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Ki Tetze 5765
Rabbi Barry Leff
Congregation B’nai Israel
Can you imagine what it would have been like to have been living in New
Orleans on Saturday, August 27, anxiously watching the news that Hurricane
Katrina was picking up steam and heading your way?
One of the newer internet phenomena is the “blog,” a contraction for “web
log.” Many people of an older generation tend to think of their journal or
diary as one of their most intensely personal possessions—they don’t share
it with anyone, often not even their spouse. Well, welcome to the internet
age—younger people nowadays often post their journals on line for everyone
to read. If you go to the internet and search on “New Orleans blog” you can
find some fascinating first hand stories of what it was like.
One blogger named Craig wrote the following on that Saturday morning:
“Original plan: lunch with friends in the Quarter today, then head to Baton
Rouge for a food show tonight. Decide about hurricane stuff on Sunday.
New plan: Wait to see what Mayor "Everybody Loves" C. Raymond Nagin says
about evacuations. This will be about noon. If he says go, our French
Quarter lunch is still on. There might be more drinking than otherwise,
since a trip to Baton Rouge would be a wasted enterprise. Evacuation means
I-10 will go contraflow and we wouldn't be able to get back.”
I love that New Orleans spirit—the storm is coming, and the big question is
what does it do to the lunch plans. And the calculation that they’d have to
skip Baton Rouge, because they wouldn’t be able to get back home to New
Orleans.
Imagine looking around your house—looking at all your most precious
possessions, your pictures, your mementos, art work, furniture, your
computers, and having to decide whether to leave, having to decide what you
should take with you? Imagine waking up on Sunday morning, August 28,
watching the TV, and seeing your mayor tell everyone to get out of town—the
city is being evacuated.
Another blogger, Chris, described the decision to leave like this:
“Alright, in a rare display of common sense, the old lady and I, along with
the whiskey, are moving to higher ground. The National Hurricane Center's
forecast track hasn't changed in 24 hours; usually a pretty good indication
that it's going to do exactly what they say it will. And now Katrina's a
pretty intimidating category 4, 145 mph winds, and the hurricane center has
even amused the thought of it strengthening to category 5. In short, this is
no longer something that I'm comfortable joking about.
We live in a one story single shotgun in Mid City, we don't have storm
shutters, elevation is 1.5 feet below sea level, and there's not a room in
the place without windows.. hardly a safe shelter in a category 4 or 5
storm. At this point I'm going to be pleasantly surprised if we return to
find it in livable condition.”
Imagine that feeling as you lock the door of your house, get into your car,
and leave, not expecting to find your home in livable condition when you
come back.
Homelessness has been a problem in America for some time. But a few weeks
ago it became much worse, literally overnight, when hundreds of thousands of
people were rendered homeless by Hurricane Katrina.
The stories we have heard have been heartbreaking. Parents have been
separated from children. Mentally incompetent people have been shipped off
to far away locations with no one keeping track of who was sent where.
40 residents of a nursing home died because they were abandoned by the
owners and staff as the floodwaters approached. Can you imagine the horror
those poor people must have felt, sitting in their wheelchairs as the water
rose, no one answering their cries for help, no way to get to higher ground,
or even to the roof of the building?
And as if the natural disaster wasn’t bad enough for about five days after
the levee broke New Orleans became like something out of a bad “B”
movie—lawlessness, looting, bodies abandoned in the street. People all over
the world watched the TV and said in disbelief, “this is the most powerful
nation on the planet?”
This week’s Torah portion, Ki Tetze, contains a lot of different rules and
regulations, a lot of different laws. But as I was reading this week’s
parsha I was struck by two laws that are directly relevant to the situation
at hand. By the measure of one of them, we as a society have failed
miserably. By the measure of the other, the jury is yet out.
Deuteronomy chapter 22 verse 8 commands us: ki tivneh bayit chadash, “When
you build a new house, then you shall make a ma’akeh, a parapet for your
roof, that you should not bring any blood upon your house, if any man falls
from there.”
In the days of the Bible, they didn’t have central air conditioning. The
houses had flat roofs. During the hot summers, in the evening people would
go sit up on their roofs where they could catch a little breeze and cool
off. Some people in Israel still do this today. But the homeowner was
responsible for the safety of his guests—you had to build a railing so
people wouldn’t fall off the roof.
Just like in American law—if you have something hazardous at your home, and
someone gets injured, you could be sued for negligence. This mitzvah is not
just a rule about architecture—rather it points us to an important
principle. If you build something, you have to build it right, with safety
in mind. And the rule applies not just to the person who originally built
the structure, but to any owner; and it applies not just to the roof of your
house.
As Rambam (Maimonides) wrote in Mishneh Torah: Both the roof and any other
object of potential danger, by which it is likely that a person could be
fatally injured, require that the owner take action... just as the Torah
commands us to make a fence on the roof. ... and so, too, regarding any
obstacle which could cause mortal danger, one has a positive commandment to
remove it, to guard it, and to be very careful with it, as it says “take
heed to yourself and guard your soul diligently,” and if one does not remove
it but leaves those obstacles constituting potential danger, one
transgresses a positive commandment and negates a negative commandment "Thou
shall not spill blood" (Hilchot Rotzeach 11:4).
Rambam’s phrasing tells us that the responsibility to protect against a
danger falls on anyone in a position to do something about it, not just the
one who is technically the owner of the object in question.
The responsible authorities failed miserably when it comes to following the
guidance of this commandment. The levee between New Orleans and Lake
Pontchartrain was a known hazard. None of the authorities involved was
terribly surprised that the levee gave way. They’ve been warning about it
for years.
When things were falling apart in New Orleans, we read a lot of people
blaming others: The President blamed the governor, the governor blamed
the mayor, the mayor blamed the Feds and around it goes. Lately, in a
refreshing twist, there has been some accepting responsibility: Earlier this
week President Bush said "To the extent that the federal government didn't
fully do its job right, I take responsibility." Louisiana Governor Kathleen
Blanco said "At the state level, we must take a careful look at what went
wrong and make sure it never happens again. The buck stops here, and as your
governor, I take full responsibility." Mayor Nagin said “I think now we are
out of nuclear crisis mode, it seems as though myself, the governor and
president have done some retrospection as far as what we could have done
better, and ultimately we're all accountable at the level of local state and
federal government."
But what does it mean to “take responsibility?” Will any of them resign in
shame because they did an inadequate job? Saying they will do something
differently in the future does not help those who have suffered.
Has anyone involved done real teshuva, real repentance for the monumental
failures?
I respectfully suggest that the fact the levee broke in the first place was
a major failure on the part of the Federal government. Back in 1995 a flood
killed six people in Louisiana. Recognizing that the system of levees was
vulnerable, and that local government did not have the resources to fix it,
the Federal government stepped in with the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood
Control Project, or SELA.
According to a leading New Orleans newspaper, over the next 10 years, the
Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million
on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in
local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as
hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the
levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside.
Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a
trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures
of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time
as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles
in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq
as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.
Newhouse News Service, in an article posted late Tuesday night at The
Times-Picayune Web site, reported: "No one can say they didn't see it
coming. ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious
questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."
Yes, serious questions SHOULD be raised. But the Federal government is not
the only one at fault.
The City of New Orleans has a comprehensive hurricane disaster plan, which
can be found online. The only problem is the city and state didn’t follow
their own plan. The plan details how they need to identify the at-risk
population, have in place transportation and other resources. The Mayor has
the authority to order an evacuation. The disaster plan calls for procedures
for handling persons with special needs like the physically or mentally
disabled.
But the disaster plan didn’t work—it was a disaster itself. They had no plan
for how to get people who didn’t own cars out of New Orleans. In a city with
one of the highest poverty rates in America—30% of the former residents of
New Orleans live below the poverty line—they had no plan for evacuating
people who don’t own cars.
The tragic scenes at hospitals, the deaths at nursing homes, show there was
no plan for dealing with people with special needs. Despite their own
requirement that the local government have one. Mayor Nagin said he assumed
if he cried “help” the State and Federal governments would come to his
rescue in a day or two. Some plan.
There’s not much we can do about the past except to try and learn from it.
To learn that we, as individuals and a society, must take VERY seriously the
injunction from this week’s Torah portion to build a parapet around our
roofs, to build a safe society. Even if it costs money to do so.
Looking forward, looking to our response to this awful natural disaster, the
Torah charges us with helping. In chapter 22 verse 4 of this week’s parsha
we are commanded “You shall not watch your brother’s ass or his ox fall down
by the way, and hide yourself from them; hakeim takim imo, you shall surely
help him to lift them up again.”
This commandment is not just talking about donkeys and oxen. When someone is
in trouble—in today’s world the easiest analogy from an ass or an ox is to a
car broken down—you have to help them.
Life is coming back to the Gulf states and New Orleans. Businesses are
slowly re-opening, people are trying to put their lives back together. It is
up to us to help them. This is process that is not going to be over in a few
weeks—it is going to take months and years to rebuild. If you already gave
something to help with relief, it wouldn’t hurt to give more—the costs
involved are staggering, well over $100 billion. The Conservative synagogue
in Metairie, a suburb of New Orleans, suffered extensive damage. They had
5-10” of water in the building, the floors are ruined, they have a problem
with mold, and their insurance company informed them that they have no flood
insurance. And of course many congregants are now homeless and unemployed.
Information on how you can make donations to help the victims of Hurricane
Katrina—Jewish and Gentile alike—can be found by the entry to the sanctuary.
Today I wish I could use an overhead projected on Shabbat. There was a great
cartoon in yesterday’s newspaper which is very appropriate to the hurricane
damage and our personal efforts at self-improvement in this month of Elul
leading up to Rosh Hashana.
The nerdy kid in the Foxtrot cartoon is looking at himself in a mirror.
Kid says “Mom and Dad don’t think I should buy a cartoon book with my
allowance.” “What?!” the reflection replies. “They think I should donate it
to help the hurricane victims.” “The nerve!” “How dare they suggest the
needs of people who have had their homes and jobs and lives decimated
outweigh your need to giggle for 30 minutes!” “I’m not sure I like what I’m
seeing in the mirror.” “Heck, 45 minutes if you read slowly!”
This is the “season of repentance.” It’s the time of year we hold a mirror
up to ourselves and look at what we’ve done and how we’re doing.
Do you like what you see in the mirror?
Shabbat Shalom
To view the archives, go to www.neshamah.net
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