Reflecting on VT – What Faith Gives Us

Reflecting on VT – What Faith Gives Us
April 27, 2007
Rabbi Gary S Creditor

When last Shabbat came, I was very relieved that I didn't have to preach. The intervening time since the terrible, terrible tragedy at Virginia Tech gave me time to reflect. The multitude of children last erev Shabbat for Consecration was a great balm to all our numbed souls.

With the passage of time since that Monday we have been inundated with media analysis of every possible component. I question whether the mode of presentation was necessary. The headlines could have been smaller. NBC did not have to show his material. The articles could have been more condensed instead of hitting us over the head to deepen our own trauma. There is nothing I can add or would I wish to add to that frenzy.

But a week ago yesterday, with everything so bitingly sharp, Alberta Lindsey, religion columnist of the Times-Dispatch called and asked me the following question: "What does faith give us in times like this?" I didn't know that she would entitle her article "Where Was God." I would have said something else. To her question I gave four answers that she did include in the article. I share them with you with a little elaboration.

1. Faith enables people to have hope. I can't compare these times to others, which are easier, which are worse. These are surely difficult days, these days "try our souls." But faith in God, that we exist at all, that our bodies are such glorious wonders, that the sun continues to rise and set, that spring flowers bring beauty to the world, that there is a divine mandated system of right and wrong, that there celebrations like Consecration last Shabbat and a Bat Mitzvah now, gives us hope for a better day tomorrow.  Faith in God, the source of eternity, the belief in a purposeful creation which implies that our lives and deeds have meaning, that faith, gives us hope and affirmation that what we do, the positive and good deeds, of love, of grace, of kindness, these acts have an eternal quality. They are supreme in their goodness are eternal in their effect. As much as solar flares reach out far from the sun, our faith imbues us with the belief that the goodness of our lives reaches far beyond us and for much longer than we live, even if our days be brief. Faith gives us hope for tomorrow.

2. Faith gives us courage to face the world. This is a difficult world. With the tragedy at VT we lost one of the last pieces of our innocence. Where are we sending our children? To what destiny? The religious soul has faith that ultimately goodness will prevail. We believe that there are more good, decent and honest people, reflecting God's image, radiating the divine seed of holiness, than there are evil ones. If we were to just read the daily paper and watch the 11:00 PM news we could crumble before the avalanche of death and destruction that exists in the world. There is the oft-told joke that if you saw a headline that read "Little, old lady helped across the street" no one would buy the paper. The media is a staccato drum beat of the bad and trivial. It takes courage to face it and maintain our equilibrium. Faith in a loving God, faith in the constancy of existence, faith in the unending saga of humanity, faith that we do makes a difference, enables us to rise and surmount, ascend and transcend, be good and act kindly, despite and to spite the world we live in. We look that world in the eye, we read the newspaper and watch the TV and declare: we, our children and our children's children will prevail. We will make the world better, more glorious, more beautiful, morejust. We have that courage because we have that faith.

3. Faith consoles us when we are wounded by the events of the world. Faith in God, faith in other people helps us when we are wounded and broken. I cannot imagine a single person not touched in the innermost recesses of their soul by the calamity at Tech. Either visibly or invisibly we shed tears for those killed, those wounded and our scarred world. Our liturgy is so powerfully comforting in expressing our faith that in a world that will do what it will do, right or wrong; God's presence is near to envelope us in love. Judaism uses the word shechina, feminine in grammar, to express the faith that like a mother hugs, protects and shelters her child, so, too, does God do to us. That lesson was in the Hashkiveynu we recited earlier. It is the image of a mother bird hovering over the nest, sheltering the young with her wings. The storms will come and so, too, the winds, but the mother will hover over her young. So, too, does God, to shelter our souls, if not our bodies. The Rabbis have a great and powerful teaching in the Midrash, that when we cry in our pain, we do not cry alone. God cries with us. This faith is healing balm for aching hearts.

4. In grappling with what happens to us after death, faith gives serenity for the soul, and faith helps comfort us. The irrevocable truth of that Monday is that one terribly sick and demented person killed thirty-two others. No faith and no God will rewrite the past. But is all lost when we die? Within authentic Judaism is the faith that our neshama, our life force that no man-made machine can detect or monitor, beyond the electricity in the brain, the "we" who we are, is indestructible, impervious to harm. Beyond being invisible, it is eternal. Eternality is the ultimate quality of God. For us heaven exists. It is a metaphoric state that is beyond physical discernment. No satellite will ever find heaven. The words "up" and "down" are our metaphors to locate the undetectable. There, in that realm, the soul lives after death. We have the faith that the neshama exists in God's eternity, in His proximity, in a light that we, here, cannot see, and in a warm that we, here cannot feel. This is not a provable axiom but an article of faith that needs not be proved, but rather affirmed. My Jewish faith,  that the souls of the students and faculty who died "ascended" to heaven, that God's love "envelopes" them all, that in that metaphysical realm all is serene, calm, tranquil and peace, consoles me andcomforts me, about them and about my ultimate destiny as well. I have that faith. I share it with you.

Faith in God, in ultimate divine justice, cannot rewrite that past that is past. To be human means to have free will. God relinquished complete control and gave us this tiny globe over which to reign and rule, to do good and to do evil. Yet an article of faith is that God cares about us, God loves us, God cries with us in our pain and in our joy. Faith gives us the impetus to pick ourselves up and spit in the eye of each tragedy and calumny and live. With hope. With courage. With consolation, and with comfort. We live with faith.
I would but insert this last paragraph before I conclude as a caveat to all that I have just said.
            Faith is not found in the midst of crisis.
            Faith is not based on an infrequent visit to synagogue.
            Faith is not discovered in a seldom recited responsive reading or Sh'ma Yisrael.

            Faith is found in the constant cultivation of our soul.
            Faith is grounded in constant searching for God.
            Faith is grown in the unceasing conversation with eternity.
            Faith is found in the Bible, God's words to us.
            Faith is found in the Siddur, our words to God.

I close with the following:

The great Hasidic master Rabbi Nachman of Beslov told a wonderful story. He once saw a man whose house had burnt down. The man had been crying terribly about his losses. Now he began looking through the rubble, finding bits and pieces of wood or metal to start rebuilding. One by one he made a pile of pieces. Rabbi Nachman said: "See how he is collecting pieces to rebuild. So it is with our spiritual lives. Even when we think there is no hope, we are already collecting pieces to rebuild.

With faith that brings hope and courage, may we build and rebuild a better world.

May we search, find and have the faith.            

Amen.