David Seidemann: I was there

Posted Wednesday, December 31, 2008 2:12 am

From the other side of the bench

Issue of Jan. 2, 2009 / 6 Teves 5769

I was there. I was there last Thursday amid the terror, the sound of metal hitting glass, the anguish of parents looking for their children and the cries of children looking for their parents.

I saw the blood and the tears, the twisted metal, the immobile, the wounded and the heroes. I was there to witness the failure of human engineering and the glorious success of human hands as a 2,000 pound vehicle was lifted off the wounded.

Hours earlier that morning I had a discussion with one of my daughters about the precision G-d demands from us. I explained to her that one minute here and one minute there is the difference between Shabbos, holiness and the profane. How certain mitzvot demand certain measurements and time, and that an inch here and an inch there, a second here and a second there does make a difference.

Little did I know how prophetic that conversation would turn out to be. Just a few hours later a vehicle came crashing through a window missing my wife by no more than six inches and two of my children by maybe a foot. A few minutes earlier I had taken my two elder daughters across the street to purchase a cup of coffee for my wife. I ran across the street at the first screams for help and arrived at the scene before Hatzalah, before the police and before the firemen.

As a mass of hysterical humanity was running through the gaping hole in the windows made by the out of control vehicle, my eyes immediately made contact with my wife and our two youngest daughters. Still in the street, I screamed at my two eldest daughters to stay put on the sidewalk opposite the accident, and entered what looked like a battlefield to extricate my wife and two youngest. I brought them across the street, reuniting them with the other two and re-entered the building to see if I could be of assistance.

I looked down at my feet and saw what appeared to be a boy of about two. His eyes were shut, his head bloodied; he wasn’t moving. I kept asking him, “What’s your name?” –– just to have a conversation with him, just to see if he was alive. Ten seconds later he was being triaged so I left and allowed Hatzalah to do the work they train for but hope they never have to do.

Since then I have replayed the scene over and over in my head. I have read blogs and articles and more blogs. Those blogs that excoriate the driver of the vehicle would be well served to obtain a copy of the police investigation that exonerates the driver of any wrongdoing. Comments that imply a message of disapproval from G-d towards Chabad are to be rejected and repudiated outright. Those comments and their authors evidence a deep misunderstanding of how G-d speaks to us in this generation and through which mediums.

But the blog that captured my attention most profoundly was the comment that concluded that this tragedy was proof positive that G-d had abandoned the Jewish people on no less than a day of miracles, Chanukah.

I was there. There were more miracles than one could count. An inch here, a foot there and tens would have been killed. Parents who just happened to pick their children up from the Lego area just seconds before the car came crashing through; an enclosed trampoline ride that moments before the crash had been filled with children. And on and on.

There are only two miracles that occur these days that are self-contained, pure miracles –– conception and the renewed creation of this world every day. With just the right amount of gravity and oxygen to allow the earth to maintain its direction and man to retain the ability to breathe, those miracles exist independent from calamity. Almost every other miracle these days appears not as an isolated incident itself, but more in the genre of a diminution in the pain and casualties associated with human tragedy.

Creation and conception are “stand alone” miracles. Every other miracle, from the splitting of the Red Sea, to the rescue at Entebbe, to the fact that Israel survives surrounded by 22 Arab nations is a miracle that is defined as “results” that are counterintuitive to the existing reality on the ground.

Realistically, the children of Israel should have drowned in the sea before them or been killed by the pursuing Egyptian army. Logically, the State of Israel should have been wiped off the map years ago. Scientifically and medically, scores should have been killed G-d forbid or at least permanently injured last week at the Chanukah Wonderland.

But such was not the case because on the fourth day of Chanukah 5769, G-d performed one miracle after another as the odds were defied. What “should have been” as a result of a 2,000 pound projectile slamming into a crowd of Maccabees didn’t happen, because G-d wrought numerous miracles that day.

So to the blogger who feels Thursday’s tragic accident is proof that G-d has abandoned us, I say the following. We no longer live in the Garden of Eden where human suffering was not part of the human condition. Human suffering is very much a part of the human condition and miracles today are measured by minimizing the results of peril and not by the total absence of peril. One day we will revert to those Eden days but until then we need to seek out and recognize the daily miracles occurring before our eyes.

We are very good at asking the Almighty to hear our prayers. We know very well how to say to G-d, “please.” Sometimes we need to place the “please” aside and focus instead on the “thank you.” Now is one of those times.

David Seidemann is a partner with the law firm of Seidemann & Mermelstein. He can be reached at (718) 692-1013 and at ds@lawofficesm.com.