Beyond the High Holidays

The Torah is a God-given guidebook on how to run the race of life.

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Life may be viewed as a spiritual race. Rosh Hashanah serves as the starting- and finishing- line. The track is littered with all sorts of obstacles and diversions. Your running mate is none other than yourself. … Rosh Hashanah is a time for us to reflect upon how far we are lagging behind our potential. It is a time for us to recognize and analyze our errors; and to plan our strategy for minimizing the gap between who-we-are and who-we-can-be for the following lap to the race.

An obvious question that remains is: Why was the anniversary of the creation of man, rather than the very beginning of Creation (and thus the beginning of time), chosen to be Rosh Hashanah? The answer relates to the very nature of the day described above.

Man is considered by the Torah to be the crown of Creation. Everything else was created to provide man with the environment and tools that enable him to fulfill his purpose in this world. Our sages teach us that man was created last to show that if he lives up to his potential, all else was created for him; but if he does not, he is considered to be so lowly that even a flea was worthy of being created before him.

God created man to express His will in this world. God’s desire and goal is that man should become aware of the duality of his nature; rise above and harness the physical, animalistic part of his being and use its energy to make the physical world more spiritual. The task of a Jew is to transform mundane physical acts and objects into receptacles for spirituality; to reveal that the finite, physical world is not antithetical to Godliness, but can be used as a vehicle to demonstrate God’s infinity and majesty. All of this can be achieved by studying and implementing the Instruction Manual (the Torah), provided by The Creator Himself.

One of the refrains of the moving Rosh Hashanah liturgy is the phrase “Hayom haras olam; Hayom ya’amid bamishpat kol yetsurei olamim.” Roughly translated, this means: “Today is the birthday of the world; today He will judge all the creatures of the worlds.” This in fact is a mistranslation. The word “haras” is more precisely used to refer to gestation (pregnancy) rather than birth. The “birth” or creation of mankind on Rosh Hashanah was really the conception of mankind. God was giving us the potential or the chance to complete our own development process.

It is thus extremely fitting that on the day that God gave mankind the opportunity to achieve greatness, man’s achievement (or lack thereof) is judged and evaluated.

So there you have it. Rosh Hashanah was the beginning of timekeeping for mankind. It was and continues to be the moment when our spiritual stopwatch started ticking, when man was presented with the challenge of his purpose. The shofar that we heard this past Rosh Hashanah sounded the stopping and restarting of that spiritual stopwatch.

As we now move into the year and our race begins, let us consider our mistakes of the past year and plan for the event ahead. Let us take the inspiration from Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and the spiritual energy of Sukkot, which is approaching, and face the coming event with courage and determination.

This article was originally published in the Jewish Learning Experience’s 2001 newsletter, Vol. 1, No. 1.

To read more articles about Torah, visit the JLE Web site

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Cardinals Implicated in Sex Abuse Cover-up

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The grand jury, which met for three years, said that Krol and Bevilacqua transferred the alleged abusers from parish to parish; they failed to notify law enforcement or parishioners of the accusations.

The Most Rev. Justin Rigali, current head of the archdiocese, issued an apology over the incidents. At the same time, he criticized the grand jury’s findings. “The report is unjustifiably critical of Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, Cardinal John Krol and others who worked in the administration of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia,” Rigali stated.

Rigali’s statement also said: “The number of Archdiocesan priests credibly accused is actually lower than what the report states since the report includes priests who are supervised by either religious orders or another Diocese or Archdiocese, not the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, as well as priests who were deceased at the time of the allegation.”

The Archdiocese’s official response stated: “Taking unfair advantage of the secrecy and one-sidedness inherent in grand jury proceedings, and focusing upon lurid details of events, the District Attorney’s Office has chosen not to make this report a tool for offering constructive recommendations to prevent sexual abuse of minors in the future. Rather, it focuses on long-ago episodes, and fails to recognize the limited scientific knowledge available in the past about preventing or healing childhood sexual abuse. It also fails to acknowledge any Archdiocesan effort to update its policies consistent with contemporary medical thought.”

District Attorney Lynne Abraham did not bring charges because Pennsylvania law would not allow her to do so, the Inquirer reported. "Had the law allowed us to arrest or charge or indict people, we would have done so,” she told a press conference.

To read Washington Post and Philadelphia Inquirer stories, click below:

Washington Post

Inquirer, “Prosecutors Feel Stymied by Pa. Law”

Inquirer, “An ‘Immoral’ Cover-up”

Inquirer, “The Grand Jury’s Report on Clergy Abuse”

To read Cardinal Rigali’s letter, click below:

Letter

To read the Archdiocese’s official response, click below. When you reach the page, click on “full text of response” to download a PDF copy.

Archdiocese response

To read more about the grand jury’s findings, click below:

District Attorney’s Office

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Should Jerusalem Temple Be Rebuilt?

This remnant of Jerusalem's ancient temple, known as the Kotel or Western Wall, is regarded as the holiest site in Judaism./Photo courtesy of Israeli Ministry of Tourism.

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From the Roman Exile until modern times, the Jews believed ourselves to be living under three oaths into which God swore the Jewish people and the Gentile nations. The three oaths are:

- The Jews will not rise up en masse to the Land of Israel. Individual Jews may visit or settle, but there will not be a mass movement to resettle the Land.

- the Jews will submit to the yoke of the rule of the Gentile nations.

- the Gentile nations will not oppress the Jews overmuch.

What has happened to the three oaths?

Some ultra-Orthodox sects that oppose Zionism, like the Satmar Hasidim, believe that the three oaths are still in force, and that those Jews who create and live in the State of Israel are sinners. These are a tiny minority of the Jews of today.
Some Jews would say that the Gentile nations broke the three oaths when they murdered Jews by the millions, and made it difficult for surviving Jews to maintain their identity. When the nations would not refrain from oppressing the Jews the bargain was broken, and the Jews were free to re-establish our sovereign nation.

Some Jews would say that the three oaths were an unnecessary doctrine which justified the lowly and oppressed status of the Jews for too many centuries of exile. In order for Jews to validate ourselves and seek our universal human rights in the modern world it was necessary for us to repudiate the doctrine that God intends for us to live as second-class subjects.

What do you think?

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New Orleans: A Disaster Waiting to Happen

New Orleans, LA 9/4/05 -- Aerial view of houses in New Orleans swamped by floodwaters after Hurricane Katrina. Photo by: Liz Roll, FEMA

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First, most media outlets and federal officials have reported that 80% of New Orleans is under water. That's an area the size of Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn combined. Most of the major routes for delivering aid and conducting rescues are under water or significantly damaged. And let's not forget that the Katrina disaster area is equivalent to having all of New Jersey, Delaware, Connecticut, Maryland and one of half of Pennsylvania, New York and Virginia (about 90,000 sq. mi. in all) declared disaster areas. As such, some resources moved close to the anticipated disaster area ahead of the storm have been damaged or lost, and some of those who might otherwise pitch in to help, are picking up the pieces in their own communities.

It is difficult to say how prepared the residents of New Orleans and other coastal areas in the path of Katrina were. However, it is likely that many were not sufficiently prepared. I do not know what level of outreach has been provided over the years to educate the residents in coastal Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana, but I suspect that more could have been done. But that is true of most areas across the country.

For example, many areas of New Jersey and New York City are at risk for serious damage associated with a flood surge and winds from a significant hurricane. Yet most residents and commuters are not aware of the hurricane evacuation plans developed for their area. Many do not know what areas are outside the predicted danger zones or where the established hurricane evacuation shelter serving their area is.

One article, published by the Civil Engineering Magazine in 2003, "The Creeping Storm" by Greg Brouwer provides a useful overview of the history of actions taken over the last 40 years to protect New Orleans. Following Hurricane Betsy in 1965, Congress passed the Flood Control Act, which appropriated funds to increase the height of the levees around the northern side of the city. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers established a design criteria for the improved levees which is equivalent to a level needed to withstand a fast moving Category 3 hurricane (the Saffir-Simpson scale used to categorize hurricanes did not exist at the time the criteria were set).

As a result of the 1965 legislation, the system of levees forming a ring around the northern half of the New Orleans to protect it from surging waters in Lake Pontchartrain were set to be completed within the next decade. According to Brouwer, construction of a similar system around the southern half of the city would probably take several more years.

Yet nearly 40 years after beginning these projects, the Corps was reassessing whether the current height of the levees is sufficient. The levee system was designed for a fast-moving Category 3 storm, based on rudimentary models available in the 1960s. Brouwer states that larger storms or a slow-moving Category 3 storm could potentially overtop the levees, leaving New Orleans under 20 feet of water. Exacerbating the problem is the fact that the coastline has been subsiding over the last 40 years, and protective coastal marsh that would absorb some of the impact of a hurricane is only half as wide as it was when the levees were designed. According to Brouwer, experts said a flood likely with a Category 4 or 5 hurricane would probably shut down the city's power plants and water and sewage treatment plants and could even take out its drainage system. The American Red Cross estimated that between 25,000 and 100,000 people would die in this scenario. Today, the answer is painfully clear: the levee height was not sufficient.

Even when risks are known, the pace of bureaucratic action is slow and halting. In his article, Brouwer reports, according to Al Naomi, the Corps Project Manager: "Any concerted effort to protect the city from a storm of Category 4 or 5 will probably take 30 years to complete." According to Brouwer's article, the feasibility study alone would have cost as much as $8 million. Even though Congress had authorized the feasibility study, funding had not yet been appropriated. When funds were made available, the study would take about six years to complete. Beyond the studies, there would be many more steps to complete designs and begin, much less complete construction.

The political will and public interest to commit the time and money to such projects before a disaster are often lacking, even when the risks are great. Is it an election year? Does the project have popular support? These are the considerations that often drive decisions; not need, not risk, not who's at risk, their annual income or skin color. This lack of interest until disaster hits is seen over and over again--close to home and farther away.

Funding to repair aging dams in New Jersey was largely eliminated until five dams breached during heavy flooding a year or so ago causing significant impact to residents downstream. After the fact, funding was immediately restored. Hundreds of millions of dollars were appropriated for protection of the New York/New Jersey transit system; yet little of it was spent prior to the bombings in London. There are similar examples across the country where important projects, that may save lives, languish.

Has the response fallen short of what was needed? Have people suffered unimaginable losses? Have people died waiting to be rescued? Absolutely! Is it helpful to the victims to spin the disaster to make a political point, to wrangle over what party is at fault? Is it helpful to cry racism? Absolutely not!

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To read the 2003 Civil Engineering Magazine article, click below:

Civil Engineering

Where is God When Disaster Strikes?

Suffering is nothing new to the human condition. During the Battle of Gettysburg, Pa., the Union and Confederate armies sustained 50,000 casualities; 7,000 thousand soldiers died. Above, "Harvest of Death," a photo by Timothy O'Sullivan, documents the battle's toll.

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The Bible tells of Job, the good man who was unfairly and severely afflicted, losing children and property and nearly his life, Job rails at God and says “Why me? Why this?”

God responds and the divine voice is dripping with sarcasm.

"Who is this,” he says to Job, “that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me.”

Then God asks whether it was Job who “laid the foundation of the earth?” God asks “Have you commanded the morning since your days began, and caused the dawn to know its place?”

“Have you entered into the springs of the sea, or walked in the recesses of the deep? Have the gates of death been revealed to you, or have you seen the gates of deep darkness? Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth? Declare, if you know all this.”

In short, the answer is: Who are you to ask such things?

To some that sounds harsh: but to those who understand the relationship between the Creator and the creation, it is not. God rightly reminds us that we do not know everything, nor are we entitled to know everything.

Every time a natural disaster strikes, we learn that creation operates according to a design and that God rarely tinkers with the design. The sun rises and sets. Seasons come and go. Storms form--according to the physical principles of the world--and oftimes they do damage. That’s the way the world works.

We must also take our own responsibility for human suffering. New Orleans was built 25 feet below sea level and over the last 200 years never developed an adequate means of dealing with a major storm, which everyone knew would eventually come.

God weeps and suffers with us when we do foolish things. And that God inspires us--if we listen--to help one another recover and not to do foolish things again.

We are now swamped with horrible images from the Gulf Coast. The news tells us of both the bravery and cruelty of our fellow human beings. In the weeks ahead, we will have to be loving and sharing to those who suffer, whatever the cause.

But it is not too soon to look at the bigger questions of disaster and suffering. We are nearing Sept. 11, a time to remember another kind of disaster and suffering.

Many still say the world “changed” that Tuesday morning when the planes attacked New York and Washington. Perhaps our part of the world did, perhaps not.

But “the world” is the same--filed with people capable of great good and horrendous evil. What has changed is that disaster and suffering came closer to us.

Others--in Northern Ireland and Israel for example--have lived with terrorism for many years. Others--in the Balkans or Central Africa, for example--have never known a world without terrible religious, racial or ethnic strife. Millions in Africa have died in civil wars and AIDS epidemics in the past eight years while the world did nothing and the United States blocked some efforts to bring relief.

A few days after that awful September 11, I was at Congregation Shomrei Torah in Wayne, N.J., a conservative Jewish synagogue.

About 30 men wrapped themselves in their prayer shawls and prayed the ancient prayers. The rituals of Conservative Judaism are rigid; you don’t fiddle with them just to suit the moment. And the prayers that day were about praising God, blessing God’s name, honoring God. They thanked God for calling them into the covenant with God; they thanked God for the Torah, and they remembered the ancestors--Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses. They thanked God for giving them the victory. Here were the ancient people of Israel, beset on every side by enemies, still praising God.

In New Orleans and Mississippi on Sunday, people of faith gathered to worship, give thanks to God and praise God in the midst of their suffering.

It helps to put the horrifying events of our world into a historical perspective. When a terror strikes our land or close to us it seems particularly awful because it affects us personally. That’s because in this land we have been complacent and so blessedly free of such things.

Most of the catastrophes of the world have nothing to do with floods or hurricanes, but with our abuse of our humanity and the evils we perpetrate upon one another.

The first great terror to strike Christians was the Roman persecutions when believers in Jesus were tortured or put to death. We romanticize that as a time of glorious saints; but the people suffering probably didn’t see it that way.

Let’s skip around in history and see how suffering is not a new thing.

The armies of the first Crusade in the 11th Century reached Jerusalem and slaughtered thousands of Muslims and Jews. One eyewitness said the streets literally ran with blood, up to the knees of the horses. This witness thought that was glorious because it was the blood of the “unbelievers.”

A couple of hundred years later, a peasant boy in Germany envisioned a “children’s crusade.” Perhaps as many as 20,000 children set out to rescue the Holy Land. Thousands perished and the crusade never reached its goal. In Egypt most of them were sold into slavery.

Let us not forget the torturing and burning of heretics - in the name of Jesus, of course--by the Spanish inquisition beginning in the 13th century.

The list goes on:

*France, August 24, 1572 and the days following: Perhaps as many as 50,000 Protestants were killed by troops loyal to a Catholic monarch.

*France, 1793: The “reign of terror” begins, with torture and the guillotine being the chief instruments of government.

To come closer to our time:

*Georgia, 1838: The United States forcibly relocates the Cherokee tribes to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). More than 4,000 die along the way in the trek known as the Trail of Tears.

*Gettysburg, 1863: 50,000 casualties in three days.

*Verdun, 1916: A ten-mile front in the war in Europe sustains 700,000 casualties in eight months.

What a sad list it could be--the Lusitania, Bataan death march, Soviet Gulag, and more.

We can hope that these awful events and the catastrophes of our time would lead us to offer more prayers, more witness to peace, more pleas for friendship among all humankind. Believers dare to hope that--because God is gracious and sends grace to us--we can learn to be gracious to others.

A natural disaster may destroy property, may even kill; but it does not destroy our ability to be caring and gracious. Sometimes, it brings out our generosity.

Where is God in human suffering?

The answer lies not with God, but with us.

We are God’s eyes and hands and voice who must bring God’s grace into the work and help the sick recover. It is our words, our acts as individuals and as a nation that does this. Christian faith calls upon believers to show the world what it means to follow Jesus and to bring healing.

If anything gets in the way of that mission--internationally, nationally or locally--then there will be more suffering, more loss.

There will have to be national programs of relief; and we have the capacity to create them. Are we distracted by an international war that is going badly? Are the institutions of our national government maybe captive to forces with their own, non-humanitarian agendas?

In any struggle to relieve human suffering, whether caused by natural or man-made disasters, God is with us. That is, God wants to be with us, especially as we try to protect and save those who are poor and needy. Sometimes greed, national pride, political chicanery or apathy obstructs the grace of God.

Christians are to pray for the poor and needy, provide what help they can as individuals and to work in society--by any peaceful means--to help nations get their priorities straight.

God has promised to be with us, providing grace and love and comfort and strength. Can we--as individuals and a society--act accordingly?

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