Shofar Jewish Family Congregation www.jewishfamilycongregation.org
Tishrei/Cheshvan/Kislev 5773
Late Fall 2012
From the Rabbi’s Desk I have been talking with temple members and others in the community since the day we lost power courtesy of Hurricane Sandy, and it seems to me that many of us are in fact experiencing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Yes, I know that the term is generally associated with the horrors of war and is better suited to the folks who have lost loved ones, or their homes, or are still without basic services as the result of the hurricane. Many more houses in our area were equipped with a generator this time around, and so, many fewer people experienced the progressively colder houses and the disruption of routines. But even for those folks, and especially for those of us without generators, this third prolonged power outage in 14 months (August 2011 through October 2012) was a very tough experience. It is remarkable how quickly life seems beyond our control, how simple comforts like a warm shower become precious, how much we depend on electricity for the famous connectivity of our time. It seemed particularly difficult, coming as it did in the last few days of the election campaign. It was like attending all the classes of the course except the last week, and then having to find a way to take the test! And it was all the more awful for us here because it came exactly one year after the blizzard of October 2011, wiping out Halloween for the second consecutive year. I felt badly for the people who decorate their houses, and wondered how much of that stuff got blown away. As before, I spent a lot of time at the Vista Fire Station, where I am the chaplain. I saw people coming in with From the Rabbi’s Desk Service Schedule Notes from the Editor High Holy Day Appeal Youth Group HHD Services Sukkah Setter-Uppers 7th Grade Food Drive Yom Kippur/President Early Childhood Center
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breathing apparatuses to plug in…some came more than once a day. I saw people bringing in their pets to warm them up. I saw people charging every conceivable electronic device. And I saw people clearly being ground down by the long time without the comforts of home. As time passed and electricity was restored to more and more houses, those of us at the end of the line grew more frustrated and distressed. Thankfully, eventually our power was restored and life went back to “normal”. But the sense of our fragility, the sense of our dependence on power for heat and light and food and flush toilets, all served to remind us how modernity has robbed us of the ability to survive without that power. Just think: 100 years ago, electricity was not in common usage in homes and businesses in this country. But life was slower and simpler then. Women rarely worked outside the home, and household chores that we accomplish in minutes with electrical appliances (think: washing machines, dryers, hot water heaters, furnaces, well pumps, dishwashers, irons, vacuum cleaners, ovens, refrigerators, coffee makers, etc) consumed hours if not whole days at a time. People communicated with each other via long hand-written letters, and knew that the postal service could take days or weeks, depending on the distance between correspondents. So they took the time to think carefully about what they wanted to say, and then chose their words for maximum clarity and persuasiveness. And when the power outage deprived us of our in-
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