His response: “All I can answer is for us to ask ourselves what we can learn from this. People struck by tragedy often turn it into amazing actions in the world, and suffering often triggers emotional and spiritual growth. So it’s not always healthy to focus on how we don’t know why God does things; it’s healthier to examine what does this teaches us.”
Rabbi Seth Farber, who heads Itim, an organization that helps individuals negotiate with the religious authorities in Israel, and is also a congregational rabbi in Ra’anana, tried to deal with the tension by creating dialogue. He recently invited four imams and his congregants to his sukkah, with mixed results.
“The whole thing is very painful,” he said. “What we discovered is no one understands the other side. People left with perhaps a little more understanding, but also immense frustration.”
Rabbi Elan Adler, a teacher, school administrator, counselor, and former Baltimore pulpit rabbi now living in Ma’ale Adumim, takes a different approach. He said he was powerfully reminded by the recent prayer for the new Hebrew month of Cheshvan and the beginning of this year’s Torah-reading cycle that “we have to take a fresh look at things here and remind ourselves that it’s our enemies who are on the attack.”
At the same time, the security situation presents a spiritual challenge for Adler.
“I think of myself as a person of faith, but when these things keep happening to guys praying or coming to the aid of another and the families suffer so much, I find my faith unmoored,” he said. “I have to remind myself that God runs the world and that the God I pray to is the God of the big picture who is just. And that I for one don’t have scintilla of a clue why He does what He does.
“We need to hold both of these thoughts at the same time and remember that even though we sometimes pay a huge price to live [here], our job is to hold on tight when He swings the rope wildly. We need to remember that 6.5 million Jews live in this country, go to work, go out to eat, catch a movie at Cinema City, and put their kids to bed, doing their best to live their lives.”
Along those lines, Dr. Ervin Birnbaum, a veteran educator and retired pulpit rabbi, said that none of the Russian-born Israelis he works with through his Netanya-based outreach program cancelled on his monthly tour to sites around Israel.
“They’re not going to be frightened off…. I remind them that the mosque Muslims think Israelis covet was generously given to them by Moshe Dayan after the 1967 war, at a time when the victorious Israeli army could have easily taken back that part of the Old City. And that it’s called the Temple Mount because of our Temple.”
Now, he noted, Jews visiting the Temple Mount are harassed and forbidden to move their lips over fear that they might be praying, a prohibited action for Jews at the holy site.
“As we begin the Torah [cycle] again,” Dr. Birnbaum added, I tell them we need to be confident that we will finish and start it, finish and start it, year after year, right here, with no need to apologize for being in our land.”
Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo of the Jerusalem-based David Cardozo Academy recently blogged in an “open letter” to God about struggling with faith in a time of terror.
“I know that it is more than surprising that we don’t experience waves of terrorism on a daily basis…. And I suspect that You [God] are behind this…. I still realize that we Jews are the greatest miracle of all. We have outlived all our enemies – the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and many others…. Not even the Holocaust succeeded in wiping us out. The state of Israel is an ongoing miracle in a region that has gone completely mad. How, then, can I deny Your existence?”