Behalotcha - 'Between one misfortune and another'

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.