Gerda Klein, the Holocaust survivor won an Emmy and an Oscar for a film about her experiences in the Shoah. She was once asked, “How did it feel for you as a holocaust survivor to be holding an Oscar in your hand?”
a potato, then I was a winner.


I remembered Gerda as we watched in horror as Katrina’s 150 mile an hour winds ripped the soul out of New Orleans, devastated the entire gulf coast, broke through the levees and washed away the hopes and dreams of over a million men, women and children suddenly left homeless and adrift in the ravaged waters of despair.

What price do we put on the terrors of the night that will haunt millions of lives, our own included for a very, very long time to come? Never in all the history of this country has there been a storm as powerful and as destructive as this one. Never.

Those haunting images: families huddled together with only the clothes on their backs; a lone woman pushing a shopping cart through the flooded streets searching for a way out; lines of evacuees slowly winding over bridges and empty highways; couples clinging to each other as they waited in desperation for someone to come and rescue them, rescue workers moving door to door, flooded house to flooded house searching for bodies or the last vestiges of humanity still clinging to their own homes.

And then before we could even catch our collective breath – as if trapped in a twisted, nightmare Tim Burton version of “Groundhog Day” – Hurricane Rita pummeled East Texas and the Louisiana coast. It triggered floods and demolished buildings. It was responsible for creating over 3 million evacuees, knocked out power for over 1 million users, sparked fires across the hurricane zone and swamped Louisiana shoreline towns.

But Katrina and Rita, like this week’s South East Asian earthquake provided us all a profound lesson in humility. A lesson about our own impotence and the reality of what it means to live as part of nature and not apart from it. You’d think we would have learned it already from the terror and trauma of the tsunami’s devastation of the Indian Ocean last year. But as powerful and as destructive, and as overwhelming as that was, somehow it is always different when it’s here; when it’s us.

As the Yiddish proverb says, “Human beings plan and God laughs.”

There is nothing we can do to keep the hurricanes of life away and when nature takes aim at us, all we can do is run, or drive, or fly as fast as we can to get out of its way.

We can leave the South to avoid hurricanes. And then leave the Midwest to avoid tornados. And then leave California to avoid earthquakes. And then go where?
“There but for the grace of God go I.” “There but for the grace of God…” How could you not feel a profound, life-affirming almost overwhelming sense of gratitude at the blessings of your life, every time you watched the news or opened the paper or went on line?

To have loved ones to hold and kiss who are safe and secure is a blessing. To have friends and community and even strangers who become a caring community that will stand up and help in our time of need is an amazing blessing. And of course it reminded us of our need to prepare at home for our own disaster as well.

But I am a rabbi. Your rabbi. And I have been given the privilege of intimate access to so many of your lives. And so I know that even without the hurricane called Katrina, there are many, many kinds of storms and all kinds of hurricanes that you, too have endured this year.
“How will I ever be able to recover from the financial hurricane that overwhelmed me this year?

“How will I survive this hurricane of illness that has overwhelmed me?

“How will I ever be able to recover from the emotional hurricane which has overwhelmed me this year?”

How will I ever be able to recover from the hurricane of grief that has overwhelmed me this year?” And yet we do. We do overcome the grief, we do overcome the losses, we do overcome the divorce, the death, the financial setbacks, the physical challenges. Time and again. With remarkable, indeed with amazing resilience. And I want to share with you how we overcome the storms of life. For that is where we find God in the midst of despair and sorrow.

You all know the stories, because you all are the stories. Your kids sold lemonade and raised hundreds and even thousands of dollars on their own to help the victims. You brought blankets, sheets, towels, clothing, toiletries and anything that was needed to give to evacuees who showed up in LA or were housed in shelters throughout the country.

And you gave money. Lots and lots of money in unprecedented numbers for hurricane relief. Something like $600 million dollars was given in the first 10 days after the hurricane – more than at any time for any disaster in history - dwarfing the amount raised in the days following 9/11 or the Indian Ocean tsunami.

People posted messages on the internet, “If you know anyone who needs housing, we have a spare bedroom and we will be happy to take a family in for as long as they need to stay.”

How do you explain that response? How do you explain that hundreds, thousands of people reached out and opened their pockets and opened their hearts and opened their homes to people whom they had never met, simply because they were the victims of a hurricane?
There but for the grace of God go I
And that is the real answer. That is the real lesson of this unprecedented disaster.
And that is the most profound lesson of Judaism and of every other religion on earth as well. That’s what the Shema means when it says, “God is one.” That’s why the Torah teaches that we are made in God’s image, so we will know that just as God is one, we are one as well. To be religious, to be spiritual is to grasp to the core of your being what the ancient Prophet Amos tried to teach us thousands of years ago by saying, “Have we not one Father? Has not one God created us all? So why do we deal treacherously brother against brother?”

I say it often: Your hands are God’s hands. Your arms are God’s arms. Your eyes are how God sees. Your ears are how God hears. Your heart is the heart of God as well.

And from them and from each of you we ultimately learn what we have been trying to teach about community for so long. For in community you are never completely alone. There are always friends, synagogue members, and even strangers who will come to our aid if they only know that we are in need and we are willing to ask.

As Rachel mentioned last night, if we attacked the problem of the 90,000 people who are homeless everyday in Los Angeles County, mostly women and children, with the same passion, commitment and compassion that Katrina inspired, we could probably solve the homeless problem in our community in a few months.

The next time a hurricane of some kind strikes in your life, remember that angels are all around us eager and willing to help. Just look around this sanctuary – in front of you, and next to you, and you will see who the angels really are.

May the year ahead bring you safety and wellbeing. May you be spared from having to endure personal hurricanes and storms in the year ahead. May you be spared those hurricanes whether of nature or finance, illness or divorce or death.

For when that happens, then the best in the human spirit emerges and unlike our patriarch Jacob who said, .” We will look into each other’s eyes and know that we are seeing the face of God.