
 |
|
May 22, 2013
John Thorne:
They launched the 'Arab Spring' but now yearn for the good old days of a strongman
May 20, 2013
Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man?
Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star
The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting
May 13, 2013
Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation
David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
May 10, 2013
Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
May 8, 2013
Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility
May 6, 2013
May 3, 2013
Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
April 29, 2013
Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?
Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty
April 24, 2013
|
| |
Jewish World Review
Sept. 9, 2011
/ 10 Elul, 5771
What Have We Learned From This?
By
Paul Greenberg
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
It was the question his handful of young students had learned to expect from him. He asked it of us every time we'd finished translating that day's Scripture or a commentary on it.
He taught without an ounce of flash, Rabbi Leo Brener did, taking care to neither add to nor detract from the text. He left the flights of fancy to us. We found him terribly dull. At the time.
Only later, looking back, would we come to cherish the way he would pause before answering any question about the text. We got the message: This is Important. Not something to be entered upon lightly.
He never delivered any explicit sermon against the gods of the outside world -- success, power, status -- but we came to understand that they were of a lesser order. The message was implicit in everything he did. He moved with intention, the way he walked to and from the synagogue every Sabbath and holiday. Briskly, every step definite. With a purpose. So was his inevitable question: "What have we learned from this?"
History is a kind of scripture, too. And it, too, is to be examined carefully. It, too, changes with every reading. For history is not to be the confused with the past; it is what we make of the past. Each rereading, each rewriting, of that past casts a new light on it. Or a new darkness, depending on what the present chooses to remember, or chooses to forget.
History turns out to be the most contemporary of arts, reflecting the time in which it is written more faithfully than the time it describes. Leopold von Ranke's ideal of a "scientific" history that would describe the past wie es eigentlich gewesen -- just as it actually was -- was always a delusion. For time is so constructed that we cannot escape our own era, its prejudices and predilections. For good or ill.
Ten years after September 11, 2001, what have we learned from that awful day -- and the intervening years of triumph and tragedy, victories and defeats? Some old lessons must be learned anew: Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. United we stand, divided we fall. Rabid personal attacks on the president of the United States and commander-in-chief of its armed forces, whether George W. Bush or Barack Obama, will only divide us. And weaken us.
A host of new lessons still wait to be absorbed. Among them:
--War is no longer a matter just between states. It can be waged against us by a shadowy enemy with no state, and no respect for the laws of war that states were once bound by. They must be pursued to the ends of the earth -- and will be. See the fate of one Osama bin Laden, now consigned appropriately enough to the murky depths.
--Things should be called by their right names. Terror, terror and crimes crimes. We are not engaged in "overseas contingency operations" but a war against terrorism and terrorists. What happened September 11, 2011, was not an "unfortunate event" but an act of premeditated, unlawful war against the United States of America and its people. And we will not rest till justice is done.
--Despite the euphoria unleashed by the end of the Cold War, we have not moved into some idyllic "world warmed by the sunshine of freedom" (Bill Clinton) or "a world quite different from the one we've known" (George W. Bush). Whatever one superbly foolish historian announced at the time, history has not ended in the sure triumph of Western-style democracy. Any more than the human struggle for freedom will end.
September 11, 2011, was one of those days that changed everything, or should have. It was one of those dates that divide history into Before and After, like December 7, 1941. "All of this was brought upon us in a single day, and night fell on a different world, a world where freedom itself is under attack." --George W. Bush, September 20, 2011. That day should have eliminated the petty from our politics, our thoughts, our abiding Union. But even while we remember it, we forget. We shouldn't. That much we should have learned from all this.
Paul Greenberg Archives
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Paul Greenberg, editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, has won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. Send your comments by clicking here.
include "/home/jwreview/public_html/t-ssi/jwr_squaread_300x250.php";
if (strpos(, "printer_friendly") === 0)
{}
else {
=<<
© 2010 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Jay Ambrose
Michael Barone
Barrywood
Lori Borgman
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Richard Z. Chesnoff
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
Christine Flowers
Frank J. Gaffney
Bernie Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Argus Hamilton
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Ron Hart
Nat Hentoff
A. Barton Hinkle
Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ch. Krauthammer
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Ann McFeatters
Dale McFeatters
Dana Milbank
Jeanne Moos
Dick Morris
Jim Mullen
Deroy Murdock
Judge A. Napolitano
Bill O'Reilly
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Star Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Sharon Randall
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Heather Robinson
Debra J. Saunders
Martin Schram
Greg Schwem
Culture Shlock
David Shribman
Roger Simon
Lenore Skenazy
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Ben Stein
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Dan Thomasson
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
ZeitGeist
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Lisa Benson
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
John Branch
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
Matt Davies
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Glenn Foden
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Walt Handelsman
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holbert
David Horsey
Lee Judge
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Jimmy Margulies
Jack Ohman
Michael Ramirez
Rob Rogers
Drew Sheneman
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Scott Stantis
Danna Summers
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters
Dan Wasserman

Tech Q&A
Mr. Know-It-All
Ask Doctor K
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
On Nutrition
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
|