A Time for Unity Amid Horror

This week’s evil has suddenly made next week’s Jewish High Holy Days, with their emphasis on self-examination and judgment, a time of universal religious reflection.

Jewish and Christian clergy and Muslim leaders have been unequivocal in declaring that the terrorists who struck in New York and Washington must be held accountable for their acts.

Some Christian leaders said they were torn between a visceral impulse to strike back and the obligation to live up to their understanding of turning the other cheek. Rabbis were less conflicted.

But whether their thoughts were directed toward the terrorists, underlying causes, or an examination of conscience, Sept. 11 became a time of judgment.

Muslim Americans bowed toward Mecca, Torah scrolls unfurled, Buddhist prayer bells resonated, Christian Eucharistic bread and chalices were elevated. There were formal liturgical prayers with ancient cadences, unrehearsed but heartfelt prayers, cries for mercy and cries for help.

In South Pasadena, “we had to set up a separate phone line to handle all the calls,” said Frank Ponnet, director of liturgy at Holy Family Church, which celebrated Mass Thursday night. More than 200 parishioners showed up Wednesday for an early-morning Mass, double the usual number.

“People want to do something,” he said.

Participants were taking a well-trod path to the sanctuaries, a journey made by millions before them in the wake of inexplicable catastrophes--from diseases that plagued ancient societies to the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy, which temporarily boosted church attendance by an estimated 20% or more.

“What is religion supposed to do?” asked Dr. William H. Swatos Jr., executive officer of the Assn. for the Sociology of Religion, an international scholarly organization. “It’s supposed to provide meaning. And, lo and behold, we had a meaningless event this week.”

The horror of the attack--and the potential that it stems from religious strife in the Middle East--has spurred many religious leaders to hold interfaith services, including some at which Jews, Christians and Muslims pray side by side.

About 500 people attended a Tuesday night prayer service at Temple Beth El, a Reform synagogue in Aliso Viejo, and Laguna Niguel Presbyterian Church.

“It just seemed there would be a need to get together to pray, to help each other cope,” Rabbi Allen Krause said. “I thought it would be a much more meaningful statement as an interfaith service rather than one or the other.”

Even before the assaults, a year of repeated attacks and reprisals in Israel and Palestinian areas presented rabbis with a clear need during the upcoming High Holy Days to confront the impact of the violence on the hopes and spirit of individual congregants and the Jewish community.

The most sacred observances on the Jewish calendar begin at sundown Monday, the eve of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year. The observances end 10 days later on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Traditionally this is a time of soul-searching, repentance and judgment. During this time, Jews ask forgiveness of their sins of each other, make amends, and thereby restore their relationship with God by restoring their relationships with others.

“We’re going into the holidays with a lot of broken hearts,” Rabbi Harvey J. Fields of Wilshire Boulevard Temple said before the attack.

“More than anything,” said Rabbi Sheryl Lewart of Kehillat Israel in Pacific Palisades, “we’re dealing with the fear of the death of hope.”

Last week, rabbis from throughout Southern California compared notes and sat in on a conference at the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles in which four Israeli rabbis from Jerusalem briefed them by teleconference on the latest events in Israel.

Rabbis Agree to Address Strife in Holy Land

While on other occasions rabbis from liberal to Orthodox streams of Judaism may have disagreed on who is a Jew or whether ritual observances are mandatory, they agreed on the pressing need to address developments in the Holy Land--and to rally their congregants to unmistakably recommit themselves to the plight of Jews everywhere, and especially now to Jews in Israel.

Whatever mistakes Israel may have made--and some rabbis said it has made mistakes--this is no time to find fault with Israel when it is under fire.

But Tuesday’s events made a statement by one rabbi before the attack seem almost prophetic.

“The Jews in Israel are not safe,” said Rabbi Boruch Shlomo Cunin, director of Chabad of California, part of a worldwide traditionalist Hasidic movement. “We have to understand if they’re not safe in Jerusalem, you’re not safe in Beverly Hills, because we’re all one people. We cannot separate ourselves.”

Tuesday’s attacks made this a time of sober reflection and calls for unity for non-Jews as well.

From Washington where he was stranded by the nationwide grounding of airlines, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony went on CNN to urge Americans to “find a source of light.”

“Terrorists live in darkness, and their evil deeds they do not wish to be seen,” Mahony said. “So I say to parents tonight, get out a candle, light a candle, and let the children see the hope that is in that light. . . .”

Dozens of small votive candles flickered on a common table in the vaulted sanctuary of Emmanuel Presbyterian Church in the Mid-Wilshire district. They were lit one by one by a rabbi, Muslim prayer leaders, Protestant ministers and a Catholic priest and worshipers on their lunch hour at an interfaith prayer service.

A Candle for Those Mourning in the Area

Standing in the vaulted sanctuary at Emmanuel Presbyterian Church beneath a brilliant stained-glass window of the resurrected Christ, Rabbi Fields, wearing a yarmulke, said what others were feeling.

“Many of the mourners of those who were taken are mourning here in Los Angeles: weeping children who will never see their parents again; weeping lovers who were waiting in Los Angeles to greet those they care about most in all the world; parents whose children were lost; brothers and sisters who will never hear the voices or feel the loving hands of those they expected home for dinner tonight.”

Rabbi Alan Henkin of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations told of a third-grade boy who said his Jewish day school was closed because of the attacks in New York and Washington.

“He understood that connection,” Henkin said. “But his next question was why did the airplane crash into the building?”

The answers will be many, and judgment awaits.

‘We’re going into the holidays with a lot of broken hearts.’