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Shemot 5765
by Rabbi Dr. Barry Leff

As we all know, on Sunday December 26 the largest earthquake anywhere in the world in over 40 years struck in South Asia. The death toll, mostly from the tsunami the quake caused, is over 120,000 and climbing. Major relief efforts are underway.

The tsunami is a classic example of what insurance contracts call an “act of God.” Most of the people I know in Silicon Valley are not terribly religious people. Yet when the Palm corporation issued the warranty on the Treo PDA/Phone that I carry, they got religion in a hurry: acts of God are excluded from the warranty.

The legal definition of an act of God is “an event which is caused solely by the effect of nature or natural causes and without any interference by humans whatsoever.” Theodore Steinberg even wrote a whole book about
them: “Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disasters in America.”

Was the tsunami an act of God? Is God directly responsible for the tsunami? Did God decide that the earthquake would happen where it did and kill who it did? Did God decide this time to punish the people of South Asia, but next time the earthquake will be in the Pacific and She’ll punish the people of California?

In some ways acts of God are theologically more troubling than acts of evil. Acts of evil we can understand as clearly NOT being something that comes from God. God gave us free will, and if we choose to be evil, God is showing how much He respects us by not jumping in and messing with things every time we make a bad decision. He lets us do things that might be counterproductive, self-destructive, or harmful to others.

I hope I’m not ruining the movie for anyone, but this example is too good to pass up. We saw “I, Robot” last week. In this futuristic Will Smith film, the big climax comes when the robots evolve intelligence and decide that since one of the Three Laws of Robotics is to save human lives, since humans are obviously doing many things that are bad for them, the robots should intervene to save humans from themselves. We don’t want the robots to save us from ourselves, and I suspect most people wouldn’t want God to save us from ourselves either: we are quite happy to go on making our dumb choices.

So we don’t need to blame evil on God. But what about tsunamis? Clearly people didn’t do anything to choose to make tsunamis happen. A tsunami clearly seems to be more God’s fault than man made mass destruction, like the Holocaust. How can we understand what happened last week?

Should we hold God responsible? An obscure 2001 Australian movie called “The Man Who Sued God” takes just that tack. A guy’s boat is destroyed by a bolt of lightning, and the insurance company refuses to pay up, saying it’s an “act of God,” excluded by the insurance policy. As a reviewer described it “Either the Act of God clause is "some kind of giant all purpose lying mechanism" used by insurance agents to crush the little man, or it's what it says it is: an act for which God ought to be responsible. So, Myers decides to sue the Church, summoning representatives of every major faith. As the legal twists and turns kick in, the religious leaders will only be able to win the case if they can prove one thing: that God doesn't exist.”

Judaism affirms that God is responsible for everything that happens, including tsunamis. In the first blessing before the Shema, which we recited earlier this morning, we blessed God who “fashions light and creates darkness, who makes peace and who creates everything.” When we say creates everything, it’s a genteel version of a verse in Isaiah, where it says God creates good and bad.

But just because God creates good and bad, heaven and earth, everything, does it mean that God decided exactly where this earthquake would hit?
That God decided who was going to live and who was going to die in the dreadful tsunami wave that followed?

Henry Ford’s invention of the assembly line made it possible for all of us to drive cars. But it doesn’t mean that Henry is personally responsible for every traffic death. The farmer who grows the food that feeds a murderer and gives him the energy to commit his crime is not responsible for the crime.

If someone trips over the threshold by the door to your house, they will probably find a way to sue (or your insurance company) for compensation.
Even though it wasn’t your plan for them to get injured, it happened on your property—in your domain. Similarly, since Judaism considers God the ultimate owner of everything, we acknowledge God as the source for all, good and bad, even if it’s not necessarily in the sense of God made some sort of conscious decision for this particular bad thing to happen to you instead of to someone else.

Maimonides, Rambam, says that Man is subject to three kinds of evil: those that happen because of being endowed with matter, those that are inflicted by other people, and those that are self-inflicted. We are concerned here with the first type of evil—that caused by being endowed with matter.

In his “Guide for the Perplexed,” Rambam explains that there is no “coming to be” without a “passing away.” There is no birth without death. You cannot enjoy the benefits of the physical world without the pitfalls of the physical world. God endowed matter with certain characteristics, including that the Earth is constructed with plates that rub against each other, and occasionally they give way and slip, and result in a large earthquake. It simply goes with the territory of being made of “stuff.”
A tsunami is not God deciding to take out 100,000 sinners who live near the beach. Rather it’s a side effect of the way God created the world.

The Talmud contains advice as to what to do when a tsunami strikes.
Rabbah said (Bava Batra 73a): Seafarers told me: When a [huge] wave that
can sink a ship appears.. when it is hit with sticks on which is engraven: ‘Eheyeh asher eheyeh—I will be what I will be, words from this week’s Torah portion (Ex. 3:14)—the Lord of Hosts, Amen, Amen, Selah’ it subsides.

The Talmud tells us that when the tsunami strikes, we turn to God. By using a mysterious reference to God—Ehyeh asher Ehyeh—instead of one of God’s names, the story is telling us that God’s involvement in disasters, in “acts of God” is a mystery. We can’t truly understand God’s role in tsunamis any more than we can truly understand God. We are left mystified by this tremendous show of power that leaves so many innocent people dead.

Insurance companies and lawyers might define the disaster as the act of God—but for people of faith, the acts of God come AFTER the disaster.
God’s mysterious name calms the seas after the wave is already there, after it has already struck.

We see several “acts of God” in this week’s Torah portion. Here are a few
examples:

The midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, do a God-like act of compassion when they choose to exercise their God-given free will and oppose Pharaoh and save the male Hebrew children.

There is a midrash that says Moses’ father decided to separate from his wife and not have any children because of Pharaoh’s decree. Moses’ mother chastised him, saying “you’re being worse than Pharaoh! Pharaoh only decreed against the male children, yet you are refusing the possible female children we could have as well!” Moses father relents, and the couple engages in one of the most God-like acts we can do: having children, in this case Moses who came to save his people.

The Jewish people have no monopoly on acts of God. When baby Moses is floating down the river in his basket, the daughter of Pharaoh engages in another God-like act of compassion, pulling the baby from the river and saving his life.

The acts of God in last week’s tsunami are not, as the insurance companies and lawyers would have us believe, in the big shake and wave and destruction. The acts of God are in the acts of kindness and compassion that are being shown during this difficult period. People who are so poor they have nothing are helping rich foreign tourists find their way home.

Disaster can help us find acts of God that can overcome politics. Yossi and Inbar Gross are an Israeli couple who were honeymooning in Phuket, Thailand—a beautiful place where I have often been SCUBA Diving. They were there when the beauty turned into the horror and devastation of the tsunami. The following is an account of their story that was reported by the AP:

"What happened was, we and this Palestinian couple jumped on the roof of this Ford van," Yossi Gross told Israel Army Radio. "Below us was a raging river, a sea that washed up into the city and dragged everything along with it. Everything was wrecked, everything was ruined."

Though Israel and the Palestinians are locked in a violent four-year conflict, the emergency pushed all that aside.

Gross said they stayed with the Palestinian couple on the van's roof for more than four hours before they were able to climb down.

After they made their way to a makeshift shelter, the Palestinians gave them money and assistance that enabled them to get to Bangkok and board a flight for Israel, Gross said.

"I have to tell you if there's someone I have to thank, quite simply they're the people who got us out of there," he said. "All of our money, our passports, they were left in the hotel ... without them we couldn't have gotten out."

Inbar Gross said their debt to the Palestinians was incalculable.

"Maybe we owe them our lives," she said.

Her husband said he and the Palestinians exchanged phone numbers and intend to keep in close touch.

"Friends?" he said. "Of course we are. Absolutely."

Those Palestinians did an act of God in showing compassion and kindness to an Israeli couple—not only strangers, but part of the people most Palestinians consider their oppressors.

I’m calling on each of us to do an “act of God” and lend support to the relief efforts. I’ve made a donation both from my discretionary fund and from my pocket, and I hope you’ll join me. Flyers with information on how to donate can be found outside on the table at the entry to the chapel.
What they need is donations of money—clothing, food, etc., can all be purchased locally cheaper than shipping donated goods from here.

As it says in Pirkei Avot, you are not expected to finish the work of fixing the world, but neither are you exempt from contributing.

May God help the relief workers and agencies to direct the donations where they are most needed. May God comfort those who mourn, and may God have mercy on the souls of those innocent people who perished.

Amen.

Contributions can be sent to either the American Jewish World Service, or the Joint Distribution Committee

1) The American Jewish World Service has been working with partners in several of the affected countries for several years, and they are working with their partners to provide aid where it is most needed, directly to organizations in the effected countries. To make a donation:

• Online at www.ajws.org

• By phone and credit card: call 800-889-7146.

• Send a check to: American Jewish World Service, Asia Tsunami Relief, 45 West 36th Street, 10th Floor, New York, NY 10018.
2) The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee has set up an emergency mailbox to accept donations. The JDC also has a long history of providing relief to both Jews and non-Jews in times of trouble. There are four ways to direct a donation to the JDC: • Online at their website, www.jdc.org

• With a credit card by phone to 212-687-6200 x851

• Mail a check to "JDC-South Asia Tsunami Relief", Box 321, 847A Second Avenue, New York, NY 10017

• You can send a check to the UJC of Toledo and they can send it on to the JDC. Mark "relief fund" in the memo. Mail check to UJC, 6465 Sylvania Avenue, Sylvania, OH, 43560.