What a devastating week it’s been around the world. The numbers of dead and missing coming out of Turkey and Syria as a result of the earthquakes there are overwhelming. At the time of this writing the death toll has surpassed 15,000, with many more injured, missing, stranded in the cold.
It can leave us feeling powerless. The occurrence of these earthquakes is entirely out of our hands—tectonic plates shifting against one another suddenly causing reverberations through the earth’s crust. How could we live in such a world? Who did anything to lead to such a thing? The occurrence of these earthquakes is out of our hands.
But our response is not.
The overused phrase Tikkun Olam, repair of the world, hits home particularly hard in response to these earthquakes: the literal breaks in the world, the fault lines, lead to our needing to repair what ails us. And yet inherent in this notion of Tikkun Olam, is that the world is, indeed, broken; we do not live in gan eden—paradise; we live in a world that seems to inevitably call forth to us to respond. The Jewish notion of mitzvah—commandedness, obligation—suggests that that is why we are here: to heed the call; to play our part in responding to the world as it needs us.
The New York Times has compiled a series of charities that are working to assist this devastated region, and the Jewish Federation of North America has also launched an earthquake relief fund. So, too, do devastating events like this call on world leaders like the United States to remain deeply engaged with its international partners, devoting ample budgetary outlays to relief efforts.
The events also relate to the remarks I delivered this past Friday night vis-à-vis refugees. Many of the victims of these earthquakes were refugees from war-torn Syria, and the United States has the capacity—and the responsibility—to be a welcoming haven for those, like the Jewish people historically have been, in need of refuge. (See below for a fuller discussion.)
The world is broken. Some strands of Jewish theology suggest it has been since its inception. What matters is how we respond.
