Back to the sources
Who speaks for the Jews? Does Israel’s Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar, who declared the hideous loss of life in Southeast Asia is “an expression of God’s wrath with the world. The world is being punished for wrongdoing — be it people’s needless hatred of each other, lack of charity, moral
turpitude”?
Does Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun, who suggested that “the physical world will be unable to function in a peaceful and gentle way until the moral/spiritual dimension manifest in the behavior of God’s creatures coheres with God’s will: that is, is filled with justice, peace, generosity and kindness”?
Or does (God forbid) Jackie Mason, who wrote that “there should be a precondition that before these nations receive any aid, they should clearly denounce terrorism and, at the very least, discontinue the state-sponsored anti-American drivel heard in that part of the world”?
The tsunami inspired hundreds of articles by religion reporters asking “where was God?” Although the question can be asked of any tragedy — from the death of a child in a hit-and-run to the obscene toll of AIDS in Africa — the tsunami seemed tailor-made for theological speculation. Unlike a highway accident, the toll was unfathomably, even biblically, enormous. And unlike the AIDS epidemic, its effects were instantaneous, and its victims “innocent.” (Despite the best efforts of the public health community, AIDS will probably never shed its status as a disease that is somehow “deserved.”)
The challenge for religion reporters was to capture in a few thousand words a debate as old as religion itself, while presenting the beliefs not only of the Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims directly affected by the tsunamis but the Catholics, Protestants, and Jews watching with disbelief from their living rooms. To appreciate the challenge to the average religion reporter, someone once suggested, you’d have to imagine a single journalist responsible for covering every major sport.
Consider how many opinions there are just among the Jews. Once in a while, liberal and traditionalist mindsets converge to create something that looks like consensus. (That appears to have happened in the cases of Rabbis Amar and Lerner, who, coming from very different places, arrived at the idea that the tsunami victims were paying the price for the world’s moral imbalance.)
More often, however, the phrase “Jewish consensus” remains an oxymoron. A reporter might tap an Orthodox rabbi, like Avi Shafran of Agudath Israel, who would suggest that the Jews’ election as the Chosen People “includes the responsibility to perceive Divine messages in the trials of humankind.” That message, Shafran suggests (in an essay more nuanced than I am able to capture here), is that we work on “our responsibility to use the power of speech carefully and properly; on being more observant of the Sabbath and holidays, of kashrut and all the laws of the Torah; on dedicating more time to its study.”
Another reporter might quote Rabbi Harold Kushner (as many reporters have since the tsunami), who would say that “bad things happen to good people” because God is not “all powerful,” but that in making way for the will of humankind has created a world over which God’s own control is limited.
And a third reporter might go to Rabbi Elliot Dorff, rector and philosophy professor at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, who might say that a question like “where was God in the tsunami?” is unanswerable: “The real issue is how we respond and try to ameliorate the suffering of the people who have suffered.”
No two of these answers is necessarily contradictory, but they do point to the challenge to our understanding of religion, when no religion is a monolith. Ari Goldman, the former New York Times religion reporter who now teaches journalism at Columbia University, tells me he finds himself envying British Jews, who have a chief rabbi. “What do I tell my students?” says Goldman. “I tell them this is tricky and beware because there is no one spokesman.”
Goldman says various reporters bring their own preconceived notions to “picking a rabbi.” “I think more and more we rely on the Orthodox because they look the most Jewish, seem the most Jewish,” said Goldman. I suggest that there may be a benefit in picking a Reform or Reconstructionist rabbi: Either can explain what the “tradition” says on an issue, and describe innovations adopted by the liberal movements. “That’s two for the price of one,” I joke.
Goldman also suggests that you don’t necessarily have to consult a rabbi to get a Jewish perspective, and gave as an example a column this week by Times’ columnist William Safire refracting the tsunami through the Book of Job. What Safire did, says Goldman, is to provide a “Jewish” perspective from a book of the Bible that “most of the world can relate to.” A reporter, then, can “try to find a common scripture that can speak to a lot of people.”
All this may be so much inside baseball, except for the fact that so many of us get our information about other religions from the popular press. The diversity within Judaism reminds us to remain skeptical when someone is quoted purporting to speak from the Evangelical, Hindu, or Muslim perspective. Again, it was the Times that performed a public service on Sunday in an article that explained the basic differences between Evangelicals and fundamentalists. “Most of the Protestants who make up what some call the Christian right are not fundamentalists, who are more prone to create separatist enclaves, but evangelicals, who engage the culture and share their faith,” wrote Laurie Goodstein. “Professor [Martin] Marty defines fundamentalism as essentially a backlash against secularism and modernity.” In America, at least, fundamentalism is in decline, while Evangelical movements are a growth industry.
And perhaps, thanks to a tsunami that defied our capacity for understanding, relations among and with faiths will be a growth industry as well.