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This month's essay must by necessity of spirit concern the recent world tragedy that we all have witnessed and by which we have all been victimized. This victimization even extends most likely, as this is the way things go in such matters, to the people whom the perpetrators of these deeds sought to help. For, unless human understanding takes some giant leap forward rather quickly, the events of the past week will not promote empathy with the causes that precipitated them. Desperation drives humans to take their lives along with others in what must be recognized a last resort effort to communicate. A secondary school student interviewed on television the day after the tragedy had these words of wisdom from the "mouth of a babe": "The United States has to reevaluate its position as the economic leader of the world." For the last week or so I have read many well-written essays from different points of view. All of them had good points and certainly expressed the genuine feelings of many many people. I enclose the following, hoping I suppose, that in spite of history this logic will be the one that prevails:
We All Live in a Succah
"In 1984, when the nuclear arms race was in speed-up mode, The Shalom Center built a sukkah between the White House and the Soviet Embassy in Washington. We focused on the line from the evening prayers -- "Ufros alenu sukkat shlomekha" -- "Spread over all of us Your sukkah of shalom." And we asked, "Why a sukkah?" -- Why does the prayer plead to God for a "sukkah of shalom" rather than God's "tent" or "house" or "palace" of peace?
Because the sukkah is just a hut, the most vulnerable of houses. Vulnerable in time, where it lasts for only a week each year. Vulnerable in space, where its roof must be not only leafy but leaky -- letting in the starlight, and gusts of wind and rain. For much of our lives we try to achieve peace and safety by building with steel and concrete and toughness. Pyramids, air raid shelters, Pentagons, World Trade Centers. Hardening what might be targets and, like Pharaoh, hardening our hearts against what is foreign to us. But the sukkah comes to remind us: We are in truth all vulnerable. If "a hard rain gonna fall," it will fall on all of us.
Americans have felt invulnerable. The oceans, our wealth, our military power have made up what seemed an invulnerable shield. We may have begun feeling uncomfortable in the nuclear age, but no harm came to us. Yet yesterday the ancient truth came home: We all live in a sukkah. Not only the targets of attack but also the instruments of attack were among our proudest possessions: the sleek transcontinental airliners. They availed us nothing. Worse than nothing. Even the greatest oceans do not shield us; even the mightiest buildings do not shield us; even the wealthiest balance sheets and the most powerful weapons do not shield us. There are only wispy walls and leaky roofs between us. The planet is in fact one interwoven web of life.
I MUST love my neighbor as I do myself, because my neighbor and myself are inter- woven. If I hate my neighbor, the hatred will recoil upon me. What is the lesson, when we learn that we -- all of us -- live in a sukkah? How do we make such a vulnerable house into a place of shalom, of peace and security and harmony and wholeness? The lesson is that only a world where we all recognize our vulnerability can become a world where all communities feel responsible to all other communities. And only such a world can prevent such acts of rage and murder. If I treat my neighbor's pain and grief as foreign, I will end up suffering when my neighbor's pain and grief curdle into rage. But if I realize that in simple fact the walls between us are full of holes, I can reach through them in compassion and connection. Suspicion about the perpetrators of this act of infamy has fallen upon some groups that espouse a tortured version of Islam. Whether or not this turns out to be so, America must open its heart and mind to the pain and grief of those in the Arab and Muslim worlds who feel excluded, denied, unheard, disempowered, defeated.
This does not mean ignoring or forgiving whoever wrought such bloodiness. Their violence must be halted, their rage must be calmed -- and the pain behind them must be heard and addressed. Instead of entering upon a 'war of civilizations,' we must pursue a planetary peace."
Shalom, Arthur Rabbi Arthur Waskow Director, The Shalom Center www.shalomctr.org.
I shouldn't think that, now that the bar has been raised to this height, any armed person will ever be able to attempt to takeover an airliner again without suffering being mobbed. I pray people will with their livesnever again be as complacent, willing and seeking to accept ease as their standard, ignoring the needs of their neighbors and the world. Incomplacency is a place where war veterans live after their wars. We are now all becoming veterans of this war waged in the Modern World. Hopefully someday soon by doing so, we shall all live there , veterans of war past.
Steve B. Lance