TheTsunami, the Talmud and the Web

So life here is different than in other places that we have lived, here we do not have a television, the radio reception at best is poor, nor do two newpapers drop at our doorstep every day, we rely for the most part on the web for our source of information and of course because the community of English speakers is fairly tight we also rely on one another for the tidbits of news.

We read, alot!! I picked up a book this morning called, The Talmud and The Internet, we have had it in the library for many years but neither of us had read it . If you like the title I recommend it, it is a short little book but by no means to be taken lightly. It set me to thinking about the way in which this year started.

The Tsunami to end all, the tragic, horrific, destruction it reeked across the Indian Ocean is still being evaluated. In a tidbit of news from an online Israeli paper we read that there is an oceanographic survey underway above the epicenter to try and determine the number of sea creatures and fish that perished in the wake of this massive earthquake. One scientist said that in flying over the area in a helicopter he saw huge fish, octopus and other creatures floating on the surface in what he called "a sea of dross".

Then this past week we watched the news from home as the floods ravaged California where we once lived, and landslides, mudslides and other incidents of nature brought about destruction and loss of life to people who again didn't know that they were in harms way until it was too late.

That led me to give thought to a story that I had heard years ago about a Rabbi who protected his village with prayers and rituals whenever he heard that disaster was about to strike, and how he passed the knowledge down to his son, who only carried on the tradition partly and still was able to divert disaster and how it passed from generation to generation until at last no one really remembered the rituals or the prayers they only remembered that once those things had been and because they remembered disaster was averted!

Whether the aboves story is true or is only a 'folktale' it brings to mind that most of the world holds some sort of religious practice at it's center of being, and all of those varying practices have books which they feel are divinely inspired and from which they draw their individual rituals, beliefs and practices.

Here in Tzfat we see several rivers of tradition at work. The Orthodox,Chassid, secular Jews or the ultra religious, those who are Muslim, those who are Christian and those who are perhaps Hindu or Buddhist. Most of the rivers run peacefully enough alongside each other and share some things in common.

When one visits the open air market on Wednesdays to get fruits, vegetables and other food items as well as to have the experience of dealing with the various merchants, one sees the variety of the life of Tzfat in a closed area where all of us no matter what stream we follow are reduced to simple consumers.

We all haggle with the merchants and they in turn with us but all in all we come away feeling as if we got the best bargain and the best produce available! You never see unhappy faces at the market, everyone loves it, the colors the sounds, the smells and the haggling are all in good stead, and no one seems to notice what you are wearing, or how you speak, we all just flow with the day.

The Talmud goes back at least two thousand years, what is it? It isn't God given holy scripture, no it is the haggling of the pious men of centuries ago who argued over the meaning of certain verses of the Torah. They not only argued but they agreed and disagreed and then agreed to disagree about the things that are written there. It is a dialogue as alive now as it was centuries ago in which all the learned men discuss the sections of scripture, and the meanings of those sections which were written by the learned men who came before them. It is the web of lifelines that stretches back across the years and connects those of us who are Jews to the minds, the knowledge and the insight of our forbearer.

SO? You are saying by now, what has all this to do with the Tsunami or the Web? Well, think about this, for years we have known that all life whether it is plant, animal, marine or human is made up of five basic elements...CHOPS...Carbon, hydrogen,oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. And that all of life, including that of Giai, mother earth are interconnected and dependent upon each other.

The Tsunami may not seem connected to what has happened 18 hours away on the coast of California, nor to the volcanoes which sprung to life unexpectedly in the mountains of South America, or to the floods in the plains of the US, or the floods in countries in Europe who should be experiencing winter, or the snow slide in the mountains in Utah, but the pious men who studied and argued the scripture that became the Talmud if they were here would tell you that these events are not only connected but that no one should be surprised by the fact that they have happened. And with the modernization of today's technology a quick search of the web, (the net with which we all discuss, argue, dialogue and communicate), will reveal that although the scientific minds of the world are trying hard to make sense of all these cataclysmic events, the news media of the super powers are doing their best to make us all believe that none of it is connected so we shouldn't worry.

Sitting here on our mountain top, we scan the sky and see a tiny trace of rain, we need rain, we are in fact desperate for it. We watch the sky in the morning as the sun rises and see a moon too high, for the hour of the day and a sun bright and warm which should not come this time of year and we wonder. No Connection? Then just yesterday we caught a tiny bit of news from a scientific web site that is run by some of the worlds best scientist, and collaborates with NASA, the earth is off her axis at the pole by one inch. One inch might not seem like much but the earthquake that caused the Tsunami was responsible for the one thing that might affect all of us, the tiny tilt of our axis from it's original position. No Connection?

Think about it, try to look into your own religious writings, whatever your tradition, search out the bits and pieces of what has happened over the past month and see what you think. We like the Rabbi's of the Talmud should be discussing, agreeing, disagreeing and agreeing to disagree, but what we should not be doing in these hours of our dear planets travail is to sit idle, and believe what the news media tells us. We should all be actively searching the sacred texts of our own faiths and trying to put together some sense of all of it. We should be calling upon our God, whatever the name might be to give us insight and foresight and most of all to aide us in this time when so many are finding their faith so stretched and torn by the tragedies which have befallen them.