Annie Le Funeral and Services Between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur

Annie Le's Vietnamese family attended a private prayer service last Thursday at a rural Placerville, California funeral home. Her family's wishes are that her California funeral will be similarly quiet during the coming week and will be attended only by invited guests. Last Tuesday in New Haven, a funeral mass was said at Yale's Thomas More Chapel attended by high ranking city officials, Yale administrators, and the Le family and friends.

The murdered 24 year old Yale college student pursuing a double doctorate will also have a memorial this coming week at the Temple Beth El in Huntington, New York. Beth El is the Jewish temple attended by Jonathan Widawsky and his family.

I'm not of the Jewish faith, nor am I deeply religious, but there's something resonant in the timing of Annie Le's funeral between the two Jewish High Holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

Rosh Hashanah has more than a single meaning but one of the meanings is that it marks the day when God decides who is to be born and who is to die in the coming year. For Ms. Le, that would have been decided during the 2008 Rosh Hashanah, and if intelligence, high achievement, and beauty were not enough to change God's mind, then there appears to be not much hope for the rest of us in God's plan. We may not be able to avoid the Reaper, but we can, at least, work toward developing a clearer sense of justice. I suppose that is the attraction of Judaism; it tries to be lucid and perspicacious in all of life's mysteries and challenges and has been doing so for thousands of years.

I am myself guilty of de-humanizing the Annie Le murder and recently wrote an AC article entitled "Police Say Workplace Violence is Motive for Yale Annie Le Murder."

My point of view in writing was highly speculative and, to be honest, had its roots in a rather banal interest in "true crime" or "detective" stories. The intense interest that article generated was a great surprise for me. Even more surprising were the reactions of others, not only in my own writing, but in comments spread far and wide across the entire media.

Speculation as to the type of conflicts which can be found in a research lab is merely academic. I had gone out on a limb in trying to get ahead of big media like the New York Times which published an excellent article on September 18 titled "Demanding Job in a Divided Lab, Then a Murder." The New York Times article also describes the specific activities and environment of the research lab where both Anne Le and accused murderer Raymond Clark worked.

When I wrote my own aforementioned article, I did not mean to advance the argument that animal rights were a central issue to murder. All I meant to say was that such issues were part of the culture and character of a research lab. So are ambition, cultural differences, compensation, work hours, interpersonal relationships, and compulsions and a myriad of other things. Speculating on motive is a job for the prosecution team, though in the end, police do not have to prove motive; they only have to prove murder.

So that's where Yom Kippur comes in. In a general way, Yom Kippur is the "Day of Atonement." Judgment Day. Justice. Payback. You get what's coming to you. Whatever you call it, there's not a person in the world who doesn't know what that means, not even Raymond Clark. The concept is embedded in some manner in most of the world's religions and bodies of law.

Yom Kippur is supposed to be a "happy day" since people are supposed to have repented their sins and reconciled their differences with others and with God. People are encouraged to engage those they have offended and try to make peace with them. So I repent my petty indulgences in "true crime" and ask forgiveness even while I continue to perorate about this horrible tragedy. I hope that people will see that my heart is with the victim, the victim's family and friends. There is good reason for that.

Sources: Associated Content:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2184481/police_say_workplace_violence_is_motive.html?cat=17

New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/18/nyregion/18yale.html?_r=1

American Chronicles:

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/yb/135479788