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Jewish World Review Oct. 1, 2001 / 14 Tishrei, 5762
Society teaches values to successive generations through its children's
stories. The story of the Three Little Pigs is one of our most enduring
fables, teaching the importance of good planning and disciplined effort. But
it also carries with it a more subtle message, that safety rests in our own
hands and our own labors, that security can be bought for the price of a pile
of bricks and a bucket of mortar. This ideal, if it was ever true, went up
in flames together with New York City 's skyline and Washington's military
nerve center on September 11.
More appropriate now than the Three Little Pigs is Robert Burns's adage
about "the best laid schemes of mice and men." Indeed, the World Trade
Center towers were each designed to absorb the impact of a 747; what the
architects failed to factor in was how the fuel carried aboard a
transcontinental airliner would create an inferno capable of compromising the
structural strength of steel support beams. Of course, we don't blame the
architects; none of us imagined the acts of incomprehensible evil that
brought down those towers.
Which is precisely the point. We cannot imagine the design and the reach
of evil. We can make our best effort, erect walls of brick around ourselves
and roofs of steel over our heads, but we will never be completely safe. The
world is too unpredictable an arena, the mind of the wicked too dark a cavern.
As if to drive home the instability of temporal existence, observant Jews
around the world will disrupt their normal lives this week by moving out of
their homes into little stick houses to live as our ancestors lived in the
desert after their exodus from Egypt. But more than an attempt to recreate
the experience of a fledgling nation traveling toward its homeland, the
holiday of Succos offers us an opportunity to attune our minds to a most
fundamental principle of Judaism -- that however great our strength and the
might of our own hands, however elaborate and well conceived our plans, life
strews unexpected obstacles in our path that can scuttle our most certain
victories and demolish our most solid edifices.
A succah may be built of virtually any material: wood, brick, steel,
canvas, or even string may be used to construct its walls. But no matter how
stable or how precarious its walls, the roof of a succah must be composed of
sk'ach, thin strips of wood or leaves, through which the light
of the stars can shine at night. And when one sits in the succah and looks
up at the sk'ach -- the barest representation of a roof, which
will not protect him from even the lightest rainfall -- he is inspired by the
recollection of his ancestors who trusted in the protection of the Almighty,
the One who took them out from under the rod of their oppressors and guided
them through the inimical desert before bringing them safely home.
In his visionary writings, the prophet Ezekiel describes a great battle
on the eve of the messianic era, when the all forces of evil in the world
combine themselves into a great army called by the name Gog and Magog. The
brilliant eighteenth century thinker Rabbi Shimshon Rafoel Hirsch interprets
the prophet's vision not as a military battle but as an ideological war
between the philosophy of gog -- "roof"-- and the philosophy of succah,
where those convinced that their fate lies in the power of their own hands
and their own resources will attack the values of those who recognize the
limits of human endeavor to influence the world.
In the immediate wake of the World Trade Center destruction, cries rang
out for vengeance and military retribution. Since then, more measured voices
have asserted that this war will be like no other, without defined enemies or
defined borders, without clear strategies or decisive victories. This is an
unfamiliar kind of crisis, where we find our capacity to respond in our own
defense or to secure our own future profoundly diminished in a new world
order.
So now the citizens and leaders of the world's last remaining superpower
must grapple with the uncertainties of a violent present and a murky future.
Some will respond by declaring that we must work harder to take control of
our own fate. Others will concede that we will never be secure again. And
they will be right: no building, no bunker, no shelter made of brick or
concrete or iron will guarantee our safety from the perverse imagination of
extremists who can rationalize indiscriminate mass murder.
Yet for all that, the Jew sitting in his succah will look up at the
heavens and be at peace. He will recognize that the best laid schemes often
come to naught and that, after doing all that can be done, we are best off
leaving our fate in the hands of the One who placed the stars in their
courses, the One from whom protection ultimately comes for those who trust
not in their own strength, but in the source of all strength.
As the winds of autumn blow with the first hint of winter, we may shiver
with cold but never with fear. The illusion of the roof we can see reminds
of the invisible reality of the wings of the Divine presence. We neither
abandon ourselves to fate nor try to seize hold of it, but turn with
confidence to face the future, secure in the knowledge that we have prepared
ourselves as best we can to meet whatever life holds in store for
Succos and the
War to End all Wars
By Rabbi Yonason Goldson
JWR contributor Rabbi Yonason Goldson teaches at Block Yeshiva High
School and Aish HaTorah in St. Louis, and writes a regular column for the St.
Louis Post-Dispatch. Send your comments by clicking here.
