The Building is Burning: Faith and Doubt At Ground Zero

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor
Kol Nidre – 5763
September 15th, 2002

 

Introduction

There are two particular sources in the Rabbinic Midrashic literature which intertwine the picture which has been before our eyes constantly, the destruction of the World Trade Center Towers, and the issue of our faith in God. We are not the first people; we are not the first Jews, to have witnessed, even if from a distance, a horrible, terrible event with catastrophic loss of human life. And each time after those events, we then faced the imponderable mitzvah of praying to God, as we have since last September, even as we do tonight. On Tuesday evening, September 3, 2002, PBS had a two-hour special entitled "Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero," from where I took the title for this sermon. With the help of the Rabbinic midrashim, tonight I want to talk with you about faith in the amidst doubts.

I.

A. I listened carefully to the PBS program. Even without defining God and their beliefs, there were those who espouseddisbelief or disavowal of God. Even if they once believed, they don't anymore. Somehow they expected God to thwart the terrorists and stop the planes. I, too, wish God could have or would have. I am sympathetic for their pain. They want to believe in a God who would reach out from the heavens and stop such a cataclysm. In a child-like way I too wantSuperman, a Jewish comic-strip hero mind you, to come and save the day. In our theological simplicity we have never outgrown and never will, our comic book and comic strip heroes. Evil is vanquished and righteousness is vindicated. It is plain and it is simple. And that is what we want God to do. And if it fails to happen, then, the theory goes, there is no God.

B. In the program there were those whose faith was strengthened. Somehow, amidst all the tragedy, they said that God had to have a plan. Again, avoiding the details of their theology, they have such a deep and abiding belief in a personal God, that they cannot conceive of events that are beyond His manipulation. Somehow September 11 thhad to fit into a Divine Plan. I, too, want to believe in a God who is present, to whom I turn when I turn away from you. I want my theology to give me a purpose in life. I want a very strong faith to sustain you and me in days of trouble. Can faith make sense of calamities in such a way? I have a deep problem with this approach articulated in the program. Rabbi Kula from Clal did a fine job of articulating the dilemma of such a belief: If I believe that is was God's purpose that one person be saved, was it God's purpose that another person should die? Can I ascribe the pain and suffering of orphans and widows to a Divine Plan? I can't. I don't. I won't.

C. There was one very good answer, from my personal point of view, articulated between the extremes. Rabbi Kula noted the religious use of the word mystery. This is not the genre of usage as in "who-done-its?" where there is an answer and in time we will discover it. In religion the word is used to posit that there is an answer that is beyond us to understand or to discover. We believe in God, Creator and Redeemer. We believe through Torah that, limitedly, please note the word, limitedly, God interfered with the laws of nature to involve Himself – or Herself – in human affairs, to wit, Egypt. Since the event under discussion is so terrible, we would have expected Divine interference. Its absence is a mystery,yet it doesn't abrogate our belief in God. The onus is on us. We just don't understand because of our human limitedness. I can live with this, even if it is not easy. I can comfort myself with this, even if it is only chatzi-nechamah, a partial comfort.

II

There are two stories in our Midrashic lore, from two totally different circumstances, that suggest another authentic Jewish response to tragedy and calamity, to September 11 th. These two stories in our tradition are about buildings burning. One is about Abraham and the other is about Rabbi Joshua and Rabbi Yochanan. I find the parallelism between these two selections of Midrash and the Twin Towers and Pentagon captivating and illuminative.

A. The first comes Midrash Rabbah on Genesis 12:1 where God tells Abram to leave his homeland for as yet an unspecified destination. The Rabbis wonder: How did Abram recognize who was speaking so that he should listen? "Said Rabbi Isaac: This may be compared to a man who was travelling from place to place when he saw a building in flames. 'Is it possible that the building lacks a person to look after it?' he wondered. The owner of the building looked out and said, 'I am the owner of the building.' Similarly, because Abraham our father said, 'Is it conceivable that the world is without a guide?' the Holy One, blessed be He, looked out and said to him, 'I am the Guide, the Sovereign of the Universe,' hence, 'The Lord said unto Abram: Get thee out…'"

This is a marvelous midrash! Abraham's response is not a theological exposition. It is a cry of woe and anguish! There's a fire! Of course there is an owner! Why doesn't he put the fire out?! Audaciously Abraham is crying out: Where is the owner of our world? Where is God? Perhaps because Abraham recognized that there was a master of the world, maybe because he had the audacity to ask this question of God, our question, he merited to become the founding father of our faith.

In the Midrash the Rabbis imagine God's answer: "I am the owner of the building. I am the master of the world." Yet thatdoes not stop the building from burning.

God didn't start the fire. And God doesn't put it out.

Human being started the fire. Human beings will put it out.

Abraham understood a much deeper faith:

God doesn't want the fire of evil, wrongdoing, and tragedies to occur.

Human beings are free to make choices. Some are good. Some are pure evil.

Society, people in large numbers, benefits and suffers because of other people's choices. We are an interdependent global family.

God wants us to live morally, ethically and peacefully. It is up to us.

Perhaps Abraham, as seen through the prism of the Rabbinic Midrashic lens, had a much deeper and more sophisticated understanding of God, of us and our world. While I am still the child who wants Superman, Batman and others to save the world, I am the adult who knows differently, even at the same time.

B. In the Talmud is recorded a scene of Rabbi Joshua and Rabbi Yochanan walking the Jewish "Ground Zero" of the smoldering ruins of the Temple in Jerusalem. Only now I understand the reality of this piece, having read countless times. Rabbi Joshua, seeing the ruins and obviously everything else, cries out: "Woe and alas, the place, which atoned for the sins of the People Israel, through the ritual of animal, sacrifices now lies in ruins!" Now I really understand that cry like I never understood it before. I look at all our pictures of Ground Zero and understand the pain that rang out in his voice just as it did from those walked and worked in and in the Pentagon, and in Pennsylvania and New York. This is God's House! Where is He now? How did He let this happen?

Are not the questions the same?

Are we not all Rabbi Joshua?

Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai answered Rabbi Joshua: "Be not grieved my son. There is another way of gaining atonement even though the Temple is destroyed. We must now gain atonement through deeds of loving kindness – gemilut chasadim."

Rabbi Yochanan was just as pained as Rabbi Joshua. In other sources he is recorded as having tried to save Jerusalem from destruction and failed. He no less loved God. I'm sure that Rabbi Joshua's question, our question, was his question, too. Besides what I said earlier being operative here, too, Rabbi Yochanan adds an element that is most important for us: the transcendent God, the God far away, is made into the immanent God, the God here and now, through us.While neither building in the midrashim was saved from fire, just like our buildings, just as the divine inaction in the midrashim and in the present remains a religious mystery, God is made manifest through us, in deeds of loving-kindness.

III.

Three times God was present, at least:

A. A woman in Washington lost her son in the attack on the Pentagon. Or was it her husband? Accounts differ, but the story is true. A week after the attack, she went to the neighborhood near the wounded building. She visited a Korean-run coffee shop near the cleanup site and gave the owner money along with instructions to use it to pay the bill of soldiers who were in that day. Later, an Air Force major came in, heard that his muffin was already paid for and was told the entire tale. "That poor woman should have been in deep mourning," he said, "Instead she's buying coffee and doughnuts for us guys in uniform. I have no answers to how someone cultivates a heart as large as that."

B. "My name is Usman Farman," the young man wrote. "I am 21 years old, turning 22 in October. I am Pakistani and I am Muslim. Until September 11, 2001, I worked at the World Trade Center…I have friends and acquaintances [who also work there]. Some remain buried under the rubble." Usman described in great detail what he saw and heard that day, but there is one piece of his story that I most want to share with you. "We were evacuated to the north side of Building #7, still only a block from the towers. [We were told] to go north and not to look back. Five city blocks later, I stopped and turned around to watch. With a thousand people staring, we saw in shock as the first tower collapsed…the next thing I remember is that dark cloud of glass and debris about 50 stories high came tumbling toward us… I turned around and ran as fast as possible and fell down trying to get away…I was on my back, facing this massive cloud…Everything was already dark…I normally wear a pendant around my neck inscribed with an Arabic prayer for safety. [While I was on the ground, with people stampeding past me] a Hassidic Jewish man came up to me and held the pendant in his hand and looked at it. He read the Arabic out loud for a second. What he said next, I will never forget. With a deep Brooklyn, accent, he said, "Brother, if you don't mind, there is a cloud of glass coming at us, grab my hand, and let's get the hell out of here." He helped me stand up and we ran for what seemed like forever without looking back. He was the last person I would ever have thought would help me. If it weren't for him, I probably would have been engulfed in shattered glass and debris."

C. The town of Gander in Canada has a population of 10,400. When the airplanes were being grounded, fifty-four were sent there. Those planes totaled 10,500 passengers. For the following days that these planes were grounded the citizens of Gander and the surrounding towns took care of these 10,400 people as guests, keeping families together, elderly passengers were taken to private homes, pregnant ladies given medical attention, phone calls and emails were available and even excursion trips to the surrounding areas were organized. Every single need of these passengers who outnumbered the residents was taken care of. They were returned to their planes on time, with no one missing. On the way home a gentleman was permitted to use the PA system and reminded everyone what they had just experienced and the hospitality received at the hands of total strangers. He said he was going to set up a Trust Fund under the name Delta 15, their flight number for providing scholarships for high school students to go to college. On that plane alone was collected $14,500, to be matched by that man and later by Delta. All this, just because some people in far away places were kind to some strangers, who happened to literally drop in among them.

Maybe God was present, just in manifold different ways:

Through those who gave blood; Through those who gave money;

Through those who cried.

Conclusion

It is easy to believe in God, in happy times, at celebrations. Faith is not tested then. Individually and nationally, our faith in God and pray to Him or Her is tested. Every time I see those planes flying towards the building I want to see a hand come from the heavens and sweep them up; Superman to inhale and extinguish the flames. And it doesn't happen. That yearning, to know the answer to the mystery of God I will take to the grave, and perhaps in the next world, in which I believe, I will there and then know the answer.

Meanwhile what is left for us to do here is to follow the teaching of Rabbi Yochanan: maintain our faith in the face of mystery and through deeds of loving kindness, even small and unknown, repair the broken breeches of our world; keep our faith, and meanwhile mend broken and sorrowing hearts. We will make God manifest through us. From this night forth let us vow, Kol Nidre, to act with divine grace towards each other and the world. May the Eternal Flame of faith burn brightly in the darkness of the night. May the dawn see peace for mankind.

Amen.