Shabbat Va'era 5770, Feeling the Pain of Haiti
Rabbi Deborah Wechsler
We hear many cries this week. Cries from Mitzrayim, the narrow places of Egypt, and the narrow spaces of despair. Most poignantly we hear the cries of the men, women and children trapped under the rubble in a desolate and despondent Haiti. It is heartbreaking to watch and listen and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is profound pain in the world and there is so little we can do.
Before Shabbat we learned that perhaps 50,000 people are dead following Tuesday’s earthquake and more than three million people are in need of aid. The numbers are staggering and we do what little we can to reach out and provide support to those in need.
Five years ago, almost to the day on the Jewish calendar, I stood here and spoke to you about the Tsunami in southeast Asia, a tragedy we said, like no other we had seen in modern times. But this week we were reminded that while the world and modern history are full of tragedies, each is unique. We do not compare pain; who is to say which sadness is greater than any other. The pathos of Haiti is only now beginning to be told, the orphanages crushed under the rubble, the water sitting in warehouses waiting to be delivered to those who thirst, those who look up to heaven from their depths below wondering from where will come their salvation.
In the year 2010 we live more than ever in a global village. This brings blessing and curses. It is perhaps both that we are able to see in real time the devastation, the sadness and the human cost that is too much to bear. As Jews, as human beings, as citizens of the world we are obligated to serve and comfort and feed and clothe and bury and weep.
The Talmud teaches us that we sustain the non-Jewish poor with the Jewish poor, visit the non-Jewish sick with the Jewish sick, and bury the non-Jewish dead with the Jewish dead, for the sake of peace. (Gittin 61a) We make no distinctions, suffering is suffering and our obligation is simply to act.
This Monday we observe the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. In his letter from the Birmingham Jail from April 1963, the Reverend King wrote to people of faith to say, “I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial idea of the outsider.
The nature of an earthquake is such that the seismic shocks are felt hundreds and thousands of miles from the center. Even nature conspires to remind us that we share a common world and a common experience. We are reminded that we are all insiders, living lives as Dr. King says, tied together in our destiny. We read this week the story of a people crying out. A people whose suffering is so dire that its cries reach all the way up to heaven.
When God speaks to Moses at the burning bush He says, “I have seen the suffering of My people and heard their crying.” (Exodus 3:7) God bears witness to the plight of the Israelite people but more than bearing witness, God is inspired to act. Why? Because he is moved by it. Ki yadati et mach ovav because I know their pain. God cares about the sorrows and is moved to act.
On Yom Kippur, the most sacred day of the Jewish year, we recall the prayer of the High priest recited at the moment that he emerged from his direct encounter with God. It closes with a fervent request for the inhabitants of the Sharon region of the land of Israel who lived in peril of sudden earthquakes. He prayed, “May it be Your will, Lord our God and God of our fathers, that their homes not become their graves.” This Shabbat we know that this prayer is not always metaphor, not always poetry. Today it is a cry from the depths that God and the world hear the prayer of the people of Haiti from the valley of the shadow of death.
There are no happy endings, just small miracles of survival and moments of redemption. We close with wishes and prayers. Wishes that like God we see and care about the suffering of humanity. That we see ourselves as insiders, our destiny intimately connected with those who are in pain. That we be moved to act so that others will not find that their homes become their graves.
And we close with prayers,
Our Father in Heaven, Ruler of Creation, Master of the world: Have mercy on all those who are suffering in ruins. Have compassion on Your creatures—Look, O Lord, and see their predicament; Listen, God, and hear their cries. Strengthen the hands of those who would bring relief, comfort the mourners, heal, please, the wounded. Grant us wisdom and discernment to know our obligations, and open our hearts so that may extend our hands to the devastated. Bless us, our God, that we may walk in Your ways, and be "compassionate ones, children of compassionate ones." Grant us the will and the wisdom to prevent disaster and death; prevent plague from descending upon your earth, and fulfill your words, "May there be peace within your walls, serenity within your homes." Amen. So may it be your will.
