“In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.”
Anne Frank’s immortal words ask us to have faith that ‘peace
and tranquility’ will return again.
She does not though ask, at least in this passage, for
justice.
She does not seek the destruction of the enemy, or tribunals. She simply holds fast to a faith that the
world will restore itself, that hate will transform to love, that cruelty will
transform to gentleness.
Sadly this vision is not yet realized. 15 years after September 11, 2001 we continue
to mourn the murder of 3,000 people, the tragic loss of so many first
responders, and the sickness and death of many who worked at the site in lower
Manhattan and contracted diseases as a result.
Much of the past 15 years has been a search for justice and
search for rebuilding.
But what act of justice or rebuilding can make up for even
one life?
Is there really a compensatory justice? Or is the effort a way to prevent future
attacks?
Today we take a moment to consider the pursuit of justice
the past 15 years. The United States
military went into Afghanistan to pursue terrorists, searched for and took out
Osama Bin Laden and others. There is
more security at airports. For a time
there was even a terrorism threat message coded by colors.
But as the Talmud teaches, a life is a world, and only God
can create or recreate a world. We can
only keep memories alive, tell the story, and make sure that we not only do not
forget but also teach the values of tolerance, thoughtfulness, and peaceful
ways to resolve conflict.
We also look around, our country, our world, and we wonder
perhaps justice is so imperfect, not in is philosophy, but in its application, that we just have to get used to the efforts of judges and courts to do their
best, as we always do, and that the hope for tzedek – for justice at all
levels, is something that is a striving, a hope, a goal that we work towards
whether we work in the legal field or not.
It is a human striving, for creating a world that every day reflects the
kind of world God hopes we can create.
Our parsha teaches us how tenuous the line be justice and
injustice can be, and how we must be able to believe in the justice system
first – Our ancestors, like us, were wanderers – Like us they did not always
know what the road ahead would be for them, what the future would hold. But they did not have the resources, things
like DNA, photo, and video that could help establish evidence in a court
room. And so the ancient justice system
was based on witness testimony, and that testimony alone could establish
innocence or guilt.
Al pi shnay e’dim or
shlosha edim yakum davar – a case can be valid only on the testimony of two
witnesses or more…
Fifteen years after 9/11 it’s important to ask ourselves, to
ask ourselves to think like witnesses and to offer a loving and honest critique
of where we’ve come to all these years after the tragedies in Manhattan, at the
Pentagon, and with Flight 93 that fateful day, to look and to witness whether
in that time we’ve set up our Jewish communities to provide more help and
support to those in need, to cross the aisles and meet the people we don’t know
and forge stronger connections, to reach out to people living nearby us –
people of all backgrounds and religions and get to know them, are we creating
moments when it’s possible to disagree without being disagreeable, are we
praying regularly? Not praying only for things or for people but
tefillah in the sense of self-reflection, appreciation of the world and its
blessings, prayers of gratitude.
Are we creating the world that Anne Frank, during one of the
darkest chapters of human history, the world that she believed was possible?
No comments:
Post a Comment