Four years
ago, our New Year came just days after the horror of 9/11. We
couldn't help but address this calamity and together try to
find some solace from the horrible shock, anger and grief it
brought us.
We have had a
bit more time between the catastrophe of 2005 and this New
Year both because Katrina came so early in the hurricane
season in August and our New Year comes so late, in October.
In a different year it could be Simchas Torah already.
There's even been time for another category 5 storm to strike
though Rita thankfully came with far less devastating
results. We could say we're past Katrina by now, its
yesterday's news but that would be a terrible mistake. The
grief of the families of those who perished is still fresh.
So many are still living in shelters without any means of a
livelihood and without any real reason to hope. To say we are
past it, is to harden our hearts to the ongoing human
suffering.
Earl and Gail
Siles lived in a one story brick home in a suburb of New
Orleans in St. Bernard Parish. They were at the point of their
lives when they were looking forward to enjoying the bit they
had accumulated during a lifetime of work. That Monday
morning after Katrina, the waters came rushing to their front
door so fast they couldn't open the doors to escape. Within
minutes, the water was up to their waste and they were only
able to escape through a window and find their way to their
boat which was parked in the carport. Many of the residents of
St. Bernard's Parish have boats they use for fishing and
crabbing. There's a term I don't often use. (These are the
Siles, not the Silversteins - so it’s O.K.) The Siles were
fortunate to be able to get their boat operating but to hear
them tell the story, in just a few more minutes, the waters
would have been over their heads. When the rains eased they
were able to get their motorboat out through their submerged
neighborhood. Gail Siles said "That's when we started hearing
the people hollering and screaming . They were on their roofs
or leaning out their second story windows waving and screaming
for help. Se we just started rescuing people." For two days,
one trip after another in their 17 foot Sunbird, they saved
all together some 150 stranded neighbors. The Siles are now
amongst the more fortunate. They are living with relatives in
Florida but they have lost their home, their car, their truck.
We can't be past it when these two good people who lost
everything but saved so many lives don't know what the next
chapter of their lives will be. We can only ask how as
Americans, we can help them and hundreds and thousands like
them rebuild, their homes, their lives, their future.
While not
past it, with the bit of time that has passed since the
terrible storm, we have an opportunity to reflect on the
spiritual lessons this catastrophe brings us. Any lessons we
learn come at far too high a price but if we learn no lessons
from Katrina, spiritual and practical, the price is even
higher.
The first
lesson of Katrina is at the core of our high holy day
prayers. It is the lesson of our vulnerability. We felt it on
9/11 and we felt it again this year. We may ponder the meaning
of the opening line of the prayer "On Rosh Hashanah it is
written and on Yom
Kippur it is sealed." but we can't help but be stirred by the
following words "who shall live and who shall die, who at the
end of their days and who well before what should be the end
of their days, who by fire and who by water. And who by
water.
Many of us
deal with ongoing, chronic issues in our lives, illness,
depression, advancing age, relationships, problems with our
work, problems with loss of work and income. We feel like
we're constantly swimming upstream and not quite getting there
and then in an instant, we see how those streams and lakes
and rivers and oceans flooded the lives of so many and it
is hard for us to make much sense of it all. Whatever
personal tzuris you and I carry to meet the new year, we can
only consider ourselves fortunate that the teeming waters are
not reaching our necks. We can still catch our breath. When
we realize how vulnerable we truly are, we can only count our
blessings.
I was sitting
at the Kiddush this past Shabbat at a table with some of our
ATM members. One of our dear regulars on Shabbat morning, a
survivor, said to me, Rabbi, since I came to America, I look
up every morning and I say, Modeh Ani - the morning prayer.
I am thankful to You O G-d: You have compassionately returned
my soul to me, great is my faith in You. As a survivor, she
knows more than any of us, the meaning of vulnerability and so
she knows what it means to be thankful.
There is
great value in our appreciating our vulnerability. There is
great value in permitting ourselves to feel the impact of
these words "Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die? By Fire and
Who By Water."
We can't
help but ask "Where was G-d when Katrina stuck?"
While the great theologians of the insurance companies might
call this an act of G-d, I don't believe G-d had anything to
do with Katrina or Rita or Andrew or Camille. Hurricanes hit
the gulf coast long before the first ocean front house was
ever built and before the first note of jazz was ever played
on Bourbon Street. The experts knew how vulnerable New
Orleans was on so many levels they didn’t respond adequately,
before, during or after the storm. The worst happened.
This is not
only the story of New Orleans. It is our story too. We have
our own vulnerabilities which we can either ignore and just
wish away or we can recognize and respond. Because we are
human and alive, our health is in ways vulnerable. Do we
recognize and respond or hope the storm will not come our
way. Some have marriages that are vulnerable. Some spouses
have walls between them more powerful than the levies. What do
we do with those vulnerable relationships, try to heal them
or ignore them and hope they'll go away? They will go away. It
may be our position at our work that is vulnerable. How do we
respond? We may be emotionally vulnerable, anxious, depressed
and have been so for years but have never had the strength to
respond. Someone sat in my Study recently and said "My father
should have gotten help years ago but he was too macho and he
just gets worse and worse." Its not that he was too macho, he
wasn’t macho at all. It takes courage to admit our
vulnerability and it takes more courage to respond to it. If
we learn anything from Katrina, it is do not turn your head
away from life's vulnerabilities. Life's storms have a way of
striking at us as well. We can never be fully prepared but
don't leave yourself as vulnerable as those poor people of New
Orleans were left this past August.
At one time
there were barrier islands between the Gulf coast and the open
sea. It is believed that those barrier islands could have
possibly to some extent, protected the mainland from this
terrible flooding. For some reason that has to do with our
human manipulation of the environment, we did away with those
barrier islands. There were, at one time, miles of marshes
between the mainland and the open sea that could have served
as a secondary barrier to the full effect of Katrina's fury.
We have been eliminating those marshes like we eliminate rain
forests and fill the skies with carbon dioxide emissions
and overlog our forests and we think we are invulnerable, that
we will not have to pay a price but there is a price to pay.
It is also
possible that even if the barrier islands were still there and
all the marshes maintained, this storm was so amazingly
powerful absolutely nothing could have protected the mainland.
We've gotten a crash course in tropical storms lately.
Hurricanes are fueled by water and the warmer the water the
more powerful the storm. There seems to be a natural cycle of
more and less severe storms but more and more scientists are
saying that the warmer water in the Gulf caused by global
warming may well be the cause of these uniquely devastating
and destructive storms. Even if it is possibly true, can we
afford to ignore it? Not that long ago, there were
"scientists" still saying there is no definitive link between
cigarettes and cancer while how many millions of lives have
been lost . No one comes back from a cruise to Alaska without
marveling at its beauty and concerned by the ongoing melting
of the glaciers they see. This melting causes a rise in the
sea level which can potentially cause its own flooding.
Whether or not global warming directly caused Katrina's
destruction, we stand warned that our carbon dioxide
emissions cause a heating of the earth and we are making our
planet and ourselves more and more vulnerable.
We can't help
but ask "O G-d our loving Parent how could You have let this
terrible catastrophe befall us?" but if we let ourselves hear
G-d's response through the blast of the Shofar or the still
small voice of the divine within us, we might hear G-d's
response "My children, better ask yourselves how have you
continued to devastate this Garden of Eden I have given you.
How long do you think you can keep this up and not pay a
price. Why do you think you are invulnerable when the very
planet is vulnerable It is time my children that you grow up
and take responsibility for this world which I have loaned to
you."
In
yesterday’s NY Times editorial “Exploiting Katrina” the Times
reports how powerful committee chairs in the House and Senate
are using this crises to eviscerate environmental protections
they have been wanting to eliminate for years. If that becomes
Katrina’s legacy, the tragedy will become far greater.
As Americans
and especially as Jews, we have an obligation to empathize
with those who felt most vulnerable and abandoned during this
terrible storm. It will be long before we forget the image
of those stranded on the tops of houses waving flags saying
“save me” but they were left and abandoned on rooftops, on
the streets, in the Convention Center. We can not ignore the
plaintive cry of their question, why did you abandon us? How
could it take so many days to respond to such human suffering
before our eyes? In our eyes and in the eyes of the
world, America looked like a third world country. Fidel
Castro offered help in food and doctors. When Fidel Castro
offers you help, you know you are in big trouble.
We can not
ignore the reality that those who were stranded and died were
the poorest without the means to escape from the city. They
have been the most vulnerable before we ever heard of Katrina
and they were the most vulnerable when the storm struck.
Do you know that the rate of child mortality is higher in
Washington D.C. our nation's capital than it is in Beijing,
China's capital? Do you know that our country has the highest
child poverty rate of any other industrialized nation. Since
1999, the rate of poverty in America has been edging steadily
and disturbingly upward. Can we, the wealthiest country in
the world justify this and continue to ignore the poorest and
most vulnerable or can Katrina awaken us to find a way to
respond to those who are most vulnerable amongst us?
The spiritual
lessons of Katrina are not complete until we speak about the
goodness and generosity of the American People, of so many in
America. Houston opened its Astrodome and so many opened their
own homes. Millions and millions of dollars have been
contributed to the Red Cross, Salvation Army and a long list
of other funds. We can only hope that those who have felt
abandoned will come to feel embraced by their fellow citizens
and know that they live in a great country with so many
giving, even selfless individuals like Earl and Gale Siles who
just after seeing their home destroyed went out to save some
150 others in danger of drowning. In whatever way we can, we
have to respond, reach out and give the victims the hope that
they can rebuild their lives even at this hopeless time. We
each must promise today, that we have not finished responding
to those who need our support. When the final chapters of this
sad story are written, hopefully history will say America did
not abandon its own but helped their fellow citizens rebuild
their lives.
Lives can be
rebuilt. Lives can be devastated and yet rebuilt. We have each
experienced our own hurricanes of life when we felt knocked
down, abandoned, hopeless and yet somehow we got on our feet
again or we will get on our feet again. We are vulnerable
but we are resilient.
America is a
country built on great faith , a faith in the fact that we
can rebuild and recover. Soon after Katrina, I spoke with
Rabbi Stephen Silberman of the synagogue in Mobile
Alabama. I received an e-mail from Rabbi Silberman about a
week ago in which he wrote about going to some of the
neglected destroyed towns in Mississippi and handing out the
necessities of life. He said no one pushed or grabbed but all
were grateful for the help. One gentleman who had gratefully
seen his three daughters each receive a dress asked if he
could get a pair of dark pants. They didn't have to be
perfect, he said, they just had to be presentable enough so
that he could go to church. Imagine that, he just needed a
pair of pants to go to church. This man lost so much but not
his faith. He knows where G-d is for him and he'll find his
way to rebuild.
We saw the
destruction. Now watch the rebuilding again. Four years after
9/11 life is normal again in the financial center of New York
City or as normal as life ever gets in New York. Tourism has
been greater this year in our nation's capital than it was
before
the plane hit the Pentagon on that September day. Where there
is hurt there can be healing. We can say together with the
psalmist in psalm 30, there can be crying in the night, but
there will be rejoicing in the dawn.
That is our
prayer for all those who have suffered the ravages of Katrina
and our prayer for ourselves who have, in different ways been
struck by the storms of life. While there may be crying in
the night, let there be rejoicing in the dawn. With the
support of America, may those who have suffered most feel
the morning sun shine again and may each of us help to make
that sun shine on them.
Amen
