The Tree

Tragedy strikes yet again. People who have invested years, decades or even a lifetime in building homes, families, communities, schools and businesses have lost it all in a matter of hours. The waters were brutal. "The rivers have raised their voice; the rivers raise their raging waves" (Psalms 93). And the waters did not distinguish between young and old, between the wealthy and the poor, between the healthy and the ill.

How temporary and transitory can life be? You invest all of your energy in something for years and decades, and then with the tide it all vanishes, as though it never existed.

Whose heart does not ache upon hearing the sobs of a mother who knows not where her five-year-old son is? For a woman bidding farewell to her husband before the waters sweep her away, asking him to look after their children? For a woman holding her hungry child and weeping, "We are out here like pure animals. We don't have help."

The scenes are wrenching; and the heart breaks. Why? Oh why? Why do so many innocent people suffer? Why ask people to build a life for themselves and their loved ones and then have them watch it destroyed before their eyes?

This is not a time for analysis, but for action. Anyone who can assist in aid, shelter and care ought to rise to the tragic occasion and stretch out his or her arm and heart to the myriad who are deprived of everything.

One scene, among many, gripped my imagination. A woman, Nicky Nickelson, purchased some years ago a beautiful bed & breakfast in Bay S. Louis, Miss. near the water. The B&B, a powerfully built structure, had survived previous hurricanes, so Nicky and her six friends believed they would be safe within it until Katrina passed.

But Katrina caught Nicky by surprise. As the tides rose over the B&B, the entire structure, in her words, "crumbled, crumbled, just crumbled." In an instant, the waters swept away seven people.

Luckily, a Noah's ark was awaiting them. Outside the B&B stands a thick, deeply rooted tree, with a trunk and branches firm and solid. The tree is not as tall as it is broad and muscular. The survivors clung to limbs of the tree in a desperate attempt to hold on to their lives in the midst of horrific devastation. "For three hours," Nicky told CNN, "the tides were surpassing our heads, but somehow we were hanging on to that tree. Then the water receded, and we knew that we made it."

Does this tragic-miracle story not tell us something important about our lives today?

Raging waves of uncertainty, fear, tragedy and violence fill the horizons of our globe. The world is trembling. For the Jewish people and for the world at large, in Israel and abroad, foundations are crumbling, lives are being shattered and pain is spread all over.

At such a time, you must have a "tree" to cling onto. A tree that will not falter nor waver; a tree rooted in a reality that the devastating hurricanes of life cannot destroy. This "tree" we must share with our children, our loved ones and our communities.

What is your tree? Your sukkah?


	Abraham Reisen, one of the greatest Yiddish writers of the early 1900’s, wrote this poem in Yiddish, capturing the symbolic significance of the sukkah, the physically-fragile but spiritually-strong structure we sit in during the holiday of Sukkot. Here is his moving poem: My succa'leh was small not fancy at all but it was special and dear to me some schach I threw over it hoping to cover it and there I'd sit and think The wind was a cold one the boards they were old ones the candles were flickering low at times as if dying but suddenly rising as if they did not want to go My sweet little daughter was bringing me water saw the wind and started to call Father, she cried don't stay there inside the wind's too strong, the succa'leh will fall Fear not my child it's been quite a while the succa'leh is still standing strong winds have been worse, my dear but it's over two thousand years the succa'leh can last very long.