FANATICISM AND INDIFFERENCE

The following was part of an address Elie Wiesel gave to graduates of Boston University:

My young friends, I feel it is my moral duty to warn you against an evil that could jeopardize this generation’s extraordinary possibilities. That evil is fanaticism.

However, education negates fanaticism. Literature and fanaticism do not go together. Culture and fanaticism are for ever irreconcilable. The fanatic is always against culture, because culture means freedom of spirit and imagination, and the fanatic fears someone else’s imagination. In fact, the fanatic who wishes to inspire fear is ultimately doomed to live in fear, always. Fear of the stranger, fear of the other, and fear of the other inside him or her.

Fanaticism has many faces: racism, religious bigotry, ethnic hatred. What those faces have in common is an urge to replace words with violence, facts with propaganda, reason with blind impulses, and hope with terror.

For a while we might have believed that fanaticism was on its decline. It is not. Quite the contrary, it is on the rise in our cities, in our country and in our world.  In Western Europe—in Germany and France, Belgium and Austria—we are seeing a resurgence of yesterday’s demons of fascism and intolerance. In Eastern Europe, ethnic factions are rekindling old conflicts. In the Middle East, deeply held hatreds seem ever on the verge of sparking more raging conflagrations. “It’s us against them” has been taken as an essential truth.

The following comments were made by Elie Wiesel after winning the Nobel Prize:

If there is one word that describes all the woes and threats that exist today, it is indifference. You see a tragedy on television for three minutes and then comes something else and something else. How many tragedies have we had recently? Because there are so many tragedies, a sense of helplessness sets in. People become numb. They become indifferent.

Indifference, to me, is the epitome of evil. The opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it is indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it is indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it is indifference. Because of indifference, one dies before one actually dies. To be in the window and watch people being sent to concentration camps or being attacked in the street and doing nothing, that’s being dead. 

One should not, one cannot, and one must not turn ones back on memory. Memory is not a morbid way of living. It is an exalted way of seeing one’s life in its totality. Of course there are tragedies, but there are also ways of winning battles and overcoming despair.

Temple Beth El Plagued by Hate Attacks

The News Tribune 14 November 2002

BY STEVE MAYNARD AND STACEY MULICK

Tacoma’s Temple Beth El has been targeted with more hate incidents over the past three years than any other Jewish institution in the Northwest, according to Tacoma police and the regional leader of a Jewish civil rights group. Since late 1999, there have been at least 12 incidents, escalating from threatening phone calls and swastikas painted on the rabbi’s car to an arson attempt and a shooting linked to sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad.
“We’ve seen it progressively get worse,” said Brian Goldberg, regional director for the Anti-Defamation League’s Pacific Northwest Region. “It is pretty disturbing.” In Tacoma, “the degree of incidents and proximity of incidents, we just haven’t seen in other congregations.” Temple Beth El, a Reform congregation of about 350 families, is one of nearly 40 synagogues in the region.

The incidents started with threatening phone calls to the synagogue, a bomb threat and neo-Nazi literature left at the synagogue and mailed to the homes of temple members.
Goldberg said he believes the incidents go beyond vandals who happen to target the Tacoma synagogue. “These are not pranks,” he said. “You are using symbols that have power and meaning. You can’t discount that.”

Glickman and Goldberg said they won’t know the exact motives for the incidents until the perpetrators are caught. Temple Beth El Rabbi Mark Glickman said his congregation is not afraid. “We are not an embattled community here,” Glickman said. “I see these as acts of cowardice, frankly. They tend to happen in the dark of night when nobody is around.” Since the arson attempt, the congregation has hired off-duty police officers to patrol the grounds during services and other events. Police are keeping an even closer eye on the synagogue since the shooting in early May was linked to Muhammad.

Law enforcement officials have identified suspects in some of the incidents, though no arrests have been made. Police continue to talk frequently with Temple Beth El officials about security issues, spokesman Jim Mattheis said.  The Anti-Defamation League and Temple Beth El’s security committee have trained congregation members in security, Goldberg said.  He and Glickman cited several possible reasons for the concentration of incidents at the synagogue:

• There are several hate groups in the Tacoma area. Since 1999, several of the groups increased their memberships and visibility.

•The synagogue is on a major thoroughfare, making it highly visible and easy to find.

• While Seattle has numerous synagogues, including some with close to 1,000 families or more, Tacoma has only one allowing its enemies to focus on a single location.

“We’re not panicking,” Glickman said. “At the same time, we’re being prudent.”
Glickman stressed the synagogue is a safe place. “The atmosphere is one of calm determination to keep on going and not get distracted,” he said. “We have a lot of work to do as Jews still in making the world a better place, and that’s our prime area of focus.”