cellio | fear

Apparently, last Friday night FBI agents visited several synagogues and told people to lock their doors during services. I am curious whether they also visited mosques and churches during worship services. I haven't heard of this happening at synagogues Saturday morning, by the way, and for many congregations that would be the larger gathering.

It reminds me of last September. As the high holy days and the anniversary of 9/11 both approached, a few people asked me how I could possibly consider going to services and being a target. Excuse me while I decline to panic. If we refuse to go on with our lives and do the things that are important, which for me include worshipping in my community, then the terrorists and fear-mongers will have won. And if a synagogue has ushers who greet people as they come in, I personally think that's a better compromise than locking the doors. There is a continuum from "reckless" to "paranoid", and the correct point is somewhere in the middle.

And while we're talking about extreme responses to fear... the folks at FEMA have apparently suggested that Americans stock up on plastic sheeting and duct tape, so we can seal ourselves into our houses in the event of a chemical attack. Here's a wonderful response (link provided by chite).

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I'm really glad the shiva minyan went well... It sounds like it was a little nerve wracking but that it went smoothly.

As for living in fear, other than taking the normal precautions, I plan on attending services per usual. I've not heard any warnings in our neck of the woods (though we have a very small shul, about 200 families), but I'm sure the larger temples have.

I'm with you on this. This nonsense of plastic sheeting reminds me of nothing quite so much as 50s duck-and-cover exercises: somewhere between useless and actively harmful, feeding the general tone of paranoia.

Personally, my attitude is to keep my eyes open, but not really change what I do. There would have to be a lot of attacks (or a really huge one) for them to materially affect my day-to-day chances of injury or death. The simple reality is that the plate of carbonara I just finished is probably more dangerous to me than terrorist attacks...

This nonsense of plastic sheeting reminds me of nothing quite so much as 50s duck-and-cover exercises: somewhere between useless and actively harmful, feeding the general tone of paranoia.

Yup. When I was a teenager I sent away for my free copy of some government agency's guide to nuclear war (FEMA? someone else?). It was a fascinating read, and taught me how to build a bomb shelter in my backyard with tools around the house and what to put in it. Said bomb shelter might have protected me from a conventional bomb, but wouldn't have done squat against anything bigger. Same with the plastic and duct tape.

I wonder if Fred Small has updated his song "Dig a Hole in the Ground"? (I intended to learn it during the last gulf war, but concluded that it was too dated. It might be worth another look....)

Well said!

A.
(in a rush or she'd write a long reply. :)

the folks at FEMA have apparently suggested that Americans stock up on plastic sheeting and duct tape, so we can seal ourselves into our houses in the event of a chemical attack.

Sounds to me like someone's saying, "gee, we'd better cover our butts so if something does happen nobody will roast us for not warning anyone."

However, I agree that this is ridiculous.

If there were a known threat to a certain area of the country - even if it were, say, New York City, or LA - then it might make some sense to have the suggestion for those areas. But just a blanket statement?

I was in Israel in spring of '98. Things were tense between Clinton and Saddam, and Israelis saw a threat of scuds being fired at Israel again. It was also long enough after the gulf war that many of the gas masks which had been distributed then were no longer effective. The governement made blanket statements of this sort, and the result was rather chaotic. (You'd think that Israelis, having survived the gulf war as well as everything else would've been blasé... but that wasn't the case.) Plastic sheeting was also selling like hotcakes.

I spent several surreal hours one afternoon waiting for a gasmask in Canyon Malka (the Jerusalem Mall), only to find out that as a non-israeli I couldn't pick one up. The official word was that should there be a problem, I could go to the U.S. Embassy and pick one up. (Great - if there's a scud attack, the first thing I want to do is take the bus from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. Although they probably would've distributed from the U.S. Consulate thingy in Jersualem as well...) I think I wasn't the only one disturbed by this, because the next day a program was announced where people could buy gasmasks for 200 NIS (about $60 at the time, more or less affordable even for me) and return them for half price later if desired. So I went into one of the department stores in downtown Jerusalem for the first time (2nd floor, Lingere... 5th floor: children's toys and Gas masks) with some friends of mine and dealt with my nervousness by describing in detail the side effects of Atrophine. (The anti-nerve gas drug that came with the masks) (This was not appreciated by my friends, who were already worried about things like wearing the masks with asthma, beards, glasses, etc.)

<cynical>But maybe it's in the interest of our government to induce panic, hysteria, and panic buying of plastics. It would certainly stimulate the economy, something that the other policies coming out of washington don't seem to be doing.</cynical>

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