Behalotcha 2013/5773
Between one misfortune and another
Neil Tow ©
The TV news flashes pictures of the scenes where they will
report the news. One shocking story
after another. One tragedy after another
until numbness sets in, even weather is a study in potential dangers and the
only breaks between these segments are commercials that blare in loud and
discordant sounds images of products or services we may or may not need.
A football team takes a time out to discuss strategy and to
catch their breaths during the course of a game. One play after another, tackle after tackle,
bone-crunching, plastic helmets against helmets, a relentless poem of an
organized, ritualized conflict that once again is interrupted by these time
outs and more commercials.
Real life offers neither the flow, nor the badly needed
breaks, that either of these performances offers. Life can be unrelenting in its painful
progression, molding and kneading us beyond our ability to respond to pain,
suffering, indifference, apathy, and even to the happy and the good.
We find one example of breaks in the famous words that leap
from the Torah scroll this week, set apart from the rest of the text by a large
inverted ‘Nun’ on either side. The first
part of this tiny, two verse section begins with the familiar words: Vayhi
binsoa ha’aron vayomer Moshe…And concludes with the words that close our Torah
service, Uv’nucho yomar – When the Ark travels, and when the Ark comes to
rest.
For centuries our ancestors have debated why this poem
stands apart with a nun as a breakwater before and afterwards. Rashi explains to us that the first nun
breaks after a ‘first misfortune’ and the second nun breaks before the next
misfortune.
Within the two inverted Hebrew letters, there is a refuge, a
place of calm after one storm and before the next, or perhaps in the eye of the
current storm. In the wake of the fourth
major tornado to hit the city of Moore in Oklahoma in little more than a
decade, the people there are existing in that vulnerable place seemingly inside
the refuge between misfortunes.
Yesterday, students and teachers gathered together for a post-tornado
in-school reunion and then returned to the battered homes on battered streets
to continue trying to salvage their lives.
In the longer wake after Superstorm Sandy, beaches on the
shore have begun to open up, boardwalks rebuilt, rental properties hard to come
by as reservations fill the rolls. Storm
damage around our larger area persists as other areas struggle to complete
repairs and ‘open for summer’.
And we will gather together on Monday, Memorial Day, to remember
our brave men and women in uniform who willingly walked into storms of another
kind, of a human created kind, and were unable to return home along with their
friends back to their families and loved ones.
In all of these stories, the calm between the storms has not
proven to set the tone for the future.
One tornado hits and then another just as strong if not stronger. One storm hits the northeast and then another
still stronger. Waves of terrorism
spread over the world and there are more white stones in our military cemeteries.
We cannot seem to prevent armed conflict in this world,
despite our best prayers and efforts.
We can though commit, in these calm moments between the
storms of nature, to take steps to mitigate the impact of future storms. I reacted with anger and disbelief when the
city manager of Moore, Oklahoma said in a radio interview that with regard to
whether city residents should be required by law to build storm shelters,
especially given the tragic deaths at the local school, he replied, “The lives
of children are priceless, but we know what building costs are.”
Nothing compounds pain more than stating the obvious. The city manager’s coldness on this issue
does not fit in with the spirit of the Oklahoma that sent its trucks to our
neighborhoods to restore power after Sandy.
Now it is the turn for us, for people with the know-how, to go over
there, to sponsor and build the shelters so that the city of Moore does not
have to shoulder the cost itself.
Now is the time for residents of our area to begin
long-range planning for the next fall storm season.
Now is the time to support the families of our fallen
soldiers, so that we may imitate the loving-kindess of God who everyday is
‘zokef kefufim’, the one who enables people bent over in grief and loss to
stand up a little more straight.
TV News and football games have a life of their own. They are both performances rather than lived
experiences. They operate by their
rules. Our Torah today pricks us to
awareness of the haven between the misfortunes that appear in our world,
helping us to challenge the momentum of Torah reading so that it does not become rote, to challenge us to
rebuild and remember, to have the strength to carry the Ark forward through the
most terrible storms and to summon up the courage to shatter and scatter their
destructive potential, Vayhi binsoa ha’aron vayomer Moshe, kumah Ado—nai
ve’yafutzu oy’vecha mipanecha.