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Torture? - 11/0707

I remember when the movie, “Titanic” came out. After the three hours of enduring such a spectacular disaster love story, I asked myself why I subject myself to such torture? That thought was half about watching a romantic drama end so tragically, and half about my deep-seated fear of drowning. Not that any of us can choose how we leave this world, but I for one, know I don’t want to drown at sea, especially in cold water, and spend an hour knowing I can’t escape. To me, that would be torture.

This memory returned to my mind while listening to the recent public debate about the legality of waterboarding, that infamous interrogation technique which simulates the sensation of drowning. That the new Attorney General of the United States of America, Mr. Michael Mukasey, cannot unequivocally condemn the use of waterboarding shocks my conscience as a rabbi, as a Jew and as an American.

Back in September, Jews were all abuzz with the news that an Orthodox Jew was nominated for the position of Attorney General, only the second in history after Ed Levi who served with President Ford in the 1970s. Back then in September, the American Jewish Congress made a formal statement supporting Mukasey’s nomination, assuming he would make a clear departure from Attorneys General Ashcroft and Gonzales. He was sold to the public as the one who was going to end the nepotism in the Justice Department and the twisting of Constitutional law to empower the CIA to continue to employ various torture methods in the “war on terror” – torture methods like waterboarding, head-slapping, hours naked in a frigid cell, long periods manacled in stress positions, and sleep deprivation achieved with thundering rock music.

That was back in September.

But even after last week’s ambivalent statement by Mukasey calling waterboarding “repugnant” and “over the line” but not necessarily illegal, to my knowledge there has been no further Jewish statement about his becoming the Attorney General. In fact, I found a clearly anti-Semitic website that asked a more pointed question: Why haven’t any Jewish Senators stood up to oppose his nomination?

While Senators Clinton, Durbin, Biden, Reid and Leahy have publicly stated that if Mukasey can’t call waterboarding torture, he would not have their vote, the website asked, where are Senators Feinstein, Boxer, Schumer and Levin? Are they all lining up for the Jewish nominee? Is this a Jewish power play? And to my utter dismay, Senators Schumer and Feinstein broke ranks with their party Tuesday and cleared the way for Mukasey’s confirmation, which happened late last night in the Senate.

And why, Rabbi, you ask, are you paying attention to a lunatic, UFO watching conspiracy theory group posting on the internet whose opposition to Mukasey has nothing to do with his ethics on torture and everything to do with his being another Jew taking over our country? Because sometimes, and I emphasize sometimes, our critics are the best at pointing out our most vulnerable flaws, the ones we know we have to face, but won’t admit. And one of those flaws just might be that we are not always willing to hold a Jewish candidate for office to the same high standards we require of others.

I am pretty sure that we, Jews, have more of a conscience on this issue of torture than appears on the surface of things. I am fairly confident that most Jews were outraged when we learned about the secret prisons in Afghanistan, Thailand and Eastern Europe where CIA teams held Qaeda terrorists, and where torture tactics were used freely and sometimes combined.

I am pretty sure we, as Jews, were disgusted when we learned that when these extraordinary rendition sites were operational, they were modeled after Egyptian and Saudi detention centers where our CIA agents took their training. I am nearly positive that, as Jews, we were all outraged to learn that the legal experts, serving in the highest positions in our country, ruled in multiple secret memoranda that while torture is against constitutional and international law, the CIA was immune from the prohibitions of “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment. And I am reasonably confident that we were all disappointed when it became clear that even the McCain Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 hasn’t forced any change in the CIA’s torture practices in Guantanamo Bay.

The question is: does our fear of terrorism outweigh all the disgust, the disappointment, all this moral sentimentalism? Like Mukasey, we may bristle when we hear about this stuff, but if it can save 2000 or 3000 lives, might it be worth it to torture a few people? Perhaps even to torture a few innocent people? What do you think? Are you a little unsure?

Perhaps you noticed I said, “I am reasonably sure,” “I nearly certain,” “I am fairly confident,” “I am almost positive.” The truth is I am not absolutely certain about how any of us feels at this moment. Or what any of our reactions were when we heard the news: that not only was America holding prisoners without charges, without trials, without representation, and without any expectation of ever being released, but we have also been torturing them for information they may or may not have.

I think we are all a little ambivalent on this moral precipice. We are all soft on this matter of Constitutional and International law. Somewhere in our minds lurks the question, to save lives could it be worth it? So let’s add a more deeply Jewish dimension to our thinking. After all, that is what we are here for. It’s why we come to Temple: to put the Jewish voice into play as we confront the ethical dilemmas of our lives. And that’s my job- to speak for that Jewish voice.

You don’t have to dig far and deep to discover the voice and to hear the call. It all comes from the Torah and it calls out in words we all know. Right from Genesis when God makes the first human beings, God makes them in God’s own image. From the very start our tradition imbues us with a powerful sense of the dignity and significance of every human being. We are madeb’zelem elohim in God’s image. In Jewish tradition, humiliating the living and even dishonoring the dead are direct affronts to God. In Jewish tradition, our obligation to treat others with dignity is not conditional on what sort of person stands before us. Even a foreign slave whose labor and body belonged to another was considered by our Sages of the past to possess intrinsic dignity and had to be compensated if he was injured or humiliated. The Rabbis even said their own decrees could be overridden rather than be used to rob a person of his dignity.

And don’t think this is just a theory. Fast forward to the modern State of Israel, whose Supreme Court outlaws torture, and requires all prisoners to be provided with food, shelter, sleep in a proper bed, and everything needed to meet their physical, religious and cultural needs. This is tachlis. This is making the tradition live and integral in Israeli society and its also the moral foundation of American Jews and Jews everywhere.

Bottom line: the Jewish position on Abu Ghraib? It was heinous. The Jewish position on waterboarding? Immoral. The Jewish position on sleep deprivation, the manipulation of heat and cold, manacled stress positions---unthinkable. The rabbis didn’t care about whether you are Republicans or Democrats. They read the Torah, as I do, to require that we all act in moral ways. And the litmus test of morality begins with recognizing that every human being is made in the divine image. And from that we must know that the ones we accuse of criminal acts must still be treated humanely. It has been said that you can judge a society by how it treats people accused of violating its laws.

The United States of America has long been one of the world’s most influential nations, for upholding principles that granted fundamental human rights, even for those accused of and convicted of criminal offenses. As we turn to torture of persons not even formally accused in a court of law, we lose that influence among the nations of the world.

That’s evil. And that spreads evil.

Al Gore makes the case in his book, The Assault on Reason, that fear after September 11th has come to define America’s foreign and domestic policy. Its fear, unreasonable fear. Fear of the stranger, fear of the other, Fear-- that has led us to undermine our most important American principles. The only problem with fear is that it is not reasonable. Fear is a capricious emotion not always based in reality. And Gore argues that we should we not allow ourselves to be paralyzed or held hostage by our fears. You might reply, “But Rabbi, we are living in a different world now, a world where terrorism can reach our shores.” But the rabbi, the Jew, and the American patriot in me cries out in response: The goal of terrorism itself is to instill fear in us with minimal effort.

Terrorists are small bands of people, who need to make a big headline with their limited resources. Our fear feeds and emboldens them. It helps them succeed. And our fear diminishes us if we cede our moral high ground, when we bend the Constitution beyond recognition and abandon our own sense of ethics and humanity, trying to allay our fears by doing evil. You’ve probably never heard me use the word evil before tonight. There is enough evil in the world already without Americans waterboarding prisoners, without Americans torturing anyone in any way. There is enough evil in the world without Jews giving up our principle of b’tzelem elohim- every human being is created in the image of God and is deserving of their humanity and their dignity.

There are enough Jewish politicians in the world without adding Mukasey to the list. And this rabbi cannot be silent in this holy place about placing such a politician- Jewish or not- in charge of the Justice Department who says of torture, “repugnant but not necessarily illegal.” We are proud Jews and we are proud Americans.

We can do much better. And next time around, we should.


Rabbi Batsheva Meiri