Monday, September 05, 2005

Stunned Disbelief

I must be the last person on the blogosphere to wake up o the mind-numbing disaster that Hurricane Katrina wreaked on the Gulf Coast. I just finished watching an hour of coverage on CNN. There just aren't words. The only thing I can think of, perhaps because it's the first day of Elul, is that if people needed to learn humility and our interdependence, then this was a very bitter (but efective) way to learn it. Humanity, at the end of the day, is very fragile and weak. That's why we're supposed to learn and act with a combination of חסד and גבורה. Thank God people are rolling up their sleeves to help.

(Then, of course, there are the intellectually challenged who "know" why terrible things happen. God save us from such geniuses. And Thanks to OrthoMom for reporting and commenting on this.)

5 comments:

orthomom said...

Thanks for the link! But does putting the link to my post on the phrase "intellectually challenged" supposed to be a hint?

Jeffrey R. Woolf said...

Oops. No absolutely no implication intended. I've shifted the link accordingly. Sorry.

Anonymous said...

...so how are we to explain the comments of rabbinic greats who attribute 1648/9 to talking in shul, for example?

Jeffrey R. Woolf said...

With all due deference, they seem to have forgotten that Hazal advised to stop second guessing God. (Be-Hade Kavshe de-Rahmana lama li).

Anonymous said...

ALL of them?!?!
there were a lot who did this, you know.
at a certain point the practice must be explained, and not dismissed.