Hurricane came around Elul to teach us

I believe there are messages in what each of us experiences, especially when big things happen like Hurricane Katrina.

Katrina is being called the biggest natural disaster in American history. If that’s true, we must do more than shed a tear or two, donate a dollar or two, shake our heads for the people affected and continue with our lives.

If Sept. 11 changed everything, so, too, did Katrina. And because Katrina was the work of G-d, we need to take special notice of what it is meant to tell us.

Katrina, it should be noted for starters, occurred around the beginning of the Jewish month of Elul. Elul is one of the most important months on the Jewish calendar, but it gets overshadowed by the month that follows, Tishrei, which contains the big holidays of Rosh HaShanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot. Too many of us look past Elul as we look toward the High Holidays.

But Elul is key. It is when we get ready for the High Holidays by doing the hard work of taking a cheshbon hanefesh, an accounting of the soul, seeing where we did well in the past year and where we fell short; where we need to repent and how we can do and be better.

You can’t do all of that in the three days of Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur or even in the 10-day period between the two. You need a month when days are not consumed with meals, socializing, going to synagogue, getting new clothes for self and kids, making donations and doing all the other holiday stuff we do.

That Katrina came around Elul time tells us a lot. To me, Katrina is pointing out to us that two of the most important teachings of Judaism are also two of the most ignored these days.

Take care of people

The first is the importance Judaism attaches to relations, “bein adam l’chaveiro,” between you and other people. How important this is can be seen by the Jewish tradition that God doesn’t want any Jews coming to Him on the High Holidays trying to make amends for the way they have transgressed against God in the last year, until those Jews have first — that’s first — done all they can to repair relations with the people they know.

First, God says, do tshuva for ways you’ve hurt others. Don’t even try to talk about you and Me until you’ve taken care of the people in your life.

The second teaching is “derech eretz kudmah l’Torah,” that how you behave must be the first focus of your life before — that’s before — you worry about what the Torah tells you to do.

Again, God makes priorities clear. Don’t read holy books until after you’ve mastered being a good person, friendly, kind, caring and nice. First, be a mensch, for only then can you be a Jew.

Katrina is all about being a good person, about caring for other people, about being a mensch, showing compassion, opening your heart, reaching out your hand.

That message is especially needed in these days when so much comes our way, so fast. It’s one big story after another after another. What absolutely and totally captivates us one day is completely and totally forgotten the next.

Eventually, we become numb. Nothing reaches us, touches us, gets to us. We become detached. Nothing engages our humanity and we become distant from other people, cut off from each other.

I see that more and more every day in the Jewish world. I have seen Jews treating other Jews in horrible ways I never could have imagined.

It’s easy to do in a world that has become like those violent video games. You see enough blood and guts over and over, you become numb to it, fail to see the real horror of real violence.

So with Judaism. I think too many of us are figuring Judaism is about God, going to shul or tzedakah or doing acts of gemilut chesed, while keeping our emotional distance from other Jews.

Don’t get me wrong. All those are good things that we should all do. But we can’t do them by rote, somehow seeing them as divorced from truly caring about flesh and blood human beings.

Katrina tells us that what comes first is people, making sure to do right by how we treat others. Really and truly care about the victims of Katrina, feel their pain, imagine their anguish, extend oneself to help.

Yes, write a check, but do it for more than you automatically thought of doing. And do more. Donate a package of diapers, write a letter to someone displaced from their homes, volunteer for the Red Cross.

And then apply that not only to the people affected by Katrina but to all people. Think of that when you greet someone, how you to talk to someone, how you talk about someone. Think of that when you hear of someone in pain, in need. Visit a sick person in a hospital, offer your guest room for someone who needs a place for a few days for whatever reason.

Katrina shows us people in extreme need. But how we act every day to the people who come our way is the true measure of what kind of person we are. And everyone matters.

Katrina shows us how much things we take for granted matter. Something to eat, to drink, a roof over our heads. We must be grateful for all we have and we must remember that having all those things, we must be friendly, fair, kind.

Work on all those things this Elul and the new year will be one in which God will be very happy with you.

Joseph Aaron is editor and publisher of the Chicago Jewish News.