
and humiliating the German people.
We did not apologize for Dresden , nor for
The Battle of the Bulge, nor for El Alamein , nor for D-Day.
Evil – ultimate,
irreconcilable, evil threatened us and Roosevelt and Churchill had moral
clarity and an exquisite understanding of what was at stake. It was not
just the Sudetenland, not just Tubruk, not just Vienna , not just Casablanca .
It was the entire planet. Read history and be shocked at how
frighteningly close Hitler came to creating a Pax Germana on every
continent.
Not all Germans were Nazis – most were decent, most were revolted
by the Third Reich, most were good citizens hoisting a beer, earning a living
and tucking in their children at night. But, too many looked away, too
many cried out in lame defense – I didn’t know.” Too many were silent.
Guilt absolutely falls upon those who committed the atrocities, but
responsibility and guilt falls upon those who did nothing as well. Fault
was not just with the goose steppers but with those who pulled the curtains
shut, said and did nothing.
In WWII we won because we got it. We
understood who the enemy was and we knew that the end had to be unconditional
and absolute. We did not stumble around worrying about offending the
Nazis. We did not measure every word so as not to upset our foe. We
built planes and tanks and battleships and went to war to win….. to rid the
world of malevolence.
We are at war… yet too many stubbornly and foolishly
don’t put the pieces together and refuse to identify the evil doers. We
are circumspect and disgracefully politically correct.
