An Open Letter to Senator Durbin regarding waterboarding

Dear Senator Durbin,

Yesterday we memorialized the victims of the Nazis. As a Jewish educator, I struggled with the purpose of memorializing since my job is to facilitate the process.
Some have taught that it is a commandment “to remember,” while other’s say that memory for its own sake is a waste of time and other resources. These people believe that memory must lead to hope and change.
I voted for the Democratic Party and President Obama, with his platform for change, but I want to be sure that change is synonymous with progress. Hitler was a change from the Weimar Republic, but he was anything but an improvement.
I share these thoughts with you in the context of what most occupied my thinking yesterday. What occupies my mind, and was magnified in the shadow of the memory of the Holocaust, is the torture perpetrated by American officials, paid with my tax dollars, in the water boarding stories which fill our nations newspapers and broadcasts.
Those who remember strictly because of the loss during the Holocaust, and those who remember because memory can be a catalyst for progressive action, would both agree that we ought never become like those who victimized us.
On this Holocaust Memorial Day, many people rightfully thought of, and were called to action about, the genocide in Darfur. As my teacher, Rabbi David Wolpe taught, the greatest tragedy of the 20th century was not the Nazi Holocaust, it was the Cambodian holocaust which followed because the world was clearly aware of the atrocities human beings are capable of, and they still did not intervene.
This Yom HaShoah, the greater evil is the water boarding because we Americans perpetrated it, collectively, and not enough of us individuals took part in stopping it. Now that it is over, there remains a small window for justice.
In the Talmud, we learn that the world and strict justice could not co-exist. We had to relent if we wanted a world. We needed to give up strict justice. The same applies now. We desire justice, but it is complicated. Did the individual perpetrators follow our laws? Did the law makers act ethically? Did we put our own security needs over the human rights of the victims?
I understand that there is a difference between laws and ethics, and that it is not only about enforcement. As my legislator, I hope and trust that you will legislate to the highest moral standards.
In the aftermath of the torture American officials perpetrated against their victims, I hope you will legislate with the most common phrase associated with the Holocaust; “Never again!” Senator Durbin, you have the power to legislate in such a way as to memorialize our temporary fall from human civility and to assure that we do not let ourselves stray again. This should be your charge as you work through the process of investigation and consequence in this misguided epoch in our American history. Please turn this memory into politics and laws that assure American and human decency. Your righteous leadership can make “never again” work for all of humanity.

Most sincerely,

David Steiner