Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel

Recently, I read an interesting article by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach in the Jerusalem Post (Sept. 11, 2011) on whether or not God was present at Ground Zero? Boteach poses several interesting but unrealistic questions:

• Could God possibly have caught them? Could He have extended the famously outstretched arm He used in Egypt to save the Israelites and grant the jumpers a soft landing so they could safely return to their families?

• Could God not have reached down from his heavenly throne and plucked them from the inferno, just as he saved Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah from Nebuchadnezzar’s cauldron in the Book of Daniel?

• And as the two planes flew at great speed toward the towers in the first instance, could the same God who provided defensive clouds and protective fire to the Israelites for forty years in the desert not have provided a barrier and shield that would have made the buildings impregnable to the aerial assault?

• Why God allowed a tragedy of this magnitude is something we humans will never know. But our ignorance should not let God off the hook. In commemorating the tragedy we dare not practice a submissive, counterfeit faith that assumes our own sinfulness and God’s righteousness.

Boteach’s argument strikes me as specious. The cognitive distortion is not really about “counterfeit” faith, the examples he maps out really illustrate the problem of “childish” faith, i.e., childish notions of God that we, as adults, have never quite outgrown. From this perspective, Childish faithrelies upon big Daddy God to rescue people out of dangerous situations, while people sit by and do absolutely nothing but watch in religious awe. Such a view is the antithesis of biblical faith which always demands active human participation and mature responsibility. This theological wrong-headed attitude has never worked in Jewish history-especially during the Holocaust.

Besides, one of the most important aspects of anthropomorphic theology is the idea that Divine “hand” resembles the human hand. Thus whenever we open our hand to the poor and needy, God’s “hand” becomes instantly manifest because human beings are made in the Divine image. By the same token, the human face paradoxically resembles the Divine face.

Actually, for me I have no problem whatsoever about God and 9/11 and I think it is foolish to expect that God should somehow be accountable for “allowing” something like this tragedy to occur. Human beings must assume human responsibility for the human evil that exists in this world. Midrashic tradition contends that Cain argued that it was God’s fault for allowing Abel to die at his hand! But even in the earliest sections of the Bible, God expects human beings to emulate the Divine Shepherd by shepherding others from harm’s way.

Secondly, it is important to also point out that the miracles of the Exodus did not necessarily suspend the laws of nature as Boteach wishes to imply. This is a point that many of the medieval rabbinic scholars point out in their biblical expositions on the subject of miracles.

Each of the plagues of Egypt can be explained through a series of natural explanations. In the interest of time, we shall take one of the most remarkable miracles of the Exodus: The splitting of the Sea of Reeds. In Exodus 14:16, the verse reads: “But you lift up your staff, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it . . .”

The wording poses a profound question: Did Moses’ mighty staff magically or supernaturally cause the sea to split as commonly portrayed in the movies? Or asked in more precise terms: How did the Sea of Reeds actually split? We must also remember that the splitting of the sea was facilitated by a strong east wind. Other natural forces appear to play a considerable role as well. Evidence was this may be garnished from several poetic references to the Exodus, e.g. Judg. 5:4–5; Pss. 77:16–19; 114:3–6; Hab. 3:3–6, – all of which suggest the presence of an earthquake shock.

On the other hand, Josephus himself that the Israelites benefited from a low tide that gave them ample time to cross! In fact, he went on to say that similar occurrences have been known to occur throughout history. From the works of the classical sources we learn that Alexander the Great, exploited a similar natural phenomena when he found passage through the Pamphylian Sea in his conquest of the Persian Empire. It is likewise recorded by the Roman historian Livy, who writes how the winds drove back the waters of the lagoon which enabled Scipio Africanis to capture New Carthage. [1]

Clericus in his commentary on the Pentateuch, also records a similar incident in the English-Dutch war in the year 1672. At that time, he explains that the waters recessed at an extraordinary ebb and this natural phenomena prevented the English from overtaking the Dutch armies.

Moral of the story, the unfolding of a biblical miracle is always in the precise timing. Its impact may also be measured in the awe that it inspires in the heart of the one who has been extricated from certain death. Never does the miracle disrupt the texture of nature itself; rather God utilizes nature to achieve His ultimate purpose.

With respect, to the 9/11 attacks, there were many human foibles that contributed to the attack; had the State Department been more vigilant with the names of the perspective terrorists they knew were already in the United States, the attack could have been thwarted.

Of course, as I mentioned in some earlier articles, had the United States taken the 1993 threat more seriously, our country could have prepared itself more effectively. Even now, there is a tremendous tendency to view the Al Qaeda attack as a criminal attack, rather than as a state-sponsored attack endorsed by countries like Iran and others. How can any religious thinker seriously hold God responsible for the evil that occurred on September 11, 2001?

Where was God then? God is always with those who sacrificed their lives for the sake of saving other human beings. God was present with those who forced United Flight 93 to crash in a field near Shanksville, PA, rather than to allow the terrorists to inflict further harm on the city of Washington. Yes, courageous people are always acting as God’s calling card in a world that is consumed by human violence. And let us not forget the 341 members of the New York City Fire Department (FDNY) along with two paramedics who died saving the lives of their fellow citizens, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s fellow man” (NT John 5:13).

Martin Luther King appears to have anticipated this genre of theological questioning. In his Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community, he asserts, “Structures of evil do not crumble by passive waiting. If history teaches anything, it is that evil is recalcitrant and determined, and never voluntarily relinquishes its hold short of an almost fanatical resistance. Evil must be attacked by a counteracting persistence, by the day-to-day assault of the battering rams of justice the forces of light cautiously wait, patiently pray and timidly act. So we end up with a double destruction: the destructive violence of the bad people and the destructive silence of the good people.” [2]

I believe King’s provocative words offers the only realistic solution to fighting Islamic terrorism in our time: persistence and courage. I believe God’s will is manifested in our will to actively thwart the forces of chaos and religiously inspired fanaticism, which perpetuate diabolical images of how God and the world are interrelated.

Why didn’t Boteach propose a more sensible theological exposition? The theology of Chabad (and many other Hassidic thinkers use this motif that is attributed to the Baal Shem Tov’s teachings) believes in a universe that is governed by Divine determinism, which allows for little human role in undoing the Divine Will. According to this perspective, God is the author of every genocide and natural catastrophe that occurs. The subject of natural evil is not a topic I have time to go into at this point, for now we shall confine our remarks to the existence and ubiquity of human evil.

It is significant to note that there is no redemption anywhere in the Bible where God acts unilaterally in the redemption of His people. For an Exodus to occur, God requires human partners, e.g., a Moses, an Aaron, a Miriam and so on. For the miracle of Purim to occur, there must be a Mordechai and an Esther. This theme runs like a stream of conscious throughout the Tankah; the only question remains: What will we do as God’s junior partner in eradicating human evil that we—and we alone—have created in this world?