A week ago, on Shabbat Parashat Vayiqra, Rosh Hodesh Nisan, a great tragedy befell the Jews of NY. A tragedy that because of its magnitude, resonated among the entire Jewish people. Seven children, from 5 to 16 years old, died in an unpredictable fire. Eliane (16), David (12), Rivkah (11), Yeshua (10), Moshe (8), Sara (6), and Yaakob (5) Sassoon , Zikhronam Librakha.
When we face tragedies, we try to find a reason–there is a human urge to explain them. Something or someone must make sense of the inexplicable. We tend to blame electrical devices or absent smoke alarms. In response to this tragedy, I was actually asked to write about the safety of hot-plates used on Shabbat. And I was about to do just that. But then, I had a deep conversation with my dear friend, rabbi Moshe Plutchock, who attended the historic levaya and listened to the words of the father of the children, Gabriel Sassoon, in New York. Rabbi Plutchock was so moved. He encouraged me to listen to the 15-minute speech of the man that had to eulogize his seven children [ This is a link to the speech]. As I was listening to the words of the grieving father, I felt I was listening to a contemporary version of Iyob. My perspective changed. And I thought that, although safety is important and deserves our full attention, Rabbi Plutchock was right: the grieving father’s words were demanding another type of immediate reaction.
Speaking to the more than one-thousand Jews who came to honor his children before they were taken to be buried in Israel, Rabbi Gabriel Sassoon said it all. People came to comfort the bereaved father, but he ended up comforting them all. Gabriel Sassoon is, by profession, a Jewish schoolteacher, and that day he taught more than one lesson, reminding the attendants that very often “people forget what is important in life…” After mentioning his seven children, one by one, name by name, tear by tear, he said to all his “pupils”: “We have to love our children… Please, everybody, love your children.” Simple. Right? But loving our children is so obvious that we tend to forget it. We procrastinate. We love them, but we forget to act upon it. Now, a man who is speaking from the unfathomable perspective of someone who had it all and then lost it all, reminded us of the real meaning of “what is important in life.” Upon hearing these words, I am sure every parent must have reflected upon his or her own beloved children. Each parent must have thought what I thought and felt: “I need to love them more. I need to be more patient, more attentive, more interested. I want to spend more time with my children.”
Rabbi Sassoon spoke not only as a father. He also spoke as a thinker. A Jewish thinker who, when facing a tragedy, does not look for its causes but for its lessons. In my discussion with Rabbi Plutchok, we agreed that it would have been so easy, so expected, so not uncommon, and seemingly so very “pious”, to portray his children as sacrifices that were taken to redeem the collective sins of the Jewish people, and then, turn to the audience and rebuke them about the numberless offenses we all commit. But Rabbi Sassoon refused to justify theodicy, i.e., understanding God’s benevolence in the face of evil. Instead, he accepted the terrible decree. In his own words, “he surrendered” to God’s infinite and unknowable will. “We don’t understand anything…”, he said. And he sounded so credible. “I surrender to God, [to the God who] I know is all good.”
Listening to rabbi Sassoon, I felt I was listening to a Iyob of our generation. Iyob also lost it all (although the comparison might not be very fair, because, unlike the Sassoon family, the Gemara asserts that Iyob may have been a literary character, and not a historical one). Iyob lost his fortune, his health, and worst of all, he lost all his sons and daughters in one single tragedy. Iyob’s friends came to comfort him. They were good people, pious believers who tried, with the best intentions, to justify the lethal “act of nature” (a storm) which took the lives of his beloved children. “You must have sinned. God, who controls nature, would have never punished the innocent,” they said. Iyob listened to his friends, but rejected their arguments and insisted on defending his innocence. At the end of the story, God reveals Himself to Iyob in a vision from within a storm, challenging Iyob’s belief that he understood the way nature works. Nature (“Creation”) has a somewhat visible, predictable and understandable mechanism, which pales in simplicity compared to the intricacies of God’s infinite ways in His administration of justice with mankind. Iyob, speechless, finally admits the limitation of his understanding. And through this showing of the limits of Iyob’s mind, God dissuades Iyob (and the reader) from expecting to comprehend how God’s justice functions. Left with no answers, Iyob humbly accepts God’s decrees: he “surrenders” and renounces the presumptuously futile endeavor of deciphering God’s mind.
Like Iyob, Gabriel Sassoon rejected man-made explanations for his tragedy. The most important part of his short but immensely powerful speech, in my opinion, was when he mentioned a story, perhaps a legend, from the time of Spanish Inquisition (ca. 1480). It was about a Jewish woman who tragically lost all her children. She told God: “I used to love all my children, and now they are gone. Now, my love is free for You, and I am going to love You as much as I can.” At this point of the speech, I expected Rabbi Sassoon to endorse this glorious, super-human, expression of piety. Instead, the bereaved father shocked all his listeners with a monumental manifestation of humbleness, courage and vulnerability. Referring to the story from the Inquisition he said emphatically: “I don’t agree with that at all. When you love your child, you are loving HaShem,” who gave your child as a gift to you. “The child’s smile, his giggle, his laughter, his successes, his dreams… that’s a reflection of HaShem. Loving your wife or your husband, is a reflection of HaShem. Loving a total stranger, is also a reflection of HaShem. Every relationship we have is a reflection of HaShem. It is a different aspect of the infinite, that we experience… I lost that now. I can’t experience that anymore”.
The book of Iyob ends with an unexpected twist. Iyob, the man who did not comprehend God’s justice but ended up surrendering his human understanding, is rewarded by God. But ironically, his friends, those who tried to explain and justify God’s justice, “the advocates of God”, were ordered to bring a Qorban Hattat, an expiatory sacrifice that one needs to bring to atone for an unintentional sin.
As we prepare for our first Shabbat after this tragedy, and as we all will be checking our hot plates and smoke alarms, let us also remember and draw inspiration from the words of Gabriel Sassoon. Let us honor Sassoon’s call to embrace and enjoy “the most important thing in our lives”. Focusing our energies in doing hesed for one another. Loving our spouse, loving our peers and the stranger. And those of us who are fortunate to have a child–let us realize that we have it all! Let us be grateful to HaShem, and understand that the privilege of having loved ones reflects HaShem’s love for us. We all are His children. The good things we do for each other mirror, and are a reflection of HaShem’s eternal love for us. When we love our children we are loving that which was given to us by HaShem with love. By doing this, by echoing and answering Gabriel Sassoon’s most urgent call, we will honor the memory of his precious children the way he wants it.
May HaShem bless those who have the strength to surrender to Him, in the most difficult times.
I pray to HaShem to bless Gabriel Sassoon’s wife, Gayle Sassoon, and their only surviving child, 15-year-old daughter, Siporah with strength and health.
SHABBAT SHALOM
