Martians over Jersey

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is Carl Phillips again, at the Wilmuth farm, Grovers Mill, New Jersey. Professor Pierson and myself made the eleven miles from Princeton in ten minutes. Well, I . . . I hardly know where to begin, to paint for you a word picture of the strange scene before my eyes, like something out of a modern ‘Arabian Nights.’”

This is a quote from the transcript of the “War of the Worlds,” Orson Welles’ 1938 radio play, which, despite four entirely clear disclaimers before, after, and during the show, terrified many listeners, who had been primed by the Depression and the looming war in Europe to expect disaster.

It perhaps was not entirely necessary that this disaster — the invasion of the Earth by bloodthirsty Martians — turn into a real-life disaster, with hordes of people rushing into the streets, fearing the absolute worse. But that’s what happened.

Nor was it necessary at all that it be set in New Jersey — but it was, and that means that it has special resonance for us.

I’ve been thinking about the War of the Worlds as we confront the disquieting possibility that our night skies are bursting with drones. Are they real? Are they sent by our enemies? Are they neutral? Are they naturally occurring phenomena, both natural and human-made? Are they figments of our imaginations?

Whatever they are, they’re clearly not the Martians of the clever brains of the two unrelated Welleses who created them, H.G. and Orson. They’re probably what the government says they are — a combination of drones, planes, and other objects, not flown for nefarious reasons but more visible than before, in part at least because more people than usual are searching the sky for them.

But they clearly are flashing a warning about how fevered imaginations in fevered times can create fever dreams.

We all have to be careful not only about disinformation — lies and innuendoes spread to cause harm, or the least to unsettle people — but about misinformation as well. About accusations that might be well-intentioned, levied with the desire to tell the truth as the teller sees it, but still are not true.

The recent fury over the incident in Fair Lawn where an Orthodox boy’s peyes were cut off, against his mother’s wishes, is a good example.

There are many more plausible reasons than malicious antisemitism for that incident, and a careful reading of the Facebook posts make those reasons seem more likely than malice. The meeting that included two local Orthodox rabbis — one of them a Fair Lawn police chaplain, the other the leader of the town’s biggest shul — who left feeling secure in saying that the whole affair was a sad misunderstanding.

The episode left a family traumatized, a young man out of a job, and a town torn with suspicion.

It would have been wiser to wait just a bit, think a bit more logically, and work toward a better outcome for everyone.

This is not to say that antisemitism doesn’t exist. Of course it does, and it’s rising. But that’s not to say that it is everywhere, all the time. We must be vigilant, but not paranoid.

And that brings us to Chanukah, that holiday of light in the winter darkness.

We hope that this year, the candlelight brings the light of reason, of sanity, and of hope. We hope that the hostages will not have to spend their second Chanukah in Gazan darkness. We hope that decency and goodness will prevail.

—JP

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