David's Harp: A world gone Purim

David’s Harp is usually a satirical humorous column. In honor of Purim when we are inebriated to the point that everything is turned upside down and we don’t recognize the difference between Mordechai and Haman, the hero and the villain, this space will be serious.

Thousands died in Japan because the core of the earth has a physical geological formula that dictates movement on the crust of the planet. This movement not only caused an earthquake, but it unleashed a tsunami that swept away towns, changed the map of Japan and affected the very axis of the globe. It is beyond sad and a reminder that we live at the will of science in outer space in a universe directed by laws of nature and G-d’s grace.

A bus crashed on the Cross Bronx Expressway killing 15 people. And another crashed on the New Jersey Turnpike. The dangers of everyday transport and travel become all too real when we are faced with such tragedy and loss of life.

Two local police officers were killed in the line of duty. It is a sobering reminder to all of us of the dangerous and courageous occupation that our law enforcement, fire fighters and our soldiers encounter in their course of confronting their very jobs.

Flooding in the metropolitan area has caused headaches, heartaches and endless difficulties for so many of our fellow citizens. Nature’s forces never cease to remind us of that which we can do little to control.

Five souls in Israel had their throats and bodies slashed and slit during the middle of the night as they slept in their beds on Shabbat. It is also a reminder. It reminds us that the Jew lives in a world that is beyond the laws of physics, science, nature, decency, civility and universal conscience. The horror of Purim’s lottery, that any random Jew on any old day should be killed, is alive and well in 2011.

The earth has always quaked, and rivers seem to flood, and vehicles will often crash, and soldiers unfortunately have throughout history given their lives.

But it should not be part of the course of nature that a three-month old baby is slaughtered in her sleep. And it should not be in the science of the planet that her two brothers and mother and father are slaughtered alongside of her.

We are living in a world of Purim. It is a chaotic drunk place where the hero is the villain and the villain is the hero. It is a place where people mask their evil and yet publically rejoice in their desire for genocide. It is a world of Purim. It is a place filled with Haman after Haman mocking the Mordechai. It is a place where a 12 year- old girl returns from a Kabbalat Shabbat celebration to find her family dead with their blood dripping over toys and sefarim and a crib. It is a world of Purim. It is a world that contains a story where G-d’s hand is hidden and where we must bring about the miracle through our own strength. It is a world where we must be courageous and enter a precarious palace even when we are not summoned. It is a world where we must change the very calendar containing our day of demise into our day of victory and our enemies’ hanging.

Purim is indeed the holiday of chaos, which leads into the holiday of Pesach bringing with it the Seder, the order. May we merit the Moshiach’s speedy arrival and enter into a world where perhaps the science of the earth may still cause it to quake, but the sanity of the planet will allow a baby to sleep through the night in peace.