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Life Versus Terror: a 9/11 and Contributors at Chabad.Org Have Written on the Anthology Great War of Life Against Terror

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Life Versus Terror: a 9/11 and Contributors at Chabad.Org Have Written on the Anthology Great War of Life Against Terror www.Chabad.org Voices Life versus Terror: a 9/11 and contributors at Chabad.org have written on the anthology great war of life against terror. Each time I did so, I found myself encouraged, reaffirmed in my faith in the goodness of G-d’s world. If that was my experi- ence, perhaps it may be yours as well. Following is an updated collection. We’ve survived. We’ve cleared the rubble and Wanton Hatred, Wanton Love by Zalman Shmotkin picked up the pieces of our shattered pride and Today I Saw Evil by Yori Yanover shocked economy; we even have a design in the A Soldier’s Boots by Colonel Jacob Z. Goldstein works for a new glorious World Trade Center, com- Face To Face by Tzvi Freeman plete with a memorial to our dead. We’ve deposed How Do You Fight Evil by Tzvi Freeman the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam in Iraq. We have these big fat x-ray machines in our airports Hasn’t Belief in G-d caused more Evil than Good? by and patrol cars watching our bridges. Bin Laden’s Tzvi Freeman on the run or at least lying low. Why I’m Not Afraid by Tzvi Freeman And still we’re in the thick of battle, this war of When Heaven is Evil by Manis Friedman life versus terror. Turns out that this battle has been The Jewish approach to Tragedy by Dov Wagner going on all along, only we avoided looking it in Silence by Tali Lowenthal the face. It’s not an equal fight. One side has human Today the World Trembles, Today the World is Born bombs and lethal poisons and hateful determination by Simon Jacobson and absolutely no scruples. The other side has Nine, Ten and Eleven by Simon Jacobson goodwill and moral inhibitions and hesitant smiles and kind words and small charitable acts. It’s no The Twin Towers - A Spiritual Reincarnation by equal fight, since a single hesitant good deed is a Laibl Wolf billion times more powerful than all the bombs in The Burning Palace by Yossi Jacobson the world. Transcending Fear by Yanki Tauber Life shall triumph, as it always has. As it did The Jew’s Double Standard by Yanki Tauber when eight men and women survived the Great Guilt by Yanki Tauber Flood in an ark and emerged to resettle and repop- Why Does Esau Hate Jacob? by Yanki Tauber ulate the earth. As it did when 70 souls descended into exile and slavery, to climb out four generations One Year Later by Yanki Tauber later as a vibrant people with a mission to bring The Sacred and the Good by Jay Litvin freedom and sanctity to the entire world. As it did Life After Terror by Jay Litvin when Mordechai refused to bow to Haman and when the Maccabees refused to accept the desecra- tion of the Holy Temple. As it did when the free world defeated Hitler, and when the evil of Stalinism crumbled to dust just 15 years ago. Life shall triumph, for life is so much stronger than ter- ror. Numerous times during the two years since 9/11 I’ve read and re-read the articles that our editors 1 www.Chabad.org Voices Wanton Hatred, Wanton Love Raw, cold-blooded, fanatical, baseless, relentless hatred can be matched and combated only with pure, by: Zalman Shmotkin undiscriminating, uninhibited, unyielding, baseless, unsolicited love and acts of kindness. But we need not just plain love. We need love that costs us. Love that we get nothing back for. The barbarians willingly gave up their lives to sow September 17, 2001 their hatred. We need to be willing to lose sleep, to suf- Standing only a few hours before Rosh Hashanah, fer losses, to be uncomfortable, to sacrifice our pleas- when we pray to G-d to demonstrate His mercy to ures, in order to help another human being — with at the entire world, please allow me to share with you least the precision, determination and passion that some reflections about the recent events that have so Evil’s compatriots of last week employed to fulfill their affected us. mission of hate. We all look for consolation and we seek to con- Every one of us can make a difference. sole. But the sheer enormity of the evil we just expe- The Rebbe would always quote the Maimonidean rienced is so hideous, so repellent, we’re left with no adage: Each person should see himself as though the words. entire world is on a delicate balance and with one deed Of course, we stand behind our military, our intel- he or she can tip the scales. ligence agencies and our elected leaders in their Only a few handfuls of terrorists turned our world efforts to eradicate this evil. upside down. Let us not underestimate the power of But we shy away from personally looking this each of us to turn it upright again. evil straight in the eye, we shrink from taking it on. Every good act, every expression of kindness and Timidly, we prod and encourage each other to love, will be a thousand antibodies to neutralize the “return to normal life.” viruses put in place by the forces of evil. For how could anyone of us purport to combat In response to darkness, we will fill the earth with something so grotesque and so awesome? light. To defeat evil we will saturate our globe with I’d like to propose, though, that we can and need good. to do just that. And when we do our part G-d will surely do His part Much has been written about the motivation, the to protect us and transform our world to the one we all conditioning, the bloodcurdling ruthlessness, the hope and yearn for, one that will be filled with His precision of last week’s crimes against humanity. glory, like the waters fill the ocean. All accounts and hypotheses point to the same Rabbi Zalman Shmotkin, [email protected] is simple truth: The primary motivation, the underly- the director of Chabad.org ing force behind every action executed by last week’s murderers was: Hatred. Pure, unbridled, blind, indiscriminate Hatred. Hatred of freedom, Hatred of democracy, Hatred of “infidels,” Hatred of Jews, Hatred of anything and everything besides the murderers themselves. Wanton, simple hatred. It is this that we must combat. It is this that we must eradicate. What is the remedy to Wanton Hatred? The Lubavitcher Rebbe of righteous memory answered this many times, with clarity and certitude: Wanton Love. 2 www.Chabad.org Today I Saw Evil by Yori Yanover a few calm course corrections, to insure full impact. Evil engulfs the innocent with a ball of fire and rises in a victorious after-dance. Evil removes thousands from among the living with one ideologically-certain whoosh of flame. I resolve today to point at evil and call it by its right- I was working on my news report this morning and ful name. I resolve today not to euphemize the truth, there was a faint boom in my background. We live on not be understanding of the plight that caused flesh and the Lower East Side of Manhattan, right off the FDR blood to degenerate into mass-killers, not to presume a Drive that surrounds the island with a ribbon of five spark of the Divine in people capable of this horror. I million cars each morning. Noise happens. Then my resolve today to contribute as best I can to the eradica- wife called and said there was a rumor somebody tried tion of the Islamic system of terror and death, of the to blow up one of the Trade Towers, could I go look? criminal Mullahs and Kadis and Ayatollahs who have Our living room windows feature a magnificent raised a generation of dedicated murderers. panorama picture, starting with the Empire State Today I wish to belong to a civilized society that Building on the extreme right and ending with the East turns on its enemies and pounds them to the ground River and Brooklyn Heights on the extreme left. Smack until they raise the white flags of surrender. Until, like at the center used to stand the two towers of American post-Nazi Germany, they take on the burden of proof commercial resilience and might. They were still there that they belong once again to the Human race. as I was rushing to the living room, phone in hand, except there was a Dali-style gaping hole in the one on (September 11, 2001) the north side, and sooty, black and brown smoke was billowing from it. By Yori Yanover, [email protected] Then my wife was saying, on the phone, it was a plane that did it, crashed into the building. And as she’s speaking, I see another schmuck pilot coming way too close to the towers, about to repeat the mistake of the first guy. He was moving south, green and sparkling in the benign morning sun, and I was sure there was something terribly wrong with the Air Traffic Control at La Guardia, or Newark, to have allowed two slips like that on the same day. But then it turned, corrected course and headed directly into the bright, reflecting side of the southern tower, and instantaneously an orange ball of fire erupted and grew ever bigger, and I knew it hadn’t been a mistake all along. Helpless and shocked I stood in my living room, the phone in my ear, and I was screaming and crying “Oh, my G-d” so many times, my voice mixing with tears until I wasn’t screaming any more, just staring in dis- belief.
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