PEARL RECRIMINATIONS: Judith Weiss has a post over at KesherTalk that's gotten quite a bit of attention in the Blogosphere in the last couple of days, in which she criticizes Mariane Pearl, the widow of murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, for her decision to raise the couple's infant son, Adam, as a Buddhist. Mariane is herself a French-born convert from Christianity to Buddhism, and Weiss feels that by declining to raise her son in the faith of his late father, Mariane Pearl is not only "betraying" her husband, but is even guilty of "an act of ethnic cleansing."
Now KesherTalk is a great blog, and I certainly have the utmost respect for Judith Weiss as a writer. But in this instance she's way, way out of line. Yes, Daniel Pearl died as a hero in the service of his religion, his country, and his profession, and it's undoubtedly a tragedy that he never lived to see the birth of his son. But how is Pearl's heroism and martyrdom in any way damaged by his widow's very personal decision to raise her infant son the way she personally sees fit (in her own religion, as opposed to her husband's)? And even moreso, how is that anyone's business other than her own? For Weiss to somehow doubt Mariane Pearl's love of her husband for this reason, when I would imagine she has never met either of them, is nothing short of shameful.
Is Weiss suggesting that it is Mariane Pearl's obligation to embrace (if not convert to) a religion that is not her own, and has never been her own? Is it really fair for her to compare the French-born Mariane, who is an American citizen, to Vichy-era French neighbors who stood by and watched as Jews were shipped off to Auschwitz? And how can Mariane's personal religious beliefs even be considered in the same universe as the genocidal practice known as "ethnic cleansing"?
I am a Jew, I come from a family of Jews, and I fully expect to one day raise Jewish children. But to question the morality of others based on their personal familial and religious decisions is not only un-Jewish, but un-American. Weiss' argument is in line with the worst kind of Jewish elitism, the condescension towards gentiles to which I have long been exposed in various Jewish communities in which I have lived. It's the attitude that caused friends of mine in college to refuse to speak to another friend who had taken on a non-Jewish girlfriend. The attitude that if the son of a Jewish father must be raised as a gentile, then he might as well not even be alive.
Weiss seems to feel so strongly about her argument because Mariane Pearl "reminds" her of various people from her past- an in-law, a friend of her ex-boyfriend, and those who practice "the shiny, well-scrubbed Buddhism of lean expat Europeans with Lonely Planet guides in their backpacks." But those others (such as the guy with an Israel-less world map on his wall) clearly were anti-Semitic- is Weiss actually suggesting that this makes Mariane a Jew-hater? And since, once again, Judith Weiss does not know Mariane Pearl, I consider it an enormous and very unfair leap to accuse her of such horrible things, when all she wishes to do is raise her young son, by herself, after her husband was viciously murdered by evil terrorists in Pakistan. I believe the only right thing is to allow her to grieve, and live her life, in the way in which she sees fit. And if this woman, who has never been a Jew, chooses to not raise her son as a Jew, then so be it.