Article below by Laibl Wolf, Dean, Spiritgrow - The Josef Kryss Wholistic Centre, Australia
You have been away for some weeks, maybe months, travelling or visiting. You finally come home. And it feels so good, so secure, so familiar. You sit yourself down in your favorite lounge chair and look around and mentally whisper, “It’s just great coming back home.”
The fifty foot wave carries everything in its path along miles of wave front, frothing angrily at all in its path. Effortlessly it sweeps houses off their foundations, carelessly catapults container ships ashore, drags hundreds of cars like plastic toys through towns and fields, crashing and crushing bridges, refineries, and shopping centres. The roar of destruction is awesome, terrifying. Bodies bob up and down but soon cease to feature in the macro sweep of titanic garbage that makes up the jetsam and flotsam of civilization that ceases to be – drowned by cataclysm and vis major.
Our home is our castle. Every nook and cranny triggers a memory – a piece of our life. The house is as intimate with our soul as is our body. It snuggles us in its womb, extricating us from the demons outside, from a world of thrust and parry. It encompasses us in a warm blanket of security fending off the lurking dangers of a world no longer safe.
It arrives so suddenly – a deafening crackle of crunching tectonic plate sheering a few more centimeters of its opposite number, and all too suddenly the Pacific Rim is the setting for topographical mayhem. A mere rubbing of subterranean shoulders, and life on the surface of the green planet is turned upside down. New Zealand and Tokyo join a modern history of quakes that rudely destroys landscapes of earth and lives alike.
Our comfort zone is more than a house. It is a state of mind. It accepts the high predictability of tomorrow’s normalcy and continuity. It anticipates the newspaper on the front porch, the neighbour’s dog barking, the good-morning kiss of our child, the familiar face on the bus, and the setting of the afternoon sun. Change is uncomfortable. Transformation is painful. Destruction is soul destroying.
The plume of nuclear cloud floats away ominously from the cracked nuclear plant torn asunder by forces far stronger. We breathe the air of our city and wonder. The unspoken sense of personal security is hesitant and thinly veiled. Our sense of tomorrow is no longer a given, a bedrock of assumption, an axiom of life’s continuity. Our complacency is undressed and the veneer of self-assurance cracked wide open.
Is there rhyme or reason? Or are we dry leaves driven by powerful and wanton winds of arbitrary change?
I think not. I believe not. To a world of moderns who exult themselves in their political and physical capacity to rule and over-rule, to control and defeat, to invade and subjugate, to maim and murder – comes a message, a correcting mechanism, a reminder: you are but ants to be stamped out at Will. And as the Torah notes: when the angel of death is given permission, it doesn’t discriminate between the good and the bad. Rough justice for human sensibilities!
We are witnessing a cosmic lesson in humility. The animalistic tendency of man is being checked and subdued. A force far greater is reminding us of the higher purpose of creation: “And it was good.” When we make it less good, it comes to bite us. ‘ The Kabbalistic teachings describe the physical features of life as shards of a broken Divine container that humans have been given the privilege to raise up and restore. And not just a privilege – but an absolute duty, loosely described as Tikkun Olam – the 613 Mitzvot that repair the world.
Jewish people have a 3500 year tradition of response to supreme adversity. It is called Teshuva – returning to the norm. In the place of fear and repair, the onlooker of tragedy has to visit his/her own heart and commit to a life of high values, true Hessed (compassion), real nurture of family and friendship, meaningful contribution to the welfare of others and community, and expression of real love – even for the stranger.
Read the signs well and make a change in your life. The tsunamic flood seeks a Noachide response of principle and brotherhood - Ahavat Yisrael.
10 comments:
I just can't help wondering, "Why Japan?"; Not that they are so ideal a people, but surely many others are worse.
Unbelievable. So much is happening in the world on a daily basis all over, though. Not just in one localized area. Quickly, too. I cannot believe how much water piled up in 1minute and 53 seconds. In the video the place was flooded in that amount of time....
Vanguard: go to google and enter in the words "Japan WW2 torture" and you'll begin to get the picture.
Someone was telling me yesterday that an elderly Jewish man (who died recently) who fought for the British in WW2, was captured by the Japanese and put into a small cage which was so small he couldn't stand up. He was kept there for six months.
Devorah, that wouldn't cut it. For their sins in WWII I dare say they got their due in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I guess we can't judge how much "their due" really is.
As Lazer Brody writes:
"Until now, Hashem deferred the world’s payment for all its sins. In other words, He let them charge their spiritual debits instead of “paying cash,” that is, repenting daily for all their misdeeds. But nothing is forgotten; all past debts must be paid..."
Link: http://www.breslev.co.il/articles/holidays_and_fast_days/purim/messianic_labor_pains.aspx?id=18610&language=english
I just want to add that Japan is a nation of idol worshipers. I lived there for 2 years and visited there for 4 months in 1989. There are temples to gods all over the place. They have statues of gods including representations of a giant male organ in public places. That being said, I'm not so sure this is why this quake/tsunami happened. What county is without some quilt for torture, injustice and slavery? I don't know if this is the nation the rebbe was referring to. I'm thinking it might be America, G-d forbid.
Also I saw this somewhere on the Internet. Sorry I can't remember where::
January - Chile
February - New Zealand
March - Japan
For what it is worth...my mother has a cousin (a non-Jew) who married a Japanese man and they lived in Japan. Once she came back to the States on a visit and her family got together for a reunion. This cousin talked about the evil in that country. She said when she simply got off of the airplane, you would feel the evil in the air — like it slaps you in the face.
I compare that with the feeling I get when getting off of the plane after arriving in Eretz Israel....the Kedusha!!(Holiness) is in the air. My entire neshama reacts with LIFE! And...the reverse happens too....leaving EY is an awful feeling - right in the gut. SO many people have echoed this feeling of tearing one's self away from EY. One friend told me he cried when leaving Israel...got on the plane, cried tears and nearly threw up because he so badly wanted to stay that he got physically sick. I guess only a Jew would react this way over being in Israel.
But, in Japan...you smell the evil - spiritually and physically.
Sorry for the extra paragraphs here, but when I re-read what I wrote, I didn't want to speak about the Kedusha of our Holy Land in the same paragraph as evil...so I hope you don't mind that I am taking up more space on this page!
Talking about smells.... try Bangkok for the worst.
Devorah Designs:
I hear you; Share your EY feelings too.
But when it comes to cruelty, I'm certain many Arab nations, and China, are so much more cruel. Then there's North Korea, and who knows where else they so abuse human rights.
So, "Why Japan?" is still a puzzle to me.
Kol tuv to you all.
It's a puzzle to everyone Vanguard. Nobody knows why, although some people pretend to.
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