September 17, 2001: Nineteen years ago was my first Rosh Hashanah as a full-fledged rabbi. Newly ordained and serving in my first full-time pulpit, I was excited, and very, very nervous. During dinner, for which I had little appetite, the phone rang. “Is this Rabbi Block?” a woman asked. “Yes,” I replied. “Rabbi, you don’t know me. I don’t belong to your congregation, but I have a very important question. May one drive on Rosh Hashanah?” “Forgive me,” I responded, “You’ve caught us in the middle of dinner. I can only give you a brief answer. Yes, one may drive on Rosh Hashanah, to and from the synagogue.” “Wonderful!” she exclaimed. “Could you give me a ride?” Some high holy days are more memorable than others. For obvious reasons, both good and bad, this is a year none of us will forget.

In its worldly wisdom, the Book of Ecclesiastes observes, “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven…a time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted…a time to grieve and a time to dance….” To everything there is a season. Rosh Hashanah is a solemn holiday, yet its primary theme is renewal and its spirit is one of celebration. Some 2500 years ago, Ezra the Scribe said of this occasion, “Go now; eat of the best. Drink sweet wine and send portions to those who have nothing prepared. This day is holy to the Eternal One. Do not be sad, for the joy of the Eternal is your strength.” Like the Jews of Ezra’s era, we often neglect our religious obligations, but on Rosh Hashanah 5762, no commandment feels harder to obey than this: “Do not be sad.”

In the course of my work, I encounter and experience a good deal of sadness and I often meet people for the first time when they are in mourning. I normally tell them, “I am very sorry to meet you under these circumstances.” That is how I feel today. The sermon I had prepared for this service was a personal one, intended to introduce myself to you, to tell you who I am and why I came here. That is something I still hope to do, on Yom Kippur. At this moment, however, my thoughts, like yours, are elsewhere.

They are with the passengers and crews on four doomed flights, whose last words to their dear ones were expressions of heroism and love. They are with the courageous firefighters and police officers who died trying to save others. They are with thousands of victims robbed, in an instant, of their very lives, with the maimed, injured, and traumatized survivors, and the heartbroken families whose lives have been shattered. I am thinking of the brother-in-law of a dear friend who escaped from the 87th floor of Tower Two, and the brother-in-law of another who disappeared into the maelstrom at the top of Tower One. And my thoughts are with you, my new, but beloved congregational family, stricken by our national tragedy. I am very sorry to meet you under these circumstances.

“To everything there is a season.” These well-known words suggest that the universe is a rational, ordered place, that times and seasons alternate in a recurring and eternal pattern, that there is a predictable ebb and flow to human affairs, that birth and death, too, occur in their due season. But in recent days, we have discerned no pattern, no rationality, no predictability, no orderly ebb and flow. We do not know what to do or say, or even what to think.

These horrible events demonstrate anew how little we truly comprehend about the universe, about times and seasons, about our very selves. Any death, especially a tragic and untimely one, brings us face to face with the profound limitations of our understanding. How, then, are we to make sense of these callous and calculated crimes? These savage acts, in the words of Hannah Arendt, “confront us with the perplexity of radical evil.” In the face of such evil, we experience rage, frustration, and deep sadness. We struggle to awaken as from a nightmare. We peer into the darkness and perceive our own fragility and our mortality. Even worse, we wonder if existence is utterly capricious and futile, if anything we do matters, if we can count on anything.

Yet, however devastated and disoriented, we know instinctively that we must not yield to fear or capitulate to confusion. To paraphrase Stephen Biko, martyred hero of the South African struggle for liberation, “the most potent weapon in the hands of the terrorist is the mind of the terrorized.” The forces of darkness have armaments enough. We must not lend them our own. Rather, by attempting to wrest coherence from these awful events, perhaps we can regain a measure of control over our lives and destinies.

What can we say with confidence about these diabolical acts and their perpetrators? First, it is clear from the accumulating evidence that these crimes were carried out by Islamic revolutionaries, and that these deeds are part of a pattern. They are linked to the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, the bombings of US embassies in Africa, the attack on the USS Cole, and a series of aborted attempts to commit similar atrocities.

Why do they do these things? Is it because the United States supports Israel? Or, to put it another way, if the United States abandoned Israel would these extremists leave America alone?........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)