Jennifer's Blog

Like lots of Jew­ish par­ents, my hus­band and I grap­pled with whether to keep our kids in a synagogue-run school or go pub­lic. We made the deci­sion to try pub­lic kinder­garten after mov­ing to an area where the near­est syn­a­gogue school was about half an hour away.

There were times that we wor­ried our daugh­ters would feel iso­lated in a school where most cel­e­brate Christ­mas. Luck­ily, this is not the case. Instead some­thing amaz­ing occurred.

One of our daugh­ters came home yes­ter­day and told me that her teacher asked if she could tell the class about Chanukah. She danced around the table while her voice rose to a deaf­en­ing shrill that only par­ents of young chil­dren tolerate,

“Mommy, will you come help me teach the class about Chanukah?!?”

I agreed and later emailed her teacher. I offered to accom­pany our daugh­ter and bring some sym­bols of Chanukah like a meno­rah, a book, a stuffed ani­mal that plays tra­di­tional Jew­ish songs and a Star of David.

To my sur­prise, her teacher was not only wildly sup­port­ive but informed me that the class is mak­ing a “Hol­i­days Around the World” book. She said the class is learn­ing about a dif­fer­ent coun­try each day and has chil­drens books on many reli­gious hol­i­days. She even added that the class has reserved one day to cook latkas, make paper meno­rahs and play the drei­del game. She invited our fam­ily to visit and give a joint pre­sen­ta­tion on Chanukah along with our daughter.

Our other daughter’s kinder­garten teacher emailed with the same sen­ti­ment. Her class is also cel­e­brat­ing “Hol­i­days Around the World” and she men­tioned that she just read her class The Only One Club by Jane Nal­i­boff (Flash­light Press, 2004). This book is a great asset to anyone’s library as it teaches kids that every­one is unique in some way. While it opens with a Jew­ish girl who starts “The Only One Club” after learn­ing she’s the only Jew­ish kid in her class, she quickly real­izes that each stu­dent has a unique trait that qual­i­fies them admit­tance into the same club. While this book is avail­able on Amazon.com, I was sur­prised our daughter’s teacher had a copy since I received mine from The PJ Library, a com­pany ded­i­cated to Jew­ish Children’s books.

Still, I am astounded at how multi-cultural Kinder­garten has become. Wouldn’t it be nice if all coun­tries in the world respected other coun­tries’ reli­gious prac­tices? But we know they don’t. In fact, we know many Mus­lim coun­tries teach their kids to hate Jews and Israelis at a remark­ably young age. I have blogged about Mid­dle East­ern tele­vi­sion shows using a faux Mickey Mouse to instill hatred against Jews and Israelis. This is just another sad exam­ple of how many Islamic coun­tries turn our cul­ture against us.

It would be a huge relief if we didn’t have to worry about ongo­ing ter­ror­ism in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Dar­fur, Indone­sia, Iraq, Kuwait, Kur­dis­tan, Lebanon, Pak­istan, the Philip­pines, Rus­sia, Soma­lia, Syria and Turkey. But we do. We also have to ago­nize over occa­sional attacks in Europe and the US. No coun­try is immune. In fact, we’re now real­iz­ing that the threat from within is stronger than we esti­mated. The recent ter­ror­ist attack at Ft. Hood, the largest mil­i­tary base in the US, is just another exam­ple of home­grown jihadists.

Daily sight­ings of ter­ror­ism, anti­semitism and hate mon­gers only fuel a future that looks bleak. So what can we do? Well, one thing we can do is stop teach­ing hate. After see­ing this video yes­ter­day, I won­dered how this man could call him­self Chris­t­ian (or for that mat­ter char­i­ta­ble). From what I can see, he hates his Jew­ish neigh­bors. His hatred seems oddly mis­placed and a tad ironic since Jesus was a Jew.

Know­ing our daugh­ters are in classes that show appre­ci­a­tion for world reli­gions goes a long way. Unlike kids that are smoth­ered by hate and pro­pa­ganda at an early age, I see hope when I gaze into our daugh­ters’ eyes. I dream of a day where every land can live in peace. When every coun­try can end civil war and take a cue from these kindergarteners.

What is it about pro golfer Tiger Woods’ recent car crash that has cap­ti­vated the world? Is it because he is one of the great­est ath­letes of all time? Or because he has gone to great lengths to keep his pri­vate life pri­vate? Is it because tabloids are spread­ing rumors that he’s involved in a love tri­an­gle with two hot­ties (his wife and the alleged mis­tress)? Or is it because this story oozes sex appeal, adul­tery, drugs, domes­tic bliss gone wrong and feeds on the hid­den desires of a sex­u­ally bored society?

What­ever it is, shouldn’t we just get over it? I mean the guy hit a fire hydrant and a tree in his own neigh­bor­hood. Isn’t that embar­rass­ment enough? Woods now has the daunt­ing task of not only fend­ing off the police that con­tin­u­ally attempt to inter­view him but also the press that will no doubt hound him for months to come. Then there is his wife, Ellen Norde­gren, to deal with. Woods has a lot of dam­age con­trol to do if the reports are true that Norde­gren bashed the rear win­dow of this Escalade out of anger.

Repair­ing an SUV rear wind­shield can occur in no time with the right body shop. But there are no quick fix to regain­ing trust in a mar­riage. In most cases, reestab­lish­ing trust takes months, even years. Unlike a dam­aged vehi­cle, in a mar­riage, both par­ties have to want to reconcile.

Given this, I say we as a soci­ety should do as Woods has asked and respect his pri­vacy. Who cares that the alleged mis­tress, Rachel Uchi­tel, has hired high-powered celebrity attor­ney, Glo­ria Allred? This is just more of the media-circus that no self-respecting indi­vid­ual should pay homage to unless you’re into the antics of the Col­orado bal­loon boy or the White House din­ner crashers.

Instead, con­sider how lucky you are. What about the 13 peo­ple killed and 31 injured in the Ft. Hood ter­ror­ist attack? Or what about the 57 peo­ple mas­sa­cred — includ­ing 12 jour­nal­ists— in the Philip­pines as they sought to add a new can­di­date to an upcom­ing governor’s race. Or how about the 26 peo­ple killed — includ­ing 18 peo­ple still miss­ing— that were on the elite pas­sen­ger train that derailed after a ter­ror­ist act in Rus­sia? Or even the US tanker car­ry­ing a crew of 28 that was just hijacked by Soma­lian pirates? It is with these peo­ple that our hearts, thoughts and prayers should go out to. Their fam­ily mem­bers will no doubt expe­ri­ence the lousi­est hol­i­day sea­son ever.

It’s a shame that sto­ries of sub­stance become pass­ing blips on our news chan­nels while sto­ries that lack sub­stance hog our head­lines. I think it’s high time we as a soci­ety adjust our moral com­pass. Do we want to be a soci­ety that divides or unites? A soci­ety dom­i­nated by voyeurism or altru­ism? I don’t know about you, but I vote for the lat­ter. In Judaism, we call this tikkun olam –repair­ing the world. So don’t sit this one out. From the looks of things, we have a lot of repair­ing to do.

The sil­ver screen is infa­mous for fea­tur­ing bum­bling intel­li­gence agents who hoard sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion from local agen­cies. This is not too far from the truth when it comes to the blood­bath at Ft. Hood. Con­sider the FBI mon­i­tored email exchanges released Sat­ur­day in the Wash­ing­ton Post. True to Oscar Wilde’s quote, “Real­ity imi­tates art far more than art imi­tates real­ity,” the inves­ti­ga­tion was amiss.

Here’s why. An FBI-led task force in San Diego inter­cepted emails between late 2008 and June 2009 between Hasan, the alleged Ft. Hood shooter, and a rad­i­cal Islamic cleric, Anwar al-Aulaqi. These emails dis­cussed covert finan­cial trans­fers and other steps that could trans­late Hasan’s thoughts into actions, accord­ing to sources briefed by the Post.

Keep in mind, news sources pub­lished in the wake of the tragedy that the semi-automatic Hasan pur­chased with cop-killer bul­lets was in August of 2009. It also brings up the ques­tion of why a mil­i­tary offi­cer would need a per­sonal semi-automatic. While there are plenty argu­ments against gun con­trol and wait­ing peri­ods, it might cre­ate a safety net if the armed forces knew when the sol­diers they’re train­ing for com­bat pur­chase semi-automatics on their own dime (or this case just over $1,000 for the FM 5.7 mil­lime­ter semi-automatic pis­tol Hasan toted not to men­tion the addtional cost of the per­sonal revolver in his other hand).

Fail­ure to Con­nect the Dots

Fail­ure to for­ward infor­ma­tion regard­ing a home­grown jihadist might seem pass­able in a Hol­ly­wood thriller but it is incred­i­bly irre­spon­si­ble in real­ity. While the media has not released any reports of civil cases against gov­ern­men­tal agen­cies to my knowl­edge, I wouldn’t be sur­prised if they multiply.

The Post also reported that while Hasan’s emails to the Iman began as reli­gious queries, the tone became more spe­cific before he relo­cated to Texas. Besides killing 13 in cold blood and injur­ing 30 more, who knows what addi­tional dam­age he may have caused the enlisted men and women he coun­seled. There have been reports of a high sui­cide rate at Ft. Hood. Just how many attempted or suc­cess­ful sui­cides were under Hasan’s care?

It would seem likely that if the intel­li­gence agen­cies had a pol­icy of open com­mu­ni­ca­tion and knew that high rank­ing offi­cials would hold them account­able then its plau­si­ble Ft. Hood could have expe­ri­enced another outcome.

A num­ber of peo­ple inter­viewed that knew Hasan said they observed warn­ing signs. How­ever, none of these com­plaints went to a sin­gle gate­keeper that could act on this infor­ma­tion. Sadly, if a sin­gle gatekeeper’s office tracked and assessed his actions there could have been an inter­ven­tion by authorities.

More than likely, no one is con­nect­ing the dots and iden­ti­fy­ing poten­tial human time bombs when they see them. Mil­i­tary per­son­nel from the high­est ranks down needs to know the poten­tial warn­ing signs that can lead to vio­lent acts like shoot­ing sprees,  sui­cides, etc. There are a num­ber of well-researched assess­ments that estab­lish sui­ci­dal and vio­lent behav­ior indi­ca­tors for adults as well as ado­les­cents. High schools on down have had to rely on such assess­ments after the Columbine case made know­ing the warn­ing signs manda­tory. It appears our mil­i­tary forces and national secu­rity agen­cies have some work to do to break away from their exist­ing silos, report warn­ing signs to a cen­tral assess­ment depart­ment, make trans­parency between agen­cies a real­ity and ulti­mately prac­tice mea­sures early-on that can save lives and pre­vent tragedies like Ft. Hood from ever occur­ring again.