Judith Weiss has written at length (and from a very personal perspective) about Mariane Pearl's betrayal of her husband's legacy.
In the weeks after Daniel Pearl's death, I noticed the downplaying of his Jewishness in the press, and I noticed how his widow avoided it as well. It made me acutely uncomfortable, but I avoided looking squarely at my feelings. No one wants to speak ill of the grieving widow, and I didn't want to acknowledge that here was yet one more supposed Jew-lover who wouldn't take a stand when the chips were down. Now, a year after Daniel Pearl's death, I can say that Mariane Pearl enrages me. I am sure that the mother of her "Buddhist" son - named Adam, the original Jewish name - is unaware ("in denial" is more accurate) of her own private act of ethnic cleansing against the man with whom she chose to make her life. She loved this man, but not all of him - only the part of him that is "universal." His Judaism was supposed to be a vestigial tribalism that he would disavow, leave behind, in the brave new world of international journalism that they would inhabit.
Taken out of context, this paragraph has only a shadow of the power of the full post. Read the rest.
