By:Rebecca Shalomoff
In an effort to help out in the aftermath of the World Trade Center massacre, local residents have been waiting on long lines to donate blood. They have collected money, gathered food and materials for workers and volunteers searching through the wreckage, and especially, called upon a higher source for guidance and support.
About 450 congregants from local synagogues Temple Beth El in Cedarhurst, Congregation Sons of Israel in Woodmere, Hewlett-East Rockaway Jewish Centre and The Sephardic Temple in Cedarhurst gathered in the sanctuary of Sons of Israel last Wednesday evening for a community-wide worship service.
Together, participants sang the traditional Jewish prayer Oseh Shalom: Help us, O Source of Peace, to find true peace in our own lives and with our neighbors . . . strengthen our devotion to freedom and our dedication to justice for all.
In a time when people are struggling to make sense of how such a human catastrophe could happen, Five Towners are among the many grief-stricken who are turning to faith as a pillar to lean on and seeking solace in religion.
Even President George Bush urged citizens in this country which holds as one of its major tenets the separation of religion and state to attend services at their churches, synagogues and mosques on Friday, Sept. 14, while he led the prayer service at the National Cathedral in Washington. Bush proclaimed Friday the National Day of Prayer and Remembrance.
And it is the same higher being Americans are praying to for salvation, that the terrorists referred to with a different name as the justification for carrying out the worst terrorist attack on American soil, murdering possibly thousands of people in the name of Allah.
Rabbi Arnold Marans, spiritual leader of The Sephardic Temple, said that the human destruction caused when hijackers took over four commercial airplanes is different in nature than the acts of genocide performed by the Nazis because the tragedies that occurred on Tuesday, Sept. 11 were done in God's name.
And today, God is crying,he said.
Rabbi Sholom Stern of Temple Beth El said that divine forces were not at the forefront on that day of terror, but the satanic forces of this world achieved success.
While spiritual leaders and politicians speak of reaching out to God through prayer during this nightmare, they also rely on a rhetoric of retribution, vowing that the evil will be punished.
We will not let a philosophy of life win out which makes the slaughter of others its highest duty,said Rabbi Stern.
Even in the spirit of the period of the ongoing High Holiday, where Jews are expected to forgive one another, Hewlett-East Rockaway Jewish Centre Rabbi Stanley Platek said that they are not expected to forgive the terrorists and those affiliated with them because they do not understand the heinous consequences of their hatred and deadly actions.
They don't get forgiveness until they deserve it,he said.
But the evening services were not complete without a message of hope.
This is not only a great nation when it comes to defense,said Rabbi Bruce Ginsburg of Congregation Sons of Israel. It is a nation that has a good heart.
