Windows & Doors

Nobel Prize laureate Elie Wiesel said today that if Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were assassinated, he would not shed a tear. I find this response entirely understandable, disturbing that it was said, and contrary to a powerful spiritual teaching from Jewish tradition about the emotions we attach to fighting against that which we think of as evil.

Wiesel's claim that he would feel no sadness if President Ahmadinejad were assassinated makes sense, especially given Wiesel's belief that the Iranian leader is perhaps the world most dangerous man. Even if his analysis of the danger Ahmadinejad presents is not entirely correct, the idea that one can not imagine feeling remorse over the death of an enemy is understandable.

What disturbs me is that Wiesel, with all of the moral authority his word carries for so many people, made the claim. Why does he need to brag about his remorselessness? Does he think that his not crying proves how evil Ahmadinejad must be? Does he think that feeling sadness is a mark of moral clarity and strength? If so, then Weisel should think about a powerful midrash which addresses these questions.

The conservative Christian group Focus on the Family is sponsoring a "pro-life" ad, featuring football star Tim Tebow, during Sunday's Super Bowl. Is it right to broadcast the ad? Does this kind of advertising needlessly politicize a sporting event?

CBS made the wrong decision about this ad, but not for reasons most people suggest. Having rejected a Super Bowl ad from ManCrunch.com, a gay online dating service, as too controversial, CBS will nonetheless air a so-called pro-life/anti-choice ad sponsored by Focus on the Family. Both moves are probably good business, but lousy public policy. In fact, the Focus ad is a genuine threat to public health and that is why CBS is wrong.

I have no issue with political ads during the Super Bowl, especially the Focus ad, which actually confounds the usual pro-life/pro-choice dichotomy which defines our ongoing cultural struggles with abortion policy. In fact, the controversial ad affirms a woman's right to choose, at least some of the time. It also demonstrates the absurdity of calling one's self pro-life when that position advocates ignoring professionals whose only job is nurturing health and life.

While certainly not their intent, the Focus ad reminds us that both sides affirm life and choice, each in their own way. So in that sense, the ad is quite interesting. But that is hardly the whole story here.

Voodoo is more in the news since the earthquake in Haiti and lots of weird things are being said, especially about how other faiths do or should regard it. Here's what I told Jonathan Mark over at the New York Jewish Week when he interviewed me for his wonderful article which even includes the story of a Jewish Voodoo practitioner.

"Do you want me to tell you Voodoo is magic and forbidden and contrary to Jewish tradition? OK, I can tell you that.

"But I can also tell you that there's a deep theurgic impulse in Kabbalah, meaning attempts to manipulate the Divine. There's a distinction between magic and ritual, which is that ritual tries to influence God; magic believes that it can influence God, whether God wants to be influenced or not.

"Now, that's a very fine distinction," says Rabbi Hirschfield. "So I don't make fun of Voodoo, because anyone who prays to God in the hope of shaping what God does shouldn't be making fun of Voodoo.

"We all love to tell the story of the Golem. If that isn't shamanic," continues the rabbi, "I don't know what is. Some guy goes into an attic, recapitulates the Genesis story, making a person out of dirt, slaps [the Holy Name] on its forehead and it comes to life. Change that ever so slightly and you have a guy with a doll in Haiti."

"Voodoo is one more spiritual mechanism for both bridging worlds, between life and death; for people to feel empowered in their relationship with God," says the rabbi. "We shouldn't confuse the rituals we reject, and the theology we reject for the underlying human impulses that are part of all of us."

Forgiveness is hard. Both seeking it and granting it are complicated for most people most of the time. Yet we all have things for which we should be seeking forgiveness and almost as certainly those we need to forgive. Told by Toby Axelrod, the story of Eva Kor, a survivor of Nazi doctor-torturer, Josef Mengele contains important lessons in both seeking and granting forgiveness.

Kor says she has forgiven Josef Mengele, who conducted experiments on her and her twin sister, Miriam, at the Auschwitz concentration camp...."Here I am, this little guinea pig from Auschwitz, and I have the power to forgive Josef Mengele! And he can't do anything about it," the diminutive, energetic woman who will turn 76 on Saturday said this week at Auschwitz. "I stopped being a victim, and that makes me a very powerful person."

Not surprisingly, other survivors object strenuously to Kor's offering forgiveness. In 2007, the World Federation of Jewish Child Survivors called it "abhorrent to forgive this monster, Josef Mengele," and the group's president said other Mengele twins were very upset with Kor for talking about forgiveness.

Kor's response is interesting because it holds the key to what I believe are the limits of forgiveness i.e. our own readiness and the fact that we can only forgive what which was done to us.

This model of Auschwitz, the infamous death camp in which more than 1 million people were murdered by the Nazis, was recently displayed in Copenhagen where it was shown to coincide with International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The work of Marco Evaristti, the model which is called Rolexgate, is made primarily out of gold teeth taken from inmates - 2.3 kilos, about 5 pounds, to be exact.

Evaristti got the gold fillings from a "private collector" who kept this macabre collection in a glass jar. The model even includes a Rolex watch in place of the clock which sits in the iconic tower at the camp entrance. The artist explains that he wanted to challenge claims of Swiss neutrality during the war.

So what do you think? Is this a brilliant repurposing of the gold, turning remains into a memorial which even challenges those most proud of their neutrality? Is it a perverse use of sacred body parts which ought to be buried? Is it something altogether different from either of those? What do you think?