Pearl's Death Ends an Era of Complacency

By GIL TROY

The Forward, MARCH 1, 2002

Even in this epoch of disillusion and death, the brutal beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl is depressing and unnerving. The pre-kidnapping boast of Ahmed Omar Sheikh, the chief suspect in the case, that he was going to seize someone who is "anti-Islam and a Jew," leaves little doubt why Daniel Pearl was targeted.

And what the Associated Press reported as Pearl's final words offer a 21st century twist on the traditional religious expression of Jewish martyrdom. Medieval Jewish martyrs went to their deaths affirming "Sh'ma Yisrael — Hear O' Israel... the Lord is One." Pearl's expression was more identity-based, less theological: "I am a Jew, my mother is a Jew."

That Pearl died as he did, saying what he said, whether voluntary or not, represents the collapse of a worldview he shared with so many of us. Pearl was born in 1963. I was born in 1961. We were raised in America's post-Auschwitz meritocracy. The rules of the game were quite clear and extraordinarily empowering. If we worked hard, if we excelled, we could be whoever and whatever we wanted to be. We could be as Jewish or as un-Jewish as we liked, for we were Americans first. Anti-Semitism was a thing of the past. It was a very real burden to Holocaust survivors, and a somewhat useful and even lucrative obsession to the Anti-Defamation League and federation fundraisers, but it would not shape our futures.

Our American identity lacked the simplistic and jingoistic arrogance of the early baby boomers. Coming of age during Watergate and Vietnam, we did not love our country uncritically. In fact, we grew up in a time when the emerging counter-cultural media ethos taught us that one of the most authentic and effective ways we could love our country was by being critical. We were cynical progressives, shorn of the naive assumptions of the 1950s and 1960s. We knew that presidents could lie and governments could stumble.

We had, however, a different faith, and a different arrogance. We assumed that our open search for truth and our commitment to excellence could both fix the problems plaguing humanity and make us a light unto the world.

Just as our American identities helped us transcend our Jewish identities, our professional identities helped us transcend our American identities. We became lawyers, doctors, professors and journalists with a vengeance. As cosmopolitan citizens of the professional world, what we did defined who we were. And here, too, we were blessed by a remarkable freedom to pursue whatever career paths we wished. We knew we were lucky; many of us were well aware of the limits that had been imposed on our immigrant grandparents or parents. But we, whose names had already been shortened, whose accents were already perfect, didn't have to do the assimilating. We simply had to achieve.

Thinking back to my own years at Harvard University in the early 1980s, I remember one of my first conversations with my roommates, when Messrs. Troy, Mattis and Evall each laid down our ethnic cards on the table. We admitted that our lives would look different had we carried our grandfathers' names: Troyansky, Mattusewitz, Evallenko. With our malleable identities, we also felt free to surprise even ourselves with our eventual career choices. One college buddy who seemed most likely to be a senator is now a rabbi; one who seemed most likely to be a chemist is now a lawyer, and the one most likely to be a lawyer, me, is now a historian.

In worshiping at the altar of professionalism, we revered the blue-chip temples that we might enter: Harvard University, Morgan Stanley, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal. Such institutions provided their own identities — and their own protections — or so we thought.

Recent events have mocked so many of these assumptions, shattering this worldview. Yasser Arafat and the Palestinians' war has unleashed — or uncovered — a vicious, uncontrollable anti-Semitism that targets all Jews, no matter what we believe, no matter where we live. The butchery of September 11 illustrated that there are people out there targeting all Americans, no matter what we believe, no matter where we live.

Pearl's murder only reinforces the point. The anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism of Muslim fundamentalists is so extreme, so virulent and so violent that nothing can insulate us from it. It does not matter if you are an objective journalist. It does not matter if you work for a blue-chip firm. It does not even matter if your work actually explains the motives of these murders to an uncomprehending world.

Pearl died for the dual "crimes" of being an American and being a Jew. Neither his professional identity nor his blue-chip firm could save him. It is clear from all the news stories about him that he loved being an American, that he relished the opportunities he gleaned from the great American meritocratic sweepstakes. It is not clear whether Pearl was a Joe Lieberman-traditional Jew or a Woody Allen-ethnic Jew, whether he loved being Jewish or even thought much about it. One hopes that having paid the ultimate price for being who he was, he at least received some satisfaction for it when he was alive.

Perhaps one of the best responses we can have to this renewed anti-Semitism is a renewed commitment to finding a meaningful Jewish path for each of us to follow. And there should be no doubt that all of us, as his survivors, must redouble our efforts to defeat this scourge and return to a world where our democratic and meritocratic delusions can thrive once again.