Sunday, October 30, 2011

Patriotism

This past summer, I had the opportunity to sit on a Toronto panel of chaplains and religious figures addressing a range of legal/ethical questions – organ transplant, contraception, battlefield ethics and more.

When the discussion turned to the death penalty, another panelist criticized the American use of capital punishment. An Anglican priest took the opportunuty to mock the American practice of giving medical treatment to prisoners on Death Row.

Part of me was upset because her point was morally repugnant – to suggest that prisoners should be allowed to suffer because they are going to be executed anyway is absurd, and would amount to legalized prison cruelty.

But part of me was upset as an American, taking her knock on the government and criminal justice system personally. The setting was wrong for calling her on it [the context was a talk with a group of Canadian, Israeli and Arab medical students – not the time/place to discuss America-bashing], so I had to let it go. But I stewed after that one for a long time.

I'm still surprised by how strongly I reacted. I am proud of much of America, but as someone who has wanted to make aliyah for the past 20 years, and as someone who has a decent degree of cynicism about American government and its system of justice, I would not have expected to take her comment so personally. Go figure.

3 comments:

  1. If you have wanted to make aliya for 20 years, what is stopping you? Don't you feel like RIHAL in the Kuzari who said that the tefilla of diaspora Jews for kibbutz galuyot is like "the twittering of birds. Meileh I can understand the assimilated Jews for who cannot understand that we are in reshit tzmichat geulateinu and even the chareudim who have a misguided opposition to modern Zionism. What is your excuse? I hope that you can accept this as the sincere tocheicha it is meant to be.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Attack from the outside always feels worse than critique from the inside.

    ReplyDelete
  3. David-
    Of course I accept it as intended. And certainly, anyone who is not doing what he really wants to do must question himself. However, I know why I am here and it's for a reason I know to be correct in the lens of הלכה and השקפה.

    Steg-
    Very true.

    ReplyDelete