Review of Laura Blumenfled's Revenge, A Story of Hope

Rabbi Melanie Aron

July 8, 2004

In 1986 Laura Blumenfeld’s father was shot by a member of the Abu Musa gang, as he was strolling through the shuk in the Old City of Jerusalem. He was fortunate. The gunman shot only once and the bullet grazed his forehead. He survived without any real consequences, but ten years later when Laura was spending a honeymoon year in Jerusalem, she tells us that she became consumed with the desire to avenge her father’s shooting.

In that Laura is a journalist, this desire for Revenge becomes a book Revenge A Story Of Hope, in which she chronicles her investigation of the subject of vengeance as well as the personal story of her confrontation with the Palestinian who shot her father. Over the course of a year, Laura interviews religious leaders across the spectrum about their teachings on revenge and forgiveness. She speaks to those who have sought vengeance like Vitka Kovner, who as a young woman was part of an unsuccessful plot to poison the German water supply at the end of World War II and to an older Bedouin man, who took revenge on his wife who left him while he was imprisoned by writing poetry about her disloyalty that has become very famous within the Bedouin community.

Sometimes vengeance is about deterrence, she writes and other times it is a response to shame and disgrace. She wonders why some people need to get even and others adopt “constructive revenge” like an Ethiopian child, who is teased by his basketball playing friends for being so short, and shows them by becoming a world class marathon runner.

Laura tracks down the Abu Musa gang and their victims. A German tourist survived, like her father, but a young English pilgrim died of his wounds, as did an Israeli businesswoman, who was active in the Arab community and married to a man whose father was an Arab and mother a Jew. This widower, who cannot bring himself to remove his wife’s clothing from their apartment, teaches Laura an old Middle Eastern folk saying: If you want revenge, dig two graves, one for your enemy and one for yourself.

Laura learns that the man who shot her father is in prison and she begins to visit his family in Ramallah. She experiences conflict between the empathy which she feels for them as she gets to know them as individuals and the realization that “they were so nice, they hate Jews so.” She wants to believe that her father’s gunman is contrite and that he would never hurt someone again, but his letters, smuggled out of prison, are open to many interpretations. The year is 1996 and as Laura’s more hardheaded friend writes: “There’s a peace song playing now so he’s an asthmatic poet philosopher politician who believes in humanity. But if the music changes and peace negotiations fail, he’ll become a lion warrior again. It’s that tribal thing, that Mafia things- its nothing personal, then bang, he shoots you.”

Eventually things come to ahead when Laura reveals her true identity during a court hearing . Omar Khatib, her father’s assailant is not released from custody, despite her plea that he receive a reprieve because of his medical condition, leading Laura’s husband, an attorney in the New York District Attorney’s office, to believe that he has been implicated in other crimes as well. Yet Laura, and her father and mother become reconciled with Omar, and Laura’s father treasures the letter Omar writes to him and the gift he sent. Laura and her husband return to New York and after the attacks of 9-11 she calls them and basks to their concern for her well being and that of her family. She finds hope that at least for these two families, the personal has eclipsed the political.

I found the book very readable with two frustrations, one I hope to remedy tonight. The first is that I never developed a real liking for Laura, the main character. I found her self dramatizing and whinny. She had been an intern for peace, learning Arabic and working for understanding between Israeli Jews and Arabs as a young woman right out of college. How then is this experience with Omar a great epiphany!

The second frustration related to Jewish teaching. Laura is the daughter of a Conservative rabbi and is married to the son of Rabbi David Weiss Halivni, possibly the greatest Talmudic scholar of our generation. Why then is her description of Muslim and Christian teachings about revenge and forgiveness, so much richer than her discussion of Jewish teachings. Let’s take a minute to look at Jewish teachings concerning revenge.