Religious Answers to Katrina's Questions

In the days since the Gulf Coast was stricken by Hurricane Katrina, many rushed to ask the question, "Where was God in this disaster?" Indeed, the same question was asked only a few months ago after a tsunami struck much of southeastern Asia, bringing a sudden wave of destruction to lands bordering on the Indian Ocean. As such cataclysms occur, we are left with many whys - why so much destruction, so much death, especially of so many innocents, in this case the poorest of the poor in this country, one of the richest countries on earth.

Where was God?

Ultimately, any attempt to answer this question will lead to futility. Any answer is bound to raise new questions, each leaving more confusion in its wake. The most challenging questions in the theological realm focus on the existence of evil in this world. Isaiah speaks of it almost matter-of-factly when he says: "I form light and create darkness, I make Shalom and create evil - I, God, do all these things." (45:7) But this verse seems so harsh that when the sages coined the first of the morning blessings preceding the Shema using the same verse, they made one change: Praised be You... who forms light and creates darkness, makes Shalom and creates everything. Everything - to include suffering, catastrophe, evil. It is part of the order of the universe; we may question why, but the answers are beyond our comprehension, because we cannot peer into the mind of God any more than we can through our interpretation of the words of Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, the expression of the Divine Will. We are told that there are "70 facets to Torah," that the same verse may yield diverse and disparate interpretations, and when it comes to our understanding of God, it is no less the case.

In the days following the tsunami, I turned to the many articles by religious leaders that were posted on the Internet. One interesting explanation came from Sir Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of Great Britain. Rabbi Sacks turned to Maimonides to explain that

Natural disasters... have no explanation other than that God, by placing us in a physical world, set life within the parameters of the physical. Planets are formed, tectonic plates shift, earthquakes occur, and sometimes innocent people die. To wish it were otherwise is in essence to wish that we were not physical beings at all. Then we would not know pleasure, desire, achievement, freedom, virtue, creativity, vulnerability and love. We would be angels - God's computers, programmed to sing His praise.

God may set the dynamics of nature in motion, but from there it would seem to function on its own, much like the watch once it leaves the hands of the watchmaker.

Rabbi Sacks, in his attempt to come to grips with the tsunami, says that our response to such disasters is not to seek understanding, but to attempt to become a partner in creation by bringing "comfort to the bereaved, [to] send healing to the injured and aid to those who have lost their livelihoods and homes."

But Maimonides also rejects the idea that natural calamity is meaningless and without reason. We cannot blame God for the way in which nature takes its toll on innocent victims, but we are also forced to understand what problems underlie the catastrophe.

Indeed, Rabbi Sacks' solution, to partner with God in the works of recovery is something that we have become good at doing. We all join in opening our pockets and lending a hand, in feeling a sense of solidarity with those who have suffered from disasters like Hurricane Katrina.

But what happens between the disasters? For millions of people, the levees that shield them from despair are very weak. Every day leads to new breaches that leave individuals and families foundering in the deluge, some who drown in the torrents with no one there to offer a lifeline. We overlook those disasters on a daily basis; we are only led to outrage when cataclysm strikes en masse. While Boston prepared to take in Katrina's refugees, it led an assault on its' homeless, taking what few belongings that they had to make their homes under overpasses. While Massachusetts worked to welcome those who lost everything to nature's fury, it forgot its own residents who lack access to health care and basic necessities of life.

Between the disasters, do we think about how our actions can further the damage done by these acts of nature? We may not be able to prevent natural disasters of this magnitude, but we can mitigate their impact by not developing wetlands; we may be able to minimize the number of losses by making it possible for people with lesser means to have the wherewithal to escape nature's wrath when it comes their way. We can prevent greater damage to life and property by making sure that needed resources are not misappropriated, by making sure that the funds needed to shore up the levies are not cut and that the personnel for emergency management and public safety are appropriate and available.

Disasters happen; they are a part of nature that God created. We cannot prevent these disasters from occurring. But we do play a part as custodians of that creation, and we sometimes have the power to mitigate the impact of these powerful events. Before we ask, "Where was God?" perhaps the appropriate question to be asked is "Where were we?"

Understanding Tish'ah B'Av Today

Note: A previous version of this article was published in 2003, but it is now expanded to reflect current realities. As I was completing my edits, I came across the following news brief:

Feast or fast?

A religious Israeli notable stirred outrage by saying that he will hold a feast on Tisha B’Av.

Avraham Burg, a former Labor Party lawmaker and Jewish Agency for Israel head whose father founded Israel’s National Religious Party, said in a radio interview that rather than abstain from food or drink on Tisha B’Av, the day that marks the destruction of the First and Second Temples, he and his family plan to hold a festive meal in celebration of Jerusalem’s reunification in the modern State of Israel.

The skullcap-wearing Burg’s defiance of Orthodox ritual drew quick censure from Israeli religious figures. “The existence of a State of Israel and the rebuilding of Jerusalem are still no replacement for our lost Temple,” NRP leader Zevulun Orlev said. (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 11 August 2005)

This year, Tish'ah B'Av falls on Sunday, 14 August.

* * *

In August 1981, when I was beginning my year of studies at Hebrew University, I had my first meeting with my advisor, himself a Modern Orthodox oleh from the Boston area. Somehow, our conversation turned to the observance of Tish’ah B’Av (which had occurred some weeks earlier.) To my surprise, my advisor thought that Tish’ah B’Av was no longer relevant at a time when the Jewish people were returning to their homeland and had established a new state and were reestablishing religious and social institutions there.

My argument then was probably little different than it is today. I am not impressed by claims that Tish’ah B’Av is no longer relevant to us as we now celebrate 57 years of Jewish statehood. In fact, perhaps the existence of the state gives us all the more reason to be aware of that day’s importance.

Make no mistake about this: I am a blue and white dyed in the wool Zionist. I am not one of the Neturei Karta, those ultra Orthodox Jews who believe that, according to Jewish law, the establishment of a Jewish state before the coming of the messiah is illegitimate.

But I am afraid that Tish’ah B’Av is misunderstood.

Tish’ah B’Av is one of only two 25-hour fasts on the Jewish calendar. It commemorates a series of cataclysms in Jewish history that occurred on or around that date in different years. Both the first (in 586 BCE) and second (in 70 CE) Temples in Jerusalem were destroyed on Tish’ah B’Av. Commentators on the Torah claim that the report of the spies, which led to the grumbling of the Israelites and the 40 years of desert wandering, was given on that day. The expulsions from England in 1290, France in 1306, and Spain in 1492 (the same day that Columbus set sail) also took place on Tish’ah B’Av. World War I (which led to World War II and the Holocaust) began on the same date on the Hebrew calendar.

Yet Tish’ah B’Av is less about disasters that befell our people than about what precipitates disaster.

In focusing on the origins of this fast day, the Talmud offers an explanation why the Temples were destroyed. It tells us that the first temple was destroyed because of idolatry, adultery, and wanton bloodshed; the second because of the wanton hatred (sin’at hinnam) that was rampant among the Jewish people at that time.

The history of the Second Temple period is replete with accounts of the fratricidal politics of the Hasmonean dynasty and the House of Herod, and the divisions among the numerous sects of the day, including the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Zealots, Sicarii, and others. These were days when Jews thought little of taking the blood of their brethren for political gain, and where political and religious sniping were commonplace. Divisions lasted into the very siege of Jerusalem, when different groups vied for power in a hopeless situation that was further exacerbated by domestic divisiveness.

The Talmudic story of Qamtza and Bar Qamtza, presented as the (metaphorical?) cause of Jerusalem’s downfall in 70 CE, speaks to the destructive power of frail and inflexible egos, demonstrating how one tragic mistake can lead to disaster. Someone hosting a banquet sent a messenger to invite a man named Qamtza to his party, but the messenger delivered the invitation to his rival, Bar Qamtza, instead. When Bar Qamtza appeared at the event, the host moved to have his rival evicted. Seeking to avoid public humiliation, Bar Qamtza offered to pay the costs of the party if the host would allow him to remain. But the host, in the presence of the leaders of the community, stood his ground. Insulted, Bar Qamtza plotted against the leaders of Jerusalem and manufactured evidence against them, informing the Roman rulers that they were engaged in planning an insurrection. The story continues with further details of poor judgment and perilous errors that led to the destruction of the city.

The point of these stories, apocryphal as they might be, is not to present historical facts of events that occurred, but to teach about the conceptual backdrop to these historical events. As much as we can blame Rome for the destruction of the Second Temple, we can look inward to what allowed for that defeat to take place.

The question for today is this: Is the internal Jewish condition any better today than it was in 70 CE? Whether we look at Israel or at our situation in the Diaspora, the answer is: “probably not.” We may be above the cloak and dagger operations of the ancient Sicarii, though we have come perilously close to bloodshed from time to time. In the religious sphere, no camp is willing to surrender its claim to the truth, and all are guilty of verbal or political acts against others in the service of God.

In Israel, we have seen the assassination of one prime minister on the accusation of treason by a religious zealot, and the vituperation of the accusations hurled from one camp against the other continues the spirit that led to that murder. We are blessed with prosperity, opportunity, and freedom in the Diaspora, and in Israel we are blessed with political independence in our ancestral homeland. But our behavior often shows how little we have learned from the rabbis who sought to teach us some important lessons in the Talmudic account mentioned earlier, and others like it, about the infighting that has sapped our strength as a people during critical junctures of our history.

This year, Tish’ah B’Av marks another painful moment in our history. As of midnight immediately following Tish’ah B’Av, it is no longer lawful for Jews to remain in the Gaza Strip, by order of the Government of the State of Israel. It doesn’t matter what position one takes on Israeli politics and policy, whether one is dove or hawk, right wing or left, secular or religious, the expulsion of Jews by Jews is painful to accept. The disruption of lives built over decades in communities deserves sympathy. And the emotional pain that will be experienced by those given the task of carrying out the orders of expulsion in the days following Tish’ah B’Av deserves our consideration as well.

But there is a difference. Israel lives today under the rule of law in a democratic state. Its policies, like them or not, are promulgated out by those elected by the people and charged with making the decisions that affect their daily lives. A democratic society must be open to disagreement and debate, but in the end, dina d’malchuta dina, “the law of the state is the law.” The efforts of some, especially of rabbis and religious individuals, to take exception to that dictum and to encourage violations of the law, to persuade soldiers to refuse orders or desert, is reprehensible.

As we mark Tish’ah B’Av, we should dwell less on the destruction brought upon us by outsiders but on the destructiveness of our divisiveness, and our apparent inability to find unity within our diversity. Until such a time when the Jewish people can dwell peacefully together, we should continue to fast on Tish’ah B’Av, in the hope that the hunger that we feel on that day will make us think of how we might suffer more if we, as a people, cannot learn to live as one.

Pope John Paul II: Not just historic, but heroic

Pope John Paul II @ Kotel, originally uploaded by markinma.

For a Jew, the institution of the papacy is a foreign concept. So one is tempted to ask: Why should the death of a pope be significant to us? Despite the lack of an institutional bond with the papacy, many of us still feel a sense of loss for John Paul II. We had disagreements with the man, to be sure, but we need to look at the bigger picture, and in this case, that picture was of a man who could teach lessons to all of humanity, regardless of creed.

Karol Wojtyla was a product of his times in the best possible sense. Born in southern Poland, he grew up in an environment where Jews and Catholics intermingled and interacted in each other’s lives. As a child, he had many Jewish friends. Earlier this week, an Israeli daily published a letter written by a Jewish childhood friend of the young Karol testifying not only to the closeness between the future pope and the Jews of his community, but also to the reunion of these old friends when John Paul made his pilgrimage to Israel in 2000. They maintained a personal correspondence ever since.

As a young man, he was profoundly influenced by the destruction of the Jews of Poland and Europe. A more cynical witness might have ascribed the decimation of European Jewry to historical errors of the Jews and found theological rationale for it. But throughout his life he preferred in this regard to drive theology towards building bridges and mending the ways of the past that led to such wholesale destruction. A Polish professor from Krakow’s ancient Jagiellonian University told me nearly 20 years ago of his personal experience as a seminary student of Wojtyla’s, about the future pope’s real love for Jews, his respect for Judaism, and his pain over the Shoah.

John Paul II may not have been a trailblazer when it came to building relations between the Roman Catholic Church and Jews. That honor must rest with John XXIII, who in the early 1960s convened the Second Vatican Council that promulgated numerous reforms, among them Nostra Aetate, a document that removed the basis for anti-Semitism from the theology and teachings of the Church. But if not a trailblazer, John Paul II was the enforcer in ways that few could imagine. He not only talked about relations with Jews, he set personal examples.

In 1986, he visited Rome’s major synagogue and embraced its rabbi. In his travels, he sought out leaders of Jewish communities. He established diplomatic ties with the State of Israel, an act that in fact defied the old theology of supercessionism, which believed that the Jews were exiled from their homeland for rejecting Jesus. And in a poignant moment, a humble pope stood alone, dwarfed by the stones of the Kotel, and prayed for forgiveness, and in keeping with the Jewish tradition, stuck a note between its cracks.

Several papal pronouncements declared anti-Semitism “a sin against God and man” and raised questions about the practice of proselytizing. And in our own greater Boston community, let us not forget how he honored Leonard Zakim, himself a builder of bridges, shortly before Zakim’s untimely death. To recount the ways in which he made efforts to heal the scars left by two millennia of hatred and bloodletting was not just historic, it was heroic. That heroism was already evident as a young priest who returned a Jewish child in the foster care of Christians during the Shoah to his Jewish family.

The pontificate of John Paul II did not stop at the work towards reconciliation between Catholics and Jews. This pope possessed a deep love for humanity and a profound drive towards social justice. It was not above this man, cloaked in the regalia of his high office, to sit in prayer with prisoners or to reach out to the downtrodden in society. He used his office to speak out against repressive regimes in ways that few religious leaders have done.

Certainly, there were moments of conflict between this pope and the Jewish community. But no one could ever accuse him of anti-Semitic animus. The following comment, made before a Jewish group, perhaps captures the spirit of his reign and his work towards reconciliation: “I am convinced, and I am happy to state it on this occasion, that the relationships between Jews and Christians have radically improved in these years. Where there was ignorance and therefore prejudice and stereotypes, there is now growing mutual knowledge, appreciation and respect. There is above all, love between us; that kind of love, I mean, which is for both of us a fundamental injunction of our religious traditions… Love involves understanding. It also involves frankness and the freedom to disagree in a brotherly way where there are reasons for it.”

There is a tension in some traditional religious communities, Jews among them, to isolate the community from “outsiders” to protect it from influences of the outside world. There is also a fundamental flaw in such a mindset. While one always runs a risk through exposure to outside ideas, perhaps one runs a greater risk by fostering ignorance, which fosters hatred, which fosters bloodshed. From the openness of Karol Wojtyla and the Jews of his native Wadowice, the world would learn lessons of hope for humanity, the dignity of difference and the respect for that which was created in the Divine image. May his successors to the throne of St. Peter have the strength and courage to carry on in that spirit.

Yehi zichro baruch. May his memory be a blessing.