The news out of another part of our community yesterday was wretched: twelve people dead, eight of whom were children, as a result of a fire in a house on the 800 block of North 23rd Street in the Fairmount neighborhood of Philadelphia, a mere couple of miles from our synagogue.
What can one say in response to such an event? There are no words.
But Jewish tradition gives us a template for how to respond. For starters, when the mourners are among our community members, we show up to provide support, whether that support is physical, emotional, spiritual, or material. Just as, in Jewish tradition, the first meal a family partakes of after returning home from burying a loved one should be one prepared by friends or neighbors rather than one’s self—this is known as the seudat havra’ah, literally the meal of recovery—we show up to help our neighbors recover from, and feel supported through, such a devastating loss, even while recognizing the holes in their lives can never be completely filled.
Second, our instinct in moments like this can often be to ask “who is to blame?” “Which officials failed at their posts? “Which oversight is the guilt most attributable to?” But in truth, it’s moments like this where that famous quote from Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel is most relevant: “in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.”
All are responsible. The circumstance here that stands out to me is the fact that we live in a society where 26 people would need to shelter under one roof. We know we need to invest more deeply as a society in redressing the circumstances that lead to such inequities in housing, along with collateral inequities in education, healthcare, the criminal justice system, food insecurity, and more. We know we live in a society with major racial and socioeconomic inequities that are often too easy to turn a blind eye to, even when they are in our own backyard.
The Talmud teaches, “When the community is in trouble do not say, ‘I will go home and eat and drink and all will be well with me.”…Rather, involve yourself in the community’s distress as was demonstrated by Moses, [who said], ‘Since Israel is in trouble, I will share their burden’” (Taanit 11a).
It’s so easy to focus on our own lives and our own challenges, of which in this moment, there are many. But we live in a society that bears major needs. And we need to engage with them on a steady, consistent basis in order to live up to our tradition and to do our duty as human beings.
