She is considered a rising star of Arizona; some say she’s going to be the first woman president. The one supporting the possession of firearms is still fighting for her life.
Apparently, quite a few Israelis have heard about Debbie Friedman, who passed away this week, barely 59 years old. She’s a musician who brought about a revolution, who composed many hundreds of verses and prayers sung in the synagogues of America, mainly reformist synagogues, every Sabbath. The music she grew up on was that of the ‘60s. She sang American folk — while there were those who also recognized in it light influences of the kibbutz voices.
Friedman volunteered in Israel for six months, instead of going to college. After that, she came back to America and invented the music of the American synagogue. No more singing choir and listening audience — Friedman was the pioneer that introduced to the temple the sing-along of the American folk music with guitar. A whole generation of rabbis and cantors was raised on her melodies. For an entire generation of worshipers, the Judaism rings in the ears like the sweet tunes of Friedman.
On Sunday, Friedman — who had influenced the image of the American Jewry much more than most of the rabbis and the busy bees and the leaders — died. And on that day, the congregation gathered in the synagogue in Tucson, Arizona, in order to sing “The One Who Blessed” for those in need of healing, in the familiar melody of hers. “The One Who Blessed” was intended for a patient in a critical but stable condition, Jewish member of Congress Gabrielle Giffords. Gabby. Friedman died before her time, but Giffords is 20 years younger than her and surviving so far, despite being shot in her head from a point blank range, in spite of premature reports about her death — maybe thanks to this prayer, too.
Offenses of the Provocateurs and those Provoked
Rabbi Stephanie Aaron is congresswoman Giffords’ rabbi. Precisely a year ago, several days before Tu Bishvat, she went to watch the film “Yossi and Jagar.” Aaron learned a lesson from the movie and combined it with the story of Moshe [Moses] and Yitro, and the story of the giving of the Torah to the Jewish People at Mt. Sinai which was read in the synagogue that week: one should listen to the voice of their fellow man.
You can tie this theme to some other relevant ends. One connection: Giffords too revealed her Jewish roots, got attached to them through Israel — through a journey here in 2001. As a daughter to a Christian mother and a Jewish father, she needed the Israeli touch to help her to make a decision, to choose a right religion for herself.
And one more connection: In the focus of the public debate in America this week, there had been a question about the Americans’ capability of hearing out their brethren, their political opponents. This is also a customary ritual in the Israeli context. The political dispute is getting hotter, the winds are raging, the words are not chosen carefully, violence is permeating the public discourse, and then here are accusations of instigation, counter-accusations and offenses of the instigators and instigated. And so forth.
39 Jewish legislators are members of the 112th Congress. This is a decrease of six compared to the 111th Congress, which was dismissed few weeks ago — a decline of one point in the percentage of Jews on Capitol Hill from 8.4 to 7.3 percent. And this is still is an impressive representation for the community, which in its entirety is less than two percent of the American population in general.
As a matter of fact, the Jews are also a religious group enjoying over-representation in the Congress more than any other group. Unlike them, atheists have a shortage of representation: in the American Congress, comprised of 535 members, there is not even one legislator who defines himself as an “atheist.” This is despite 15 percent of the general population belonging to these groups of “no religion.”
She Needs, First of All, to Keep Living
Giffords, before she was shot, was a rising star, on her way to the top. Perhaps she’s still going to make it. She’s a Democratic lawmaker who managed to get elected in a very conservative district, from the city of Tucson southward, in Arizona, on the Mexican border. Her standpoints are corresponding: for instance, she is an eager supporter of an American’s right to possess a firearm, according to the accepted interpretation of the Second Amendment to the American Constitution.
She also supports tightening of border control in the face of illegal intruders — an issue she also delved into during her last visit in Israel, with the Republican senator Jon Kyl of Arizona. Giffords and Kyl were maintaining good relations, and his condolence statement in the wake of shooting has emphasized their friendship. However, later on this week, he felt like an urgent need to join the chorus of the speakers trying to divert the fire of criticism pointed at the right. “We just have to acknowledge that there are mentally unstable people in this country,” he said. Kyl firmly rebuffed the efforts to blame right-wing political elements for agitation and responsibility for the assassination attempt on his friend Giffords.
Kyl hasn’t announced yet whether he’s coming back to contend in the coming round of elections, in two years. And some are thinking that should he opt to relinquish, Congresswoman Giffords would run for his seat in the Senate. And if not, she might want to be an Arizona governor. She knows how to gracefully attract attention — behind which lies an ambition that is hard to hide. In 2007, it was in fact her whom the public radio had picked as a new congresswoman to accompany the reports during the whole year.
The pictures of her riding on a bike, or in the company of her astronaut spouse, have found their way to the newspapers and the voters. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s the first or second female president of the United States,” a former Labor Secretary in the Clinton administration, Robert Reich, said once about her. But before one of these things happens, Giffords should recover enough to be able to come back to the political scene. She needs, first of all, to keep living.
A Guidance from God to Hit the President
A few days before the elections of 2008, I visited the beautiful preserved house of James Garfield, who was President of the United States for four months, until being shot and fatally wounded on July 2, 1881. The house is standing, usually deserted, in the northeast of the state of Ohio. On that day, too, it had almost no visitors — the attention was drawn several kilometers from there, toward the downtown of the adjacent city Cleveland, to a mass rally of someone who a minute later was going to be a President of the United States, Barack Obama. Already at that point, there had been concerns in the air: What about all these extremists likely to make an attempt at Obama’s life? The racists, the idiots, the berserks?
In Garfield’s house, you could catch the silence, but a sort of unsettling one. He was shot at the train station, on his way to vacation. Was it a political assassination? The assassin, Charles Guiteau, definitely felt that way. As he pointed the gun, he shouted: “Arthur will be president!” And indeed, Chester Arthur, Garfield’s vice president, arrived at this position after the death of the elected president from his wounds, several months after the shooting.
But Guiteau wasn’t exactly a political killer. He was, as somebody mentioned this week, “plainly delusional, quite possibly a paranoid schizophrenic.” He claimed that he received guidance from God to take the president out. Plus, he had another motive: He supported Garfield in the election campaign, even distributed propaganda materials, but was disappointed to find out that he didn’t get an appointment to an important post, as he expected — for example, like he wanted, the ambassadorship to Austria.
The conservative columnist George Will, who also referred to Garfield and other presidents who’d been murdered in his column this week, reminds that the assassin “was executed, not explained.” I want to say: there is no point in digging too deep into the killer’s motives — for in any case of a murder of a politician, there will be one or another political explanation hiding behind.
Gun Ownership is an “Arizona Tradition”
Someone who kills should be apprehended and grounded — not exempt from the responsibility on false claims with respect to “incitement” which had led him to extreme acts, or regarding “atmosphere” which had impaired his judgment faculties. One way or the other, Will joined the army of right-wing commentators who refused to get used to the intelligible but also problematic tendency to understand the killer. And against him — against the rest of this army — there stood an army geared with the well-known arguments: the one who incited is guilty as well; the one who didn’t keep his tone civil is guilty as well; the one who drew a political battle map with target markings on it is guilty as well.
As I have already written here in an earlier article this week, these accusations were a political act. The defense was also a political act. The six killed haven’t been brought to burial yet (they are the real victims of the meaningless massacre), it isn’t known yet if the attacked congresswoman will survive — but the murder has already served as a working tool in the hands of those belonging to Giffords’ political camp.
The Republicans were forced to re-think their steps, to postpone controversial votings (on the health reform), to try to assess the extent of the damage. However, it is doubtful if it’s going to have long-term results. America has been shocked for a moment or two; down the road it will be back to normal. Once in several years, there will appear such or another killer, unstable and freakish in one or another degree, who will pull his weapon out and open fire.
Those supporting restrictions on the purchase of weapons tried to leverage the bloodshed to convince the public. As usual, they are going to fail. Between 1990 and 2010, the number of supporters of easing the laws regarding weapons possession rose from 19 percent to 54 percent. The number of those seeking limitations and tougher laws dropped from 78 percent to 44 percent. The attempt to assassinate Giffords certainly won’t change this — for the legislator herself not only supported the citizens’ right to carry weapons, but even owned a licensed gun. A “Glock,” for those taking interest. In 2008, she opposed laws aiming to limit possession of weapons in Washington, D.C., and voted against them. Then she stated: “This is a common-sense decision that reaffirms the Constitutional right — and Arizona tradition — of owning firearms.”