Back in 1984 in the small community of Eastvale Texas, things went
awry. Big time. Potholes were so numerous that the police
stopped giving tickets for drunken driving (everybody swerved). Water was in extremely short supply to the
extent that the fire department had to “borrow” water. Even automobiles threw fenders, mufflers and
tires randomly, indiscriminately. Car parts littered the streets. They just fell apart all over the place. To misuse biblical terminology, ‘the septic
tanks runneth over.’
Leaders
from the community got together and decided the best way to get some coveted
financial relief from the government was to call themselves ‘blighted’. Said then Mayor Bert Eubank, “All I need is
just a couple of million.”
These
modern-day Jobs figured they could attract a lot of attention by drawing the
national media to view their open wounds (anticipating sympathy in the form of
dollars).
The
story reminds me of the beggar in Fiddler
on the Roof. With his hand extended,
he begs for money from the usual characters.
Offered one kopec, the beggar complains, “Because you had a bad week I
should suffer?”
As
life progresses, good and bad come unexpectedly. How we react to these occurrences defines
us. A large segment of the deepest
meaning of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is coming to terms with how we have
responded to the ordinary events of life, the day-to-day stuff.
A
prayer we recite on the Holy Days reads that we should be blessed by “never
having to be dependent upon the charity of others.” At the same time, we pray
that God should be charitable to us in judging our lives. In other words, we
ought to feel dependent upon God, not upon humanity.
Who
would disagree? Of course we ought to be
independent of people! Closer to the
truth is that we invert the Judaic notion: we form intricate webs of dependency
and inter-dependency with people while distancing ourselves from God.
One
of the realizations of the global warming phenomenon is that we are swiftly
understanding how much we are need of one another for survival. We are dependent on people. We cannot get along without them. We need to galvanize one another and work on
tandem to assure that the world will sustain us in the near future. We need people in other ways too. They are our employers; we wait for words of
encouragement, paychecks and raises.
They are our customers; without them we are out of business. We are connected to humanity at all
levels. Our lives are spent depending on
people.
And
yet. It is not supposed to be this way.
At
times of searing personal pain, our attention goes elsewhere. Wisdom from the battlefield: “There are no
atheists in a foxhole.” Our tradition
says the same thing using the metaphor of life.
Long ago, Eliezer ben Durdaya was a man who reached the height of
personal achievement. He was rich,
successful… and hungry. Eliezer had an
insatiable desire for more and more. His
life slowly became twisted and his contorted by his want and the intolerable
emptiness inside.
Nearing
the end of his days Eliezer ben Durdaya screamed to the mountains, ”You are
great --Plead for me!” They remained
silent. Eliezer then turned to the sun
and moon asking their help and intervention.
They too, remained unmoved.
Finally, Eliezer understood the blanket truth: he had to do the final
reckoning. No one, no thing would come
to his defense.
Judaism
does not believe in finger pointing, unless the finger is directed at the
self. Even if events or people have
contributed to our present condition only we can make the ultimate difference;
change. The Talmud sums it up this way:
When a person dies, nothing accompanies him before the Almighty, except his
deeds.
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