In the Face of Tragedy

What Do We Do?

Tachat ha-Shemesh – Under the Sun

Weekly Torah Insights from Miami

The devar Torah this week was prompted by a troubling passage in Parshat Beha-alotchah, a near tragedy. It’s a welcome diversion from the news of the week – most any week in recent times.

We are blinded by news of tragedies at every moment. They may be from natural causes or human made. We experience famines, floods, earthquakes, and eruptions. If they affect human populations, they are tragic. Then there are shootings, conflicts, wars and kidnappings… all happening at the same time, all resulting in death and destruction. News of one masks news of the next, each rising to awareness the closer it comes to home and our personal concerns.

What does our tradition suggest we do in the face of a tragedy? We might approach this in a classical fashion – kal v’homer, often referred to as arguing a fortiori or from minor to major. Rather than begin with one of the major tragedies, e.g. how to resolve the conflicts in Israel and Gaza, we’ll begin with a seemingly minor one.

A few weeks ago, a woman ninety-six years old whose memory had been erased for nearly a decade by Alzheimer’s disease passed away. That hardly seems tragic, but Walli and I knew her and her children well. She and her husband had been our friends for half a century. It was as if we were part of her family.

When I learned of her death, I said the blessing: דיין האמת / dayan ha-emet – a judge of truth – as the Shulchan Aruch, the Jewish code of law, instructs:

על שמועות רעות מברך בא"י אמ"ה דיין האמת

On hearing bad news, one makes the blessing: Blessed are you Hashem, Our God, Master of the Universe, the judge of truth (Orach Chayim 222).

But was this bad news? Her soul had been trapped within her body for years. Was it bad that it had finally been released?

I tended to the funeral. I had the task of reading the liturgy, this for a Havurah family that was accustomed to asking questions. I not only tended to the funeral, I attended it. I was family as well.

From the outset the experience was more difficult than expected. I could not keep a clergy distance. I was too close with the family for that. I could hear every phrase I read through the ears of a son now orphaned, or a daughter-in-law whose husband had fallen years ago on a patch of ice and was rendered a quadriplegic. He had passed away from an illness some months before, predeceasing his mother.

In addition to the family was a surprisingly large gathering of supportive friends, each likely expecting a formulaic funeral but suddenly engaged in a profound process.

The text of the Shulchan Aruch continues:

חייב אדם לברך על הרעה בדעת שלימה ובנפש חפצה כדרך שמברך על הטובה

A person is obligated to offer a blessing concerning the bad with complete awareness and an accepting soul, in the same way that he blesses concerning the good.

Isn’t that asking too much of us? How can that be justified?

כי הרעה לעובדי השם הוא שמחתם וטובתם כיון שמקבל מאהבה מה שגזר עליו השם נמצא שבקבלת רעה זו הוא עובד את השם שהוא שמחה לו

Because for those who serve the Holy One, what is bad can be a source of happiness and goodness. When one accepts with love what has been decreed upon him, one finds that accepting this bad occurrence while continuing to serve the Holy One is pleasing to the Holy One.

How can we accept this in the face of any loss, large or small? But ultimately, what choice do we have? The alternative to acceptance is resentment. The tradition demands we burn through our resentment to acceptance and get on with our lives. Upon hearing the bad news of a loss that entails mourning, hearts are torn. As Solomon says in Ecclesiastes, “There is time to tear, and a time to sew up again (3:7).” The compassion of friends and the community at large allows for healing during the year of mourning.

What is the tragic event in Parshat Beha-alotchah that brings this process to mind? Toward the end of the portion Aaron and Miriam challenge Moses’ authority. The Holy One is not pleased. He orders Aaron and Miriam to step forward. He envelops them in a cloud and scolds them. Then He expresses His anger.

וַיִּחַר־אַף יְהוָֹה בָּם וַיֵּלַךְ: וְהֶעָנָן סָר מֵעַל הָאֹהֶל וְהִנֵּה מִרְיָם מְצֹרַעַת כַּשָּׁלֶג וַיִּפֶן אַהֲרֹן אֶל־מִרְיָם וְהִנֵּה מְצֹרָעַת: וַיֹּאמֶר אַהֲרֹן אֶל־מֹשֶׁה בִּי אֲדֹנִי אַל־נָא תָשֵׁת עָלֵינוּ חַטָּאת אֲשֶׁר נוֹאַלְנוּ וַאֲשֶׁר חָטָאנוּ: אַל־נָא תְהִי כַּמֵּת אֲשֶׁר בְּצֵאתוֹ מֵרֶחֶם אִמּוֹ וַיֵּאָכֵל חֲצִי בְשָׂרוֹ

HaShem was angry with them. He left them alone. When the cloud lifted from the tent, Miriam’s skin was leprous. It became as white as snow. Aaron turned toward her and saw that she had leprosy. He appealed to Moses: Please, my lord, I ask you not to hold against us the sin we have so foolishly committed. Do not let her be like a stillborn infant coming from its mother’s womb with its flesh half eaten away.

What was Moses’s response? In the face of his sister’s affliction did he bless the Holy One saying dyan emet, a judge of truth? Rather he cried out in anguish.

וַיִּצְעַק מֹשֶׁה אֶל־יְהוָֹה לֵאמֹר אֵל נָא רְפָא נָא לָהּ

Moses cried out to HaShem – “El na rafa na la – God please heal please her!”

After a week in quarantine Miriam emerged healed.

Not all petitions have such a happy outcome. We invoke Moses’s petition in our current prayers for healing. We chant El na rafa na la, a complete prayer in five words. The request to heal is at its center, with a please on either side. The word for please, נָא -na, is an imploring form of please.

Hayyim Joseph David Azulai (the Chida), an 18^th century rabbinic scholar and kabbalist, suggests in Penei David, his volume of teachings:

אל נא רפא נא לה. אפשר לרמוז דר"ת נא רפא נא נר"ן נפש רוח נשמה כיוין להמשיך אל חסד על נר"ן שלה לתקן הפגם וזהו אל נר"ן לה

Perhaps this formulation – el na rafa na la – hints that the initial letters of the middle three words - Na Rafa Na – stand for NaRaN – Nefesh Ruach Neshama – the three ascending levels of soul. (Moses prayer) was for more than her body, but an expression of hesed (mercy) for the healing of her soul to correct also the flaw that led to her illness. And that’s el na rafa na la. (Beha-lotchah #11)

With this in mind the prayer el na rafa na la becomes more than skin deep. If one considers a deity who is active in the world and the person recovers, one thanks God. And if the person does not recover? Then we say, baruch dayan emet.

Included in the funeral service is the second blessing of the Tefillah, the long prayer that is at the core of each of the daily services. It is repeated so regularly, day in, day out, it rolls off the lips by rote. But in the face of tragedy, it raises questions. It says of the Holy One that he supports the falling, but not always. That He heals the sick, but not always. That He frees the captive, but not always. And with those doubts in mind, should we accept the claim that He will keep faith with us when we sleep in the dust?

We gathered as a family, as a community, to bury our dead. We did so with questions, shoveling doubts and uncertainties into the open grave along with packets of love letters the family had preserved. Then we sealed the grave with earth from Israel.

The loss of one woman in her nineties with Alzheimer's, seemingly a minor tragedy, had evolved into a complex process, opening the heart, raising profound questions. Now, what do we do with a major ongoing tragedy such as the ongoing conflict in Israel and Gaza?

At the burial we had poured earth from Israel into the open grave. Was that providing comfort or adding salt to the wound? There is little comfort in Israel at the moment.

If all we do is look at the news, we are likely to walk away with overwhelming data, real or fabricated, lobbed like mortar shells from differing ideological camps. That data masks the pains and pangs of heart and conscience that fester beneath the numbers and the rubble.

As we analyze the scale of tragedies from minor to major, kal v’homer, having considered one loss, we might consider two. Then we might consider twenty. Then two hundred. Two thousand. Twenty thousand… We might realize that there are no major tragedies, rather an accumulation of minor ones, each one unique, one loss at a time until the full scope of the tragedies overwhelm us.

If we bury the impact of those losses under ideology, we mask not just the loss of humans, but the loss of humanity. Should the loss be felt keenly enough, first as individuals, then as families, then as nations, we might be moved individually, then collectively to resolution.

El na rafa na la – God please heal please this unbearable conflict – so we might come together to affect a healing.

In memory of Dorothy Eingold. May her name be for a blessing.

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