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Sept. 2, 2005
Making a new peace
Grieving family creates legacy of understanding.
KATHARINE HAMER EDITOR
It has been three and a half years since Wall Street Journal
reporter Daniel Pearl was murdered in Pakistan. The paper's South
Asia bureau chief had been kidnapped by Islamic extremists while
pursuing a story connected to the war on terror. His wife, Mariane,
was pregnant at the time with their first child.
The very public and horrific way in which he died (Pearl's beheading
was recorded on video) devastated his family – and yet they
have managed to put aside their anger to turn Pearl's legacy into
a message of hope for cross-cultural understanding.
Together with her sister and parents and with the aid of a lawyer
provided by the Wall Street Journal, Tamara Pearl helped
set up the Daniel Pearl Foundation – a nonprofit organization
dedicated to promoting the kind of projects that were close to her
brother's heart. Among the foundation's advisors and backers are
many of Daniel's friends, including CNN correspondent Christiane
Amanpour and Ted Koppel of ABC News.
"He was such a giving person," said Tamara in a recent
interview with the Independent. "He had done things
like worked with underprivileged kids to help teach music and violin
– he was a musician too – so the original idea was to
continue his energy."
Pearl – who will give a talk on grief and hope at the annual
general meeting of the National Council of Jewish Women in Vancouver
Sept. 15 – noted that the focus of the foundation soon widened
to include journalistic undertakings that helped further understanding
between cultures – for example, the Alfred Friendly Fellowships,
which bring Muslim writers to the United States to learn about the
ethics and style of western journalism.
There are also concerts held all over the world in Daniel's name
– and a new program designed to allow youth to gain journalistic
training via the Internet and share stories with their peers around
the globe.
The foundation receives some grant money, but is funded in large
part by journalists and journalistic outfits such as the Journal
and the L.A. Times – and by Daniel's parents, Judea
and Ruth.
Judea Pearl, a professor, tours frequently in the United States,
often sharing the lecture stage with a Muslim colleague, Akbar Ahmed.
Last year, Ruth and Judea edited a book inspired by words spoken
by their son on the video: "My father is Jewish. My mother
is Jewish. I am Jewish."
In I Am Jewish: Personal Reflections Inspired by the Last Words
of Daniel Pearl, prominent Jews, including Ehud Barak, Elie
Wiesel, Amos Oz and Sarah Silverman, share their sense of Jewish
identity.
"The book inspired me to just put words to feelings I'd had,
that I may or may not have associated with being Jewish," Tamara
Pearl observed. "You know, we grow up with these values and
we don't always know where they come from – and then to realize
that many people who are Jewish feel the same way, to see where
in our culture it actually does derive from, it's pretty amazing."
Pearl said her brother, widely known as Danny, "Never shied
away from [Judaism]. He did feel the universal things that connect
us are stronger than our individual affinities. But he was very
Jewish. He felt Jewish. If anybody ever asked him, he always said
he was Jewish."
She has never watched the murder video in its entirety – but
by accident (CBC Television ran a partial broadcast of the video
during an interview with Judea Pearl), witnessed her brother's now
legendary words about his faith on tape.
"After I got over my shock," she said, "I could reflect
on what I'd seen. And the amount of dignity that Danny had when
he was saying that was so touching and so mind-blowing. Here were
people surrounding him that hated him for being Jewish. There's
no way to explain it, except the dignity and life force that came
through him as he said, 'I am Jewish: this is who I am.' He didn't
convey, 'This is who I am and I'm better than you.' It wasn't, 'This
is who I am, I'm really sorry, I don't really practise,' because
he didn't. It was, 'This is who I am.' And it was so beautiful
that it inspired me. I thought, What else can you really aspire
to in your life except to be OK with who you are? And he completely
was; he was born that way. I think that's why he attracted so many
friends and put people at ease and he was able to connect people
in the way he did, because he had this kind of special sense that
everything's OK."
Danny's death has been hard on her parents, said Pearl – particularly
with the amount of what she describes as "misinformation"
that's been published. But she also feels the foundation is helping
them to work through their grief by making a difference. As a family,
the Pearls seem to have an instinctive sense of tikkun olam
(healing the world) – both Tamara and her sister work in healing
professions.
It's a sense that seems to be shared by many of the contributors
to I Am Jewish, she said: "It's amazing the diversity
of what people feel and how people can draw strength from being
Jewish."
Her brother's death did change the way she felt about being Jewish.
"I definitely felt sad that Jews are still hated in the world."
Hatred and misunderstanding between cultures, she said, "is
so entrenched and it's so taught and until the teachers stop teaching
it, until the hatred stops being spread, it'll keep spreading."
But Pearl takes heart from some of what she's witnessed even in
the last few years. She talks about a young journalist from Pakistan
who came to the United States on a fellowship with the help of the
Daniel Pearl Foundation.
"She was amazing," said Pearl. "Before she came,
she wrote an article about Israel. This is mind-boggling, but you
cannot make a phone call from Pakistan to Israel. So she ended up,
having met some Israeli journalists here, she ended up e-mailing
them to get some quotes from Shimon Peres that she included in her
article. She basically interviewed him through them and wrote this
very courageous article about, 'Why not peace? What's the point?'
She's only 28 years old. So there are definitely pockets of hope
and connection."
Pockets of hope that Daniel Pearl would doubtless be proud to see
his family fostering.
Not only was Danny a talented writer, "He was just really a
heartful guy," said Pearl. "At the bottom line, he was
just full of heart. I think that connecting people was at the core
of what he wanted to do. To him, if it was connecting people through
playing soccer or through music or through journalism ... the means
are just the means. The heart is really what drove him."
For more information about the Daniel Pearl Foundation, visit www.danielpearl.org.
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