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The Jewish Citizen
              by Donald H. Harrison
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Our solidarity with South Koreans

SAN DIEGO—Like many in my generation I can remember how insecure my parents felt about the standing of Jews in the United States. They knew of jobs, neighborhoods and country clubs that refused entry to people just because they were Jews. They feared that latent anti-Semitism might someday burst to the surface as it had in Europe.  Invariably, whenever something bad happened, the fear would jump to my mother's lips. "I just hope no Jews are involved!" she'd say.

In the aftermath of the massacre at Virginia Tech, I have learned that our Jewish community is not the only one that suffers such fears. South Koreans across the country expressed similar insecurity, apologizing for the actions of the killer, Cho Seung-Hui, and expressing the hope in interviews and at prayer services that Americans will understand how profoundly grief-stricken they are that a countryman of theirs could be responsible. 

It was enough to make your heart break twice: first for the victims of the Virginia Tech massacre, most of whom were simply sitting in their classrooms when death came and found them, and second for the extra measure of anguish that the blameless South Korean community is feeling.

I remember back to November 22, 1963, the day of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, when it was announced that police believed they had captured the assassin, and how my mother spontaneously prayed aloud, "O God, please don't let him be Jewish." And I can still see my mother cringe when later in those awful blurred days of tragedy, Oswald was murdered in full view of the television cameras and the shooter turned out to be Jack Ruby, a Jew.  Watching your mother turn white with fear is a memory difficult to erase.

Of course, the Korean community is not in any way accountable for the actions of Cho Seung-Hui, any more than the Jewish community was responsible for those of Jack Ruby.  Both our communities include people of many descriptions, including some very good and, alas, some very bad.

I want to express my solidarity with the South Korean community, and to hope that they, like the rest of us who mourn, may soon find comfort.

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Sometimes in tragedies such as this massacre, although all the victims suffered similar fates, the names of one or two individuals leap to the fore.  In the Holocaust, of course, there was Anne Frank, who came to symbolize the unrealized hopes of the children of the Shoah.  In the bombing of the cafeteria at Hebrew University, there was San Diego's own Marla Bennett who, not long before her death, had written how just in choosing which route to walk from one place to another in terror-stricken Jerusalem, she had felt that she was making a life or death decision.  Her story, ironic in light of what subsequently happened to her, personalized the tragedy for millions of people around the world.

It was the turn at Virginia Tech, unfortunately and ironically on Yom Hashoah, for Liviu Librescu to emerge as the unforgettable victim.  A Romanian by birth, he had survived the Nazi Holocaust of his childhood. What memories must have come back to haunt him as he heard the gunman repeatedly firing his weapon as he came closer and closer to the classroom where Librescu taught engineering! 

And what nobility the professor demonstrated by using his own body to bar the door as some students jumped from the second-story window to safety and others hid behind overturned desks.  The bullets that penetrated through the door found their target in Librescu, who in that moment came to forever symbolize the role that faculty members serve as mentors to students. And may every student who ever bridled at a professor who graded too hard, or seemed unyielding on the deadline for an assignment, always remember the true spirit of teaching as represented in that moment by Professor Librescu!  Librescu died a hero, shm'a yisroel.

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Cho's known derangement brings
medical ethics issues to the fore

By Joel Moskowitz, MD

SAN DIEGO—There has been considerable discussion in the media about whether authorities should have intervened in the life of Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui, perhaps by committing him to a mental institution before he went on his rampage.  As a retired forensic psychiatrist, this is a subject that interests me deeply.  Some background and questions need to be considered.

In 1974, a legal decision came into the mental health therapeutic
relationship.  A graduate student from India at the University of
California at Berkley had emotional feelings for Tatiana Tarasoff, a
student from Brazil.  He had never dated before, only kissed her a few
times and was incensed at what he perceived her flaunting her dating other
men.  Mr. Poddar, the Naval architecture student, sought help at the
University Health Services.  He told Dr. Moore that he intended to kill
Tatianna.  He intended to get a gun and shoot her.  Dr. Moore alerted the
Campus police and asked that they arrange for Mr. Poddar's psychiatric
hospitalization.  The campus police having interviewed Mr. Poddar and
obtaining his promise that he would stay away from Ms. Tarasoff released
him.

Over the summer Tatianna went to visit her aunt in Brazil.  Meanwhile
Poddar moved in with her brother!  When she returned, he stalked and
stabbed her to death.

Subsequent legal decision mandated that a therapist bears a duty to warn people who might be threatened as the result of a patient's deranged mental condition. This presents a conundrum.  What about confidentiality?  Who is able with any accuracy to predict the actions of another? Not even a psychic psychiatrist.

There is an aphorism that psychiatrists are best at predicting the past!
In the case of the Virginia Tech killer, there were many signals even to
the extent that the State of Virginia found that he was a danger.  How did
this menace wind up living in a dorm?  On a recent TV news show, an
'expert' from John Jay College of Justice in New York remarked that there
were several on campus who were unstable and whose actions might lead to
violence.  If he knows this, why isn't something being done to detect and
correct these dangerous persons and situations?   Should applicants to
college have to consider how dangerous their fellow students might be before deciding what college to attend?

Have Americans become inured to the strange and bizarre in the service of
allowing people to do 'their own thing'.  Cho, in retrospect, was reported as weird, isolative, noncommunicative, a writer of disturbing stories, and as one who behaved in antisocial ways such as stalking female
students.  Experienced mental health clinicians will readily admit that
emotionally distressed persons give many signals before they act in
antisocial or violent ways.  Often they tell their physicians who miss the
albeit masked cry for help.

Is there some wider lesson? If we accept that past behavior is the most
decisive criteria, can we conclude that groups whose philosophy is tinged
with threats, rage and acts of gleeful destruction of human lives must be
identified and action taken to prevent the consequences of their mental
state?  Can we agree that heads of state have even greater potential to do
harm?  Surely some will assert that the United States is not immune from
such threats.   In the case of the Virginia Tech killer, many knew that he
was strange and doubtlessly steered clear of him.  Why was there no intervention?  Was it denial or some misguided and overactive commitment to the concept that people should be left to do their own thing?

Tolerance for different behaviors makes for a colorful and stimulating
heterogeneity of individuals.  But the question is have we gone too far?  After all, it could be said that cancer cells are simply doing their own
thing.  Whether it beone's next door neighbor or the philosophy of the country next door (remembering it is a small world after all), passivity
may be dead wrong.

ZOA says intervention for Egyptian Jewish
family proved to be 'the real thing' for Coke

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