Last Saturday’s despicable and tragic shooting in Pennsylvania has, as one might expect, become fodder for millions of armchair theologians convinced that God steered that bullet away from a direct hit on Donald Trump. Trump himself has, not surprisingly, promoted that theory and encouraged that salvific speculation, which reinforces his long-held, dangerous delusion that he is “the chosen one.”
I found an amusing reply to these speculations in a Facebook meme that, whatever your opinion of Trump as a person, points out the fallacy of this argument. I include it here not as a political statement - there will be plenty of time to discuss the merits of the candidates and their policies, and this meme is a tad over-the-top for the current climate - but purely to highlight the absurdity of the claim that God was actively pushing all the buttons last weekend.
I’ve never believed that God intervenes directly in human affairs. I must admit that I came close, with the 2004 Red Sox, but as a post-Holocaust Jew I’ve found it impossible to ascribe to God such direct involvement. I’ve been guided by great post-Holocaust thinkers like Rabbi Irving Greenberg and Elie Wiesel, and stayed away from simplistic assumptions, even regarding apparent miracles like the Six Day War. October 7 should have put an end to the nonsensical speculations about God deflecting bullets to save any one particular life, when 1,200 were butchered.
The victims of last Saturday’s shooting surely did not wish for God to sacrifice their lives so that their candidate might get a great photo op.
And furthermore, a just, loving God would not have afflicted my dog Casey with incurable stomach cancer. We got the devastating diagnosis last week and I really can’t discuss it yet. Casey’s just five, the most friendly, precious, sweet standard poodle imaginable, and his entire year has been filled with surgeries and pain, which to this point had nothing to do with cancer.
Here’s a picture of Casey coming out of his first chemo session a few days ago. What you see is who he is. And in a month or three, he’ll likely be gone.
If we are very lucky, we might be able to extend Casey’s life for a year. But most likely it will be far less. Are you proud of that one, God?
What kind of God would allow this to happen? How could a loving God cause such pain to such an innocent being? It’s so unfair.
Of course, I believe God didn’t afflict Casey with cancer. Nor did God put the AR-15 in the shooter’s hand.
As we all know, gods don’t kill people, guns do.
So, if we’ve established that God didn’t steer the bullet or generate Casey’s lymphoma, how does God become involved in the course of human and canine events?
Here’s the way I see it:
God does not send bullets. God sends hints.
Exhibit A: the Yarmulke Bin….
Let’s flash back to early June.
I’d been scuffling. After four decades in the pulpit, 37 years at my current congregation, I was closing in on my final service. The retirement date (June 30) had been set two years ago and I was all-in – but as the countdown headed inexorably toward that final date, I increasingly wondered whether my career had really made a difference. While I am young enough to still (God willing) have many more years, I needed to assess where my legacy stood at this moment of transition. Had my life’s journey served any deeper purpose, other than keeping the Torah warm for the next guy? Did God look around at the mark I’d made, the people I’d touched, the small brick I’d added to the edifice of history – and say, with a nod, “S’good.”
Oh, I’d gotten lots of letters from congregants assuring me that I made a difference in their lives. I’d delivered sermons addressing that question – and answered my own question with a reassuring “yes.”
The letters were much appreciated, but I really didn’t know. I was getting perilously close to the end, and I didn’t know what to think. I needed a sign. From God.
Exacerbating the situation, as my final Bat Mitzvah service approached, the girl’s family seemed intent to turn the clock back three decades, turning their back on practices that I’d implemented over the decades, designed to make services more participatory, egalitarian and welcoming. For example, back when I arrived, few girls wore a tallit on their big day. With my encouragement, that trend was completely reversed. But this girl chose not to wear one. One reason the family went retro may have been that the girl’s mom had become Bat Mitzvah on that very same pulpit, back in 1993. In fact her’s was one of the first Bat Mitzvahs I officiated at, in my first year as senior rabbi. So maybe the mom wanted things to be much as they were back then. Nostalgia can be a comforting thing in tumultuous times.
But what may have been nostalgic for this family was for me a jarring indicator that the changes I had made could be easily reversed, like an executive decision from the President. I was getting an Ecclesiastes-toned message of “utter futility.”
But then, minutes before the service, one of our lay leaders – the unofficial temple historian – came over to me and the Bat Mitzvah family with an incredible discovery. As she had been walking past a bin filled with yarmulkes near our upstairs chapel the day before, on the very top of the pile – in plain sight – she spotted three yarmulkes from the mother’s bat mitzvah in 1993.
So far, we’ve come up with no rational explanation for it. I know for a fact that we do clean out those bins at least once every 30 years (!), occasionally restocking it with leftover kippot from various events. The family had no idea that the yarmulkes were even in the building. No, neither they nor the grandparents had emptied the glove compartment before a Bat Mitzvah lesson. No one knows how the kippot got in the bin, much less how they migrated to the top. I’ve seen yarmulkes migrate to bins thousands of miles away. This one had somehow time traveled thirty one years. With all the B’nai Mitzvah, weddings and dinners that had taken place since 1993 - easily in the thousands - the odds of that one being at the top that week were exponentially small.
I asked myself:
Is it odds…or is it God’s?
I’ve long felt that the yarmulke is Judaism’s most underrated and ubiquitous ritual item, a genuine sacred object, even though the tradition gives it little respect. This miracle kippa from Narnia was fast becoming my Shroud of Turin. But the bin wasn’t done spinning its magic.
The next morning, when I returned to the scene of the crime to recreate the discovery with the lay leader, I reached down into the bin and randomly pulled out one yarmulke, from near the bottom.
It was from a 2001 dinner dance and it said,“Mazel Tov, Rabbi Hammerman.”
A couple of weeks from my retirement, and the Universe - in the form of this shabby receptacle, was wishing me Mazel Tov for a job well done.
I must have looked silly, wiping my eyes with a piece of cloth that has sat on hundreds of heads. But as I retreated to my office, I understood. Somewhere from the Beyond, as we journey full circle, as I had, and yet the days speed by with ever increasing ferocity, Someone was saying to me…
It mattered.
S’good.
And Mazel Tov from all of us here in the World to Come!
So in recent days, God did not fire the AR-15 or deflect the bullet or afflict Casey. But God may have sent me a small hint, that my life - and all life - is worth living. Every moment, every act of kindness, matters.
It’s a lesson that will sustain me as I transition to my new existence and gently help Casey, moment by sacred moment, transition to his.
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