Munich

I can think of two ideal – ideal meaning very appropriate and bizarre – places to see a movie about Jews. One could go to Brooklyn. Or, one could go to south Florida.

A sold out show of blue hairs. You’ve never seen so many cheap, kvetching, tracksuit wearing, large-spectacled folks in all your life. And – except for the lady right behind me who’d apparently left her hearing aids at home – they were entirely silent during the entire film.

I have no problem with killing to avenge wrong. I have no problem with killing to promote right. There are great philosophical debates to be had over whether doing wrong in the pursuit of right is still wrong. Does the executioner in the State Penitientiary go to hell for breaking the Sixth Commandment?

The real question is: where does it end? In any war the question is the same: can we kill enough of them so they quit before we run out of us? Should butchery be repaid with butchery? Is it right to become the evil in order to combat it? Is there such a thing as a moral high ground in war? I’d answer yes, yes, and yes. In fact, I’d go so far as to recommend Biblical vengeance on enemies: kill them, their wives, their children, their parents, their entire family down to the most distant cousin and sow their land with salt.

Happily – except for the bullets and sodium industries – I’m not in charge of such things. But where does it end? And how do we end it?