So how should I feel about the death of Osama bin Laden?

The immediate euphoria that broke out late Sunday night and into Monday reminded me of the Song of the Sea, Exodus 15:1-21, when Moses, Miriam, and the rest of the Israelites spontaneously extol God for drowning the pursuing Egyptians in the Sea of Reeds.  It is the expression of divine deliverance from pure evil, the triumphant end to a long period of suffering and bloodshed. In fact, the early Rabbis viewed the Song of the Sea as so essential that they included it within the daily morning liturgy, a liturgy we recite to this very day.  And, according to my dear friend Wikipedia, the Song of the Sea “also comprises the first ode or hymn of the Eastern Orthodox canon” and also forms part of the Roman Catholic liturgy, “where it is sometimes known as the “Song of Moses.”  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_of_the_sea#cite_note-0.

Yet this is not the only rabbinic take on the Song of the Sea.  In a famous midrash (rabbinic exposition of Scripture), God chastises angels who dance and sing as the Egyptian troops drown, saying “How dare you dance and sing as my children drown in the Sea?” (Babylonian Talmud, Megillah 10b).  Despite their evil actions, the Egyptians were still human beings created in the image of God.  Likewise, Proverbs 24:17 enjoins: “Do not rejoice when your enemy falls.”

So how, then, should I react as a “religious person” to bin Laden’s death?  Should I rejoice at his demise, happy that he can no longer inflict terror upon the innocent?  Or should I temper my jubilation, deeming it inappropriate to be happy about the death of another human being, no matter how reviled?

I would like to suggest an alternative approach.  It just so happens that bin Laden was killed on Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, and the day after the anniversary of Hitler’s suicide.  I cannot chalk this up to serendipity.  Instead, I think there is an instructive lesson here.  Jews and non-Jews alike commemorate Yom Hashoah not with jubilation or revelry at the end of the Holocaust and Hitler’s death, but with acts of remembrance.  It is a day of recollection, of story-telling, and of a firm resolve to never again allow mass exterminations of any people to take place.  We honor those who paid the ultimate price by recalling their lives and their legacies.  We focus on those who were lost, not on those who perpetrated the evil.

This, I think, should be the constructive way we channel our emotions in response to bin Laden’s death.  It might feel cathartic to chant “USA, USA” and throw back a few beers to toast the fact that we took out bin Ladin.  And, to a certain degree, it is good for us to find reasons for cheer and to celebrate the symbolic—though unfortunately not actual—end of a dark, awful period in world history as personified by bin Laden.  But any such celebration will inevitably be superficial and incomplete.  Ask anyone who actually lost a loved one on 9/11.  Instead, we should use this moment to remember and reflect.  We must remember the thousands who fell on 9/11 and the thousands more who have fallen ever since in the War on Terror.  Perhaps we can even make 9/11 into a national holiday for civic remembrance.  Bin Laden’s death won’t bring back any of the innocent victims he helped murder.  Let’s use his death as an opportunity to pay tribute to the fallen—to honor their memories and to rededicate ourselves to fulfilling the unrealized dreams they left behind.