These past few days reminded me that faith isn't for the good times.  Last Friday, a fine person and colleague died.  She had been told that she couldn't become pregnant so she went out and adopted two children.  Just as the adoptions came through, she became pregnant.  A miracle!  But, the day after she gave birth, a rare and exceedingly aggressive form of cancer was diagnosed.  Her children are 5, 3 and 1.  The funeral was Sunday.  I believe one should celebrate a life rather than mourning a death but this one was just too tragic.  39 years old, she was.  Rereading Rabbi Kushner just wasn't enough.

Then, when I came home this evening from paying a shiva call, my mother called to tell me that another friend of ours is dying.  He has prostate cancer.  Several years ago, he owned a great science fiction bookstore in Lower Manhattan until he was forced out by a landlord who wanted the much higher rent a bank would pay.  The community protested and petitioned, but to no avail.  He and his wife moved to Northern New Jersey.  Now, she's facing life without her lifemate.  He's just a little older than I.  I don't fear death, just a senseless one.  His seems senseless because prostate cancer is supposed to be treatable.  Giuliani had it, so did Joe Torre.

I reminded myself of a retreat I was on while Jewish Lay Leader in the Army.  We were at Berchtesgaden, where Hitler had his villa.  An odd place for Jews to hold a retreat, you might say, but that's where the US Military had established a recreation/retreat center.  During morning Talmud Torah, my supervising chaplain, Rabbi Joel Schwartzman, asked the discussion leader where was God during the Nazi Holocaust.  How could there be a compassionate God, he said, when there was so much suffering amongst his people Israel.  The Leader, a member of a Sephardic Hasidim congregation, gave the most unexpected reply.  He quoted Matthew 5:10-14.  Here, he said, was the proof.  Jesus (or Joshua, son of Joseph, as he called him) testified to God's love for all those oppressed in His name.  After all, he said, where were all the so-called good people during this unspeakable horror?  Instead of proclaiming the truth of God's word, they were silent.  That's all evil needs, said he, to flourish.  Then he quoted Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."  Evil flourishes when God is denied.  To blame God for such horrors, whether "natural" or man-made, is an evasion of responsibility.

I know that Sari is with God, just as Alan will be in a few short days.  It is for us to remember and honor them, for through that they will live forever.  It is our acknowledgement of their immortal souls and of God's unconditional love, a love we can never deny any of God's creation.  Whether it be horrible disease or the inhumanity of the wicked, God's love prevails.