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Topics in this digest:
Re’eh 5765, A prayer for those effected by Hurricane Katrina:
by Rabbi Dr. Barry Leff
Ribono shel olam, Master of the Universe!
Harachaman, the compassionate One! As you blessed our ancestors Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah, please bless and heal
those affected by Hurricane Katrina. El Na, Please, God, bring physical
healing to those who are sick or injured; bring material support to those
who have lost their homes and their jobs; bring comfort to the neshamot, the
souls, of all whose lives have been disrupted by this catastrophe.
Please God, support the hands of all those who are working to save lives and
rebuild in the effected lands. Help us to remember that the poorest have
been made poorer, and we are commanded not to turn our eyes from our poor
brother. Bring them speedily from darkness to light,
Amen
Re’eh 5765
By Rabbi Dr. Barry Leff
Congregation Bnai Israel
Toledo, OH
Every week we read of large numbers of people killed in Iraq by suicide
bombers. One week the death count is 38; another week it’s 47. It happens so
frequently that it almost gets hard to take notice. Oh, another few dozen
killed in Iraq, what else is new?
But the news out of Baghdad on Wednesday (August 31, 2005) was enough to get
me to sit up and take notice. The fatality count from an episode caused by
terrorism reached a new high: 965 people were killed.
But what’s truly astounding is that these 965 people died without the
detonation of a single gram of high explosives.
They were killed by a rumor. A mere RUMOR that there was a suicide bomber in
the midst of a Shiite religious procession set off a stampede that killed
almost a thousand people.
Even though no explosives were involved, those 965 people were just as
surely the victims of terrorism as if they were killed by a huge explosion.
Without the fear that has been spread by months of terrorism, a rumor would
not have set off such a panic. The stampede was a huge over-reaction.
In an article in the New Yorker about Civil War-era terrorist John Brown,
Adam Gopnik writes “Terrorism is an autoimmune disease; its purpose is to
cause harm by provoking an overreaction.”
The terrorists certainly succeeded in provoking an overreaction in Iraq.
The goal of terrorism—and it doesn’t matter who the terrorist is, Islamic
extremist, Palestinian nationalist, Tamil separatist, the Irish Republican
Army, John Brown in the Civil War or the Stern Gang in Israel’s War for
Independence—the goal is to create fear and confusion in the target
population.
The Torah considers fear one of the greatest of curses. Among the long list
of curses we will read in a few weeks in parshat Ki Tavo is the fear that
will befall the Jewish people if they stray from God’s commandments:
“And your life shall hang in doubt before you; and you shall fear day and
night, and shall have no assurance of your life; In the morning you shall
say, Would it were evening! and in the evening you shall say, Would it were
morning! for the fear of your heart with which you shall fear, and for the
sight of your eyes which you shall see.”
Terrorists believe they can win if they can make people live in fear. The
terrorists in Baghdad hope that people will become to afraid to go to
religious processions—or to vote for a Constitution. The terrorists in Gaza
hope that Israelis will become too afraid to go to the café, they hope the
people will give up, withdraw from the West Bank and Jerusalem.
I’m not saying the Global War on Terrorism, or as it’s now called “The
Struggle Against Islamic Extremism,” is an overreaction. But to put it in
perspective, each and every year about 20 times as many Americans lose their
lives in car accidents as lost their lives in the World Trade Center; yet we
don’t make the same kind of “War on Car Accidents.”
Terrorism provokes a response because it’s scary.
Terrorism is the weapon of the weak. Someone who feels they have no chance
to win in a conventional military way will often resort to terrorism as way
to achieve their political goals.
The Talmud (Shabbat 77b) teaches about five instances of fear cast by the
weak over the strong: a gnat that can frighten a lion; a mosquito that
frightens an elephant, who is afraid it will fly up its trunk; the fear a
spider causes a scorpion, who is afraid it will get in its ear; the fear of
the swallow upon the eagle, who is worried it will be hindered from
spreading its wings; and the fear a small fish causes the Leviathan, who is
afraid the fish will get in its ear.
Today’s leading instance of fear cast by the weak over the strong is clearly
terrorism.
The Sunnis in Iraq have gone from being yesterday’s powerhouse to today’s
minority. In a democracy, they are weak—they don’t have as many votes.
So they are trying to assert their will through instilling fear in people.
The struggle between the Sunnis and the Shiites reminds me of a teaching
connected to this week’s Torah portion that in my ethnocentric way I at
first only applied to Jews.
In this week’s parsha, Re’eh, we read banim atem l’Adonai Eloheichem, lo
titgodedu v’lo tasimu karcha bein eineichem lameit, “You are children of the
Lord your God, do not cut yourselves or make a baldness between your eyes
for your dead.”
The Talmud in Tractate Yevamot brings a beautiful teaching about how when
the Torah says lo titgodedu, do not cut yourselves, it means do not cut
yourselves into different factions. I was thinking about the Jewish world
today and the big divides between secular and religious, the way much of the
Orthodox world refuses to recognize Conservative or Reform Judaism as
legitimate, the schisms within movements—among the Orthodox schisms between
various Chasidic sects and modern Orthodox for example, in our own movement
schisms between those who favor ordaining gays and lesbians and those who
don’t, and about how terrible all these schisms are. About how we clearly
seem to be violating the commandment of lo titgodedu, don’t cut yourselves
into factions. Yet when I heard about the tragedy in Baghdad, I realized
that the schism between secular and religious, or the divide between
Orthodox and Reform, is bush league compared with the schism between Sunni
and Shiite.
Yet we should not be complacent—the murderous violence between Sunni and
Shiite is what can happen in the Jewish world if we are not vigilant. The
Jewish extremists who pronounced a Kabbalistic curse on Ariel Sharon that he
should die should be taken seriously as a warning.
Sadly, factions, Jewish and otherwise, are a fact of life. The Sunnis and
Shiites are not going to all of a sudden decide they should follow a
teaching from the Talmud about not creating factions. Those factions weaker
and more desperate than us are going to continue to try and make us afraid.
When you are afraid, you can’t think straight. One of the more troubling
passages in the Torah is when God is hitting Egypt with plagues it says over
and over, “God hardened Pharoah’s heart.” It seems very troubling that God
would harden someone’s heart, and then punish them. One interpretation I
found that I liked says that at first Pharaoh hardened his own heart; then,
after a few plagues, he got to be totally terrified.
And someone who is terrified can’t make a straight decision. So God hardened
Pharaoh’s heart just enough to overcome his fear—just like in a tough
situation, you might tell someone they need to “toughen up”—so that Pharaoh
would have free will.
In difficult times, we need to think straight. As Franklin D. Roosevelt said
“We have nothing to fear but fear itself”
Fear is so bad the rabbis equate it with sin. The prophet Isaiah said "The
sinners in Zion fear; a trembling has taken hold of the profane"
(Isaiah 33:14). One of the great rabbis, seeing his student in a state of
unnecessary fear, said to him, "You are a sinner!" In this spirit the Torah
teaches, "Trust in God and do good; dwell in the land and cultivate faith"
(Psalms 37:3).
Our antidote to the scary times we live in is to remember, as it says in
Psalm 118, “The Lord is on my side; I will not fear; what can man do to me?”
May God bless us with the blessing Moses gave our ancestors: chazak v’amatz,
“Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them; for the
Lord your God, He goes with you; He will not fail you, nor forsake you.”
Amen.
To view the archives, go to www.neshamah.net
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