CHAPTER 1

RUNNING AWAY FROM REVENGE

Let's take a tour through the head-spinning, backpedaling, morally ambiguousalleyways of revenge. Don't be afraid. I know vengeance conjures manymixed feelings and raw emotions. It's more acceptable to confess to havinga kinky taste for porn than to acknowledge harboring feelings of revenge.Vengeance occupies a dark and deeply buried shelf inside the closet of culturaltaboos. Rarely is it discussed openly where reputations can be ruinedand bad opinions formed. We tend to speak about revenge hypothetically,jokingly, as if we're not to be taken seriously:

"What I am about to say is just between you and me."

"Surely you know I would never do such a thing."

"I'm ashamed to even think it. But I wouldn't mind seeing — — receive whatis coming to her."

For Jews around the world who are members of the Conservative denomination,the High Holy Days of 2010 represented yet another death blowfor revenge. After nearly forty years (when it comes to the Old Testament,forty years does seem to possess certain magical, symbolic significance),the prayer book, known as the mahzor, which is used during the Days ofAwe—the period in the Jewish calendar extending from Rosh Hashanah toYom Kippur—was updated with a new edition. Aside from its more user-friendlyappearance there were some significant changes in substance, too.For instance, no longer would God be described as "awesome," since, inmodern times, awesome is the word of choice—for Chosen teenagers aswell as Gentiles—to describe just about anything. God shouldn't have tocompete with pizza or a pair of jeans, and that's why the mahzor now refersto God simply as "awe-inspiring."

As for other modernizing changes, the prayer book is now more genderneutral and even acknowledges the death of a gay partner. What's more,God himself was not spared a makeover. Apparently, a vengeful God no longerfavorably represents the Jewish faith well enough. In the solemn prayer,Avinu Malkeinu, a line that asked God to avenge the killing of Jews, wasdeleted.

Louis D. Levine, a congregant of Temple Israel in White Plains, NewYork, wondered about the wisdom, not to mention historical accuracy, ofthis drastic change in the liturgy. "I am not a warmongering, right-wingnut," he said, "but that line represented a real historical response to the horrorsvisited upon Israel."

But it also made God look unhinged, so it was removed. The God of theJews was almighty and, apparently, unavenging, as well. For several thousandyears, religions, and then governments, issued commandments, edicts,dire warnings, and, ultimately, mixed signals about vengeance. Now ConservativeJews were being asked to edit their own central texts lest they bereminded that the language of revenge had once been very much part of theprayers of the Jewish people.

Vengeance: expunged from ancient texts, ridiculed as a holdover from aprimitive past, and yet longingly stored in the memory bank of humankind.The advance of civilization marches on while the revenge impulse stubbornlyrefuses to civilize and subside, to simply give up its enduring influenceon the human psyche. Vengeance can be curtailed and suppressed,but it can never be truly undone, nor should it. Whether we admit it or not,whether we are permitted to act on it or not, revenge brings order to themoral universe, establishes the proper measurement of our loss, gives voiceto indignity, and serves as a necessary equalizer when victims have beenrendered low.

Despite all the warnings about revenge and the prohibitions against it,everyone practices it on some level, applauds it when properly exercised,and even dreams about it in their sleep. We see it daily in schoolyards, sportsarenas, and halls of Congress; we know that it lurks within the messy detailsof international affairs, domestic relations, business dealings, and, of course,legal battles. Revenge is life's ultimate dirty little secret and guilty pleasure.In so many dramatic and unavoidable ways it has defined our civilization,influenced our politics and culture, informed our literature, and dominatedour private fantasies.

And, yet, there is also a curious schizophrenia about revenge, loopholeswhere vengeance slips through even amid all the proclamations that revengeis wrong and that justice is a far more important human value thangetting even.

A few recent stories of revenge will reveal a culture in conflict with itselfwhen it comes to the proper role that revenge plays in society and in the livesof individuals. They also demonstrate a fundamental confusion about therelationship between vengeance and justice. Everyone makes distinctionsbetween them, with the search for justice widely accepted while the pursuitof vengeance roundly condemned. But are these two concepts so very different?When individuals are in desperate need for justice they qualify theirobsession by categorically denying that they are out for revenge. Yet in avery real and unacknowledged sense they believe that they are entitled toboth; they simply can't say so in polite company. And that's where the distinctionbetween justice and revenge becomes more of a linguistic exercisethan a hard truth. Every effort to mask the human impulse to feel avengedby hiding behind the robes of justice is like a bait and switch among themorally wounded. We know what we mean; we just can't express it openlyand honestly.

Several weeks after 9/11, with plans already underway to bomb Afghanistanin retaliation for the most devastating act of terrorism committedagainst the United States on its own soil, President George W. Bush addresseda large gathering of employees of the Federal Bureau of Investigation(FBI)—the very same body, along with the Central Intelligence Agency(CIA), that had failed to gather the necessary information and take the appropriatemeasures to foil al-Qaeda on 9/11.

In explaining the reasons behind the "shock and awe" that Americawould soon visit on the Taliban in Afghanistan, the president said, "Ours isa nation that does not seek revenge, but we do seek justice."

The audience erupted with...