In all of this recent brouhaha over the so-called "Ground-Zero Mosque," I heard some guy ask, "Okay, it's hollowed ground, but just when does the grieving stop?"
Never, sir, for an historian. Historians go to Gettysburg, stand over the mass graves there marked only by regiment, unspool the Gettysburg Address or the poetry of Emily Dickenson in their heads, (Ample make this bed/Make this bed with awe/In it wait till judgement break/Excellent and fair) and then cry like babies.
The passage of time does not make an injustice magically just, nor does it make suffering any the less tragic, or heroic. In the last great Jewish revolt of the 2nd century, Rabbi Akiba was skinned alive by the Romans, slowly, spouting Torah the whole time. I still shiver to think of it. No longer a teen-ager, I can watch the end of Spartacus with dry eyes, but I can't think of Daniel Pearl without weeping. If you're waiting for me to get over the image of Americans crossing themselves and then jumping off the 104th floor to keep from being burned alive, I'm afraid you've got a very, very long wait.
Hi Alice, this is Chris's Lodge Brother John. I must agree with all you say about the grieving over the atrocities committed on 9/11/2001 much the same as the one committed on 12/7/1941.
ReplyDeleteIt was suggested to me that if one was to simply bury a pig on the site of the new mosque it would not be built. Nuff said.