April 23, 2008 - IT IS NOT FOR US TO COMPLETE THE JOB - (18th of Iyyar, 5768)

For avid news watchers, these past few weeks, have been truly gut- wrenching. At first we were traumatized by Cyclone Nargis which hit Myanmar (Burma). It reminded some of us of the catastrophic tsunami of 2004 which took the lives of over three hundred thousand people in Asia including 168,000 in Indonesia alone. The death toll in Myanmar is estimated to be at least one hundred thousand people, although the actions of the military junta which rules the country with an iron-hand have prevented an accurate and full assessment of the losses to date. But, just as the world was working itself up into a righteous lather to condemn the Myanmar generals for not allowing relief workers into their country, an earthquake struck in Sichuan, China. It was no tiny temblor. This 7.9 quake buried tens of thousands of people almost instantly as buildings came crashing down on their occupants. I do not need or want to delve into the agony of the victims or the survivors because we have been as exposed to this tragedy through reports and video more than we have the devastation which continues in the lives of the hapless Burmese.

And just when we begin to recover our senses of balance, we receive the news of Ted Kennedy’s malignant brain tumor and yesterday, the tornado which ripped through the Colorado town of Windsor. Our concern for the immense losses of fellow human beings, all of a sudden come very close indeed, when someone the stature of Senator Kennedy is diagnosed with such an illness, and we witness the devastation of a town some of us have visited.

And need I mention the rise in the cost of oil? If the other events haven’t caused you psychic discomfort, and I am sure that they did, $135/ a barrel of crude oil must have, at least, caught your eye. Just what, however, this development may do to us and our economy is uncertain. It surely moves vast amounts more of our money into hands of people who don’t love us or our way of life…and that just can’t be good.

Juxtapose these terrible tragedies with our torah portion for this week, Bechuchotai, and we might begin to read into them Divine displeasure and even wrath. This Levitical portion promises that if we behave according to God’s laws, we shall reap blessing. If not, then bad things will happen to us.

It was in an article I read this week, written by Rabbi David Zucker for the UJC Rabbinic Council, that the rabbi of Shalom Park de-couples natural calamity from human behavior. I quote:

In the modern world, we do not connect the vagaries of the world of nature necessarily with human behavior. While there are consequences for uprooting forests and for burning too many fossil fuels (global warming), nonetheless, typhoons and hurricane are indiscriminate in who they devastate, poor and rich, righteous and wicked, the old as the young.

This is good news for us who, when afflicted with some malady, commonly ask what we did wrong to deserve it. But it is equally a message to us that 1) we should count our blessings and 2) we should not, as Torah enjoins us, stand idly by the blood of our neighbor. There are many reasons that we should cry out against the injustices of the Myanmar Generals. Not the least of these is that it is in our own best self interests. For, if ever the days come when we ourselves need the help of others, we do not want /them/ to be silent on our behalves. We Jews have experienced that silence in our history. We know the bitterness of having our own plight ignored. But more importantly, we need to speak up and to give what we can because we want to show solidarity with those who are suffering. It reinforces the good in us to be compassionate and to demonstrate our sympathy for those who have endured such devastation and now need our help. (Just as an aside, this comes with a caution to check out the organizations to which you make contributions. Unfortunately, we live in a world of those who make livings off the needy, the destitute, the poor and the victims. Check the given organization at www.charitynavigator.org

While I was laid up in bed with a cold this week, I listened to a BBC radio article which analyzed the reporting on the Chinese earthquake and Myanmar cyclone. On the one side, the reporter was proud of the fact that news agencies were able to get word out to the world community about these tragedies, helping to marshal the resources necessary to aid the victims. On the other hand, she worried that too much exposure to too many of the sorrow-filled stories coming out of these two dreadful natural events might make generating sympathy for victims of future disasters more difficult. I suppose that this is the reason that stories like these which remind us of our own, national disaster, Hurricane Katrina, have such a short half life. We cannot stay focused on death and misery for too long a time without their taking a heavy toll on our own lives, our own responsibilities and obligations. There is only so much we can expect of ourselves, and we must prioritize our lives and our resources if we are to succeed in life.

We have to seek a balance to be able to live in this world. I give you a particular Israeli instance. I am certain that the Jews who live in Ashkelon are feeling no small remorse that their responses to the sorrowful plight of the citizens of Sderot to the constancy of Gazan rocket fire hasn’t been stronger. Now that they, too, have come into the range of the Gazan Grad missiles, they are wearing the same shoes as their fellow Israelis who have the misfortune of living too close to the unstable Gaza Strip. I wasn’t just talking trivia when I spoke before about our needing to operate from enlightened self-interest.

Humanity is at its best when it responds from its sympathetic side. It is at its worst when it deals from the side in love with power and greed. If there is any justice in this universe, as the Israelite prophets prophesied that there was, the Generals of Myanmar will have their strangle-hold on the lives of their people broken. If there is true justice, they will be convicted in and sentenced by a world court for their crimes against humanity.

However, if there is to be mercy in this world, it will have to come from each of us. These natural calamities challenge us to rise to the best that is within us. It is upon us who literally enjoy so much, to share with the stricken at this moment in time.

It really isn’t a matter of reward and punishment. It is part of this world in which we live…where there will be horrible things that happen. We need to let some of that into our lives and, following our shock and tears, manage to do something to assuage their misery. We realize that we shall never be able to return the victims to the way things were before calamity befell them, but we can and must help them to pick themselves up and begin to rebuild their lives. As Pirke Avot tells us, it is not for us to complete the task, but neither are we free to abstain from it.

In a real sense God has given us these challenges. We can and should do no less than to rise to them.