Some time ago we posted a review of Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11: A Call to Reflection and Action, by David Ray Griffin, who (along with numerous other writers) analyzed the 9/11 act of terror as quite possibly an deliberate action by the US government. Many people have reacted to the elaborate "conspiracy theory" with some skepticism – not to mention outrage and such.

Countless words have been spoken and tears shed in the past five years, and we’ve been searching for appropriate words to share here in observance of the fifth anniversary of a day that changed some many things.

Rabbi Arthur Waskow, co-author, The Tent of Abraham; director, The Shalom Center, which voices a new prophetic agenda in Jewish, multireligious, and American life, wrote the first version of this essay wither in a week after the attack. It has been published since then in such diverse places as the AARP magazine and The Nation.

As he shares it again with friends, Rabbi Waskow says, "As I listen to the endless arguments over what to build at Ground Zero, sometimes I think: Forget the grandiose designs. Put up a leafy, leaky, shaky, vulnerable hut . It will fall apart in every rainstorm, and we will put it up again. And again. And again. It will teach all of us the truth about the world we live in. No more Towers."

Also ...

This Hole in the Ground -- One writer offers a powerful lament on 9/11

A comment on Waskow’s 9/11 essay:  Isn’t force necessary?    The Rev. John Erthein, pastor of Elderton Presbyterian Church in Elderton, PA, sent this thoughtful comment on Rabbi Art Waskow’s Meditation on 9/11.

 

THE SUKKAH OF SHALOM
By Rabbi Arthur Waskow

In 2001, just a few weeks after the 9/11 attacks, the Jewish community celebrated the harvest festival of Sukkot. Many did so by building a sukkah—a fragile hut with a leafy roof, the most vulnerable of houses. Vulnerable in time, since it lasts for only a week each year. Vulnerable in space, since its roof must be not only leafy but leaky enough to let in the starlight and gusts of wind and rain.

In our evening prayers throughout the year, just as we prepare to lie down in vulnerable sleep, we plead with God, "Spread over us Your sukkah of shalom—of peace and safety."

Why does the prayer plead for a sukkah of shalom rather than a temple or fortress or palace of shalom, which would surely be more safe and more secure?

Precisely because the sukkah is so vulnerable.

For much of our lives we try to achieve peace and safety by building with steel and concrete and toughness:

Pyramids
Air raid shelters
Pentagons
World Trade Centers

But the sukkah reminds us: We are in truth all vulnerable. If as the prophet Dylan sang, "A hard rain's gonna fall," it will fall on all of us. And on 9/11/01 the ancient truth came home: We all live in a sukkah. Even the widest oceans, the mightiest buildings, the wealthiest balance sheets, the most powerful weapons did not shield us.

There are only wispy walls and leaky roofs between us. The planet is in fact one interwoven web of life. The command to love my neighbor as I do myself is not an admonition to be nice: it is a statement of truth like the law of gravity. However much and in whatever way I love my neighbor, that will turn out to be the way I love myself. If I pour contempt upon my neighbor, hatred will recoil upon me.

Only a world where all communities feel vulnerable, and therefore connected to all other communities, can prevent such acts of rage and mass murder.

The sukkah not only invites our bodies to become physically vulnerable, but also invites our minds to become vulnerable to new ideas. To live in the sukkah for a week, as Jewish tradition teaches, would be to leave behind not only the rigid walls and towers of our cities, but also our rigidified ideas, our assumptions, our habits, our accustomed lives.

Indeed, the tradition teaches that Sukkot is the festival on which we open ourselves to what is foreign to us. We pray especially that prosperity and peace pervade all nations, not only the Jewish people. Sukkot is the festival when we invite holy guests into the sukkah—"guests" precisely because they are our higher selves, our unaccustomed selves.

By leaving our houses, we create the time and space to reflect upon our lives. To "reflect" is to look in the mirror at our "reflections." Indeed, for a moment in 2001 many Americans did pause to ask themselves the question, "Why did those attackers hate us? Did we do anything to bring such hate upon us?"

But the government of the United States moved at once to change that question into, "Why did those attackers dare to hate us?" And it immediately gave the answer, "Because we are free and they hate freedom."

Can we imagine a president addressing Congress to say:

"For forty days your government will take no action except to gather evidence of who perpetrated this mass murder. We urge all Americans to gather in sukkot — in all the places where we might explore the open weave of half-walled space between us and the rest of the world, between humanity and the rest of the planetary web of life. We urge us all to reflect.

"We invite not only those who from a distance have studied Islam but those Americans and others who themselves are Muslims, to talk with the rest of us in these 'sukkot' (the plural of Sukkah).

"We invite those who have lived in the despairing slums and rain-ravaged huts of the world, who have studied alongside the humiliated, angry citizens of the future in the crippled nations that make up half the world, to talk with the rest of us in these sukkot. To reflect with us."
We can imagine that speech, but in 2001 we could not expect it from the government of the United States. For we have built a culture that has as little space for the sukkah of reflection, of hospitality to new, uncomfortable ideas, as it does for the sukkah of vulnerability and physical discomfort.

So we got what was most to be expected: Not a call to reflect. Not a call to pursue the criminals through new forms of international and transnational law. Not a call to understand and address the underlying grievances that turned a few to terrorism and many more to rage against American power.

Instead, from the government of the United States a call to war. Not merely a war, but a "crusade"—the word that beyond all others was most likely to arouse suspicion, fear, and rage in the Muslim world. War and crusade—the very archetypal reverse of self-reflection. The very opposite of looking inward. The impulse not only to look outward but to smash whatever is out there.

And in the year and a half that followed the 9/11 attacks, the US government launched not just one war but two. In each, all it cared about was smashing a repressive government that did not obey American dictates (repressive governments that did obey were not attacked) and establishing its control over resources or strategic territory that it wanted.

Our leaders responded to our vulnerability by trying harder to make ourselves invulnerable. But in a vulnerable world, this takes more and more ferocity, more and more coercion, more and more violence -- at home as well as abroad

What would it mean to recognize that we all live in vulnerable sukkot? Here are a few examples:


Could we teach all our children the Torah, the Prophets, the Song of Songs, the Talmud, the New Testament, the Quran, the Upanishads, the teachings of the Buddha and of King and Gandhi, as treasuries of wisdom—and sometimes of great danger—that are as crucial to the world as Plato and Darwin and Einstein?

Could we learn to see the dangers in "our own" as well as in "the other" teachings, and learn to strengthen those elements in all traditions that call for nonviolence, not bloody crusades and jihads and holy wars for holy lands?

Instead of only mouthing wishes, could we insist on doing deeds: -- Strengthening the International Criminal Court and expanding its jurisdiction to cases of international terrorism? Creating peace between a secure Israel and a viable Palestine? Sharing abundance between the Starving World and the Obese World? Sharing disarmament between nations with suicide bombers and those with thousands of "weapons of mass destruction"? Learning to breathe easy instead of choking the planet with gases of mass desolation?

Not every demand of the poor and disempowered is legitimate simply because it is an expression of pain. But can we open the ears of our hearts to ask: Have we ourselves had a hand in creating the pain? Can we act to lighten it?

Can we create for ourselves a sukkah in time, a sukkah of reflection and renewal, as well as recognizing the sukkah of vulnerable space in which we actually live?

Could we in every year use the days that surround 9/11 to gather for reflection, for self-examination? Could we gather in a mood of Awe rather than fear, to mourn what tears the world apart and learn what weaves the world together?

The choice we face is broader than politics, deeper than charity. It is whether we see the world chiefly as property to be controlled, defined by walls and fences that must be built ever higher, ever thicker, ever tougher; or made up chiefly of an open weave of compassion and connection, open sukkah next to open sukkah.

Whatever we build where the tall Twin Towers stood, America and the World will be living in a leafy, leaky, shaky sukkah. Hope comes from raising that simple truth to visibility. We must spread over all of us the sukkah of shalom.

Mr. Erthein has posed some very important (and difficult) questions here, and has offered a suggestive metaphor for thinking about them.

First he asks: "How well do Christian (or Jewish) moral values translate into public policy, particularly international politics?"

Ah, there's one Really Big Question! I guess my own first thought is: If we believe in the sovereignty of God, how can we not make every possible effort (limited, imperfect, fallible though they all will be!) to do the job of translation?

And indeed, part of our problem arises when we (any particular person, church, or group) claims we have achieved a perfect translation.

Second, he asks: "If the only language an opponent understands is the language of force or deterrence, what do you do then?"

And I have to wonder how we can ever know that someone only understands "the language of force or violence," if that's the only language we speak. (I know that's an overstatement. But I'm trying to say that we may need urgently to develop or create some new languages, because the ones we have don't seem to be working very well.)

All of this is to say that I find your metaphor of languages to be very suggestive and helpful.

What do you think? How would you answer his questions?
Please send a note, and we’ll share it here.