This past New Year’s Eve and Day may have been a time of raucous celebration for most in this country, while for many Jews, it could have been just another Sabbath.
Yet it wasn’t. Rabbi Marc Berkson of Congregation Emanu-El B’ne Jeshurun said in a telephone interview that he simply could not have begun his synagogue’s Sabbath observance that Friday evening without thinking of and speaking about the horror that struck countries around the Indian Ocean earlier in the week.
“To have promptly gone into a joyous celebration of Shabbat would have been a glaring mixing of emotions,” he said. “All of us felt the pain of this.”
But it also was a time for action. On Dec. 28 — two days after a 9.0 magnitude earthquake sent massive tidal waves to Africa, India and Southeast Asia — the Milwaukee Jewish Federation sent e-mails “to as many members of our constituency as we have e-mail addresses for” in order “to let them know that the Jewish community was available to handle contributions,” said Richard H. Meyer, MJF executive vice president.
And at least “a couple of hundred” people responded as of Tuesday, Jan. 4, contributing “close to $50,000,” said Meyer.
All these funds, Meyer said, “will be forwarded to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee without any administrative charges.” The JDC has an office in Bombay, India, and is “partnering with local aid institutions that provide emergency assistance.”
Moreover, Meyer said, the United Jewish Communities, the umbrella organization of North American Jewish federations, “is encouraging all federations to approach community members” for this effort. Meyer said that as of Monday, “at least 40 federations have launched aid drives,” raising more than $3 million.
Other synagogues and organizations either joined with the MJF effort or signed onto other efforts from other groups. Rabbi Shlomo Levin of Lake Park Synagogue said his synagogue distributed the MJF’s appeal to its members.
Berkson said that the Union for Reform Judaism has created an Asian Earthquake Relief Fund; and “anything given to our tzedakah box for perhaps the next couple of months” will be directed to that effort.
Rabbi David Brusin of Congregation Shir Hadash and Rabbi Jacob Herber of Congregation Beth Israel both said they mentioned to their congregants the work of the American Jewish World Service, which according to a recent Jewish Telegraphic Agency article is also working on “long-term relief efforts” for the victims of the event.
The Chronicle has also received an e-mail from the Milwaukee chapter of the American Jewish Committee pointing out that this national organization has established a Tsunami Relief Fund whose proceeds are going to “global, Israeli and American aid groups working in the region.”
The news from Asia and Africa also inspired more spiritual reactions. During the part of Beth Israel’s service in which worshippers pray for the U.S. and for Israel, Herber asked that they remain standing in silence to pay tribute to the victims and survivors of the tsunami.
“There are times when no words can express how we feel after an extraordinary and horrific tragedy like this,” Herber told The Chronicle.
Levin said, “Ironically, I made a speech about why I wouldn’t speak about it on Shabbat.” He said he saw “three approaches in a religious sense to this issue.”
One is a “secular view, which saw in this a proof that there can’t be a God.” A second was a religious view that “this was an act of God that should be interpreted somehow” as “God’s punishment for this or that.” And he said, “I disagree with both” of these views.
But the third is that “fundamentally, this is no different from the issue we all confront, trying to explain the suffering of innocent people when we see injustice in the world” or when “an individual family has suffered an inexplicable loss.”
“This is the same as that, just on a larger scale,” said Levin. “I think this has to be viewed as another installment in that timeless question which has always troubled people” — and therefore is “not a Sabbath sermon topic.”
Berkson said he “couldn’t help noting” that the Torah portion for last Sabbath was the beginning of Exodus, a book which is suffused with the motif of how “water nourishes life and can bring death.”
And “as Pharaoh’s daughter drew Moses out of the water, so it is our task to draw all out of the water,” he said.
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