More than 4,000 kilometres from their home in Israel, a team of doctors and other medical crews rushed to India to establish a field hospital to save as many lives as they could, to help heal as many injured as they could, in the quick aftermath of an earthquake that devastated the area of Gujarat and took the lives of many of the vulnerable human beings who lived there. In all, some 19,500 people were killed in the quake, and nearly 70,000 were hurt.
A file photo shows an Israeli army medical team, operating out of a field hospital that it established near the city of Bhuj, India, ministering to the young and old after the Gujarat province in India was devastated by an earthquake in 2001. The toll of the quake was heavy: 19,403 people were killed and 68,478 injured. [Israel Sun photos]
In the photos on this page, Israeli doctors are ministering expertly yet tenderly to the youngest, and presumably the neediest, of the city of Bhuj, which suffered the greatest devastation.
These two particular scenes are near Bhuj in January 2001. But variations of those heart-rending scenes have been the hallmark of Israeli humanitarianism since the founding of the Jewish state.
The list of humanitarian missions in which Israel has participated is long. Whenever possible, whenever the country struck by disaster allowed them to enter, rescue and medical teams from Israel have been dispatched to help locate and save lives that still dangled by threads of hope and possibility. At times, the missions were to help in the reconstruction. At other times, the missions were simply to send much needed medical and other supplies.
The following is a partial list of such missions: Mexico in 1985, Armenia in 1988, Romania in 1989, Turkey and Greece in 1999, Kosovo in 1990, Kenya in 1991, New Orleans in 2005, South East Asia in 2004, Kenya (again) in 2006, China and Georgia just this year.
Despite the unceasing defamation of Israel by its enemies, the Jewish state’s well-demonstrated devotion to humanitarianism should surprise no one.
For helping where help is needed is a seminal Jewish value and very much at the centre of the teachings of our faith.
To make a difference
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In To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Social Responsibility (Schocken Books, New York, 2005), British Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks eloquently, and even movingly, explains how and why this is so.
“Judaism is a complex and subtle faith,” Rabbi Sacks writes. “Yet it has rarely lost touch with its simple ethical imperatives. We are here to make a difference [emphasis added], to mend the fractures of the world, a day at a time, an act at a time, for as long as it takes to make it a place of justice and compassion where the lonely are not alone, the poor are not without help; here, the cry of the vulnerable is heeded, and those who are wronged are heard… The truths of religion are exalted, but its duties are close at hand. We know God less by contemplation than by emulation. The choice is not between faith and deeds, for it is by our deeds that we express our faith and make it real in the life of others and the world.”
Indeed, it is especially at this time of year, on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, that we feel the full impact of Rabbi Sacks’ insights.
At Rosh Hashanah, we celebrate many theological themes. But one of the key themes that courses throughout the holiday is the unity of the world and the Kingship of the one God Who reigns over all that He has created.
“Hayom harat olam… This day the world was called into being,” we recite after each session of the shofar blasts. “Hayom ya’amid bamishpat kol yetsurei olamim… This day all creatures of the universe stand in judgment before You,” we continue in reciting.
And as it is obligatory to hear the sounds of the shofar, it is important, too, to recite the proclamation and press deep into our consciousness its profound meaning: that all of God’s world is interconnected as a single life-sustaining, and life enhancing system.
Rabbi Sacks refines the point even more sharply.
“We cannot know God, Maimonides implies, but we can act like him [through acts of kindness, righteousness and justice]. Within the limits of human intelligence, we can climb at least part of the way to heaven, but the purpose of the climb is the return to earth [emphasis added], knowing that here is where God wants us to be and where he has given us work to do. Judaism contains mysteries, but its ultimate purpose is not mysterious at all. It is to honour the image of God in other people, and thus turn the world into a home for the Divine presence.”
The best, if not the only, way to turn the world into a home for the Divine presence is to care for it and for its inhabitants, to act at all times for its betterment and for the betterment of its inhabitants.
“To live is to give,” Rabbi Sacks writes so elegantly.
Let us therefore resolve on the eve of Rosh Hashanah to give of kindness, righteousness and justice to each other for the sake of the other.
This is the world we must build for the sake of our faith and our tradition, for the sake of our children and our grandchildren, and for the sake of the promise we made in our hearts to those whom we once loved but are no more.
Shanah Tovah.