From the desk of Rabbi Alex Greenbaum

The Virginia Tech massacre happened on Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Memorial Day. Both days bring up the same question, Where was God? Both are answered by, It wasn't God, it was freewill. Guns don't kill people, people kill people. But, both feel like a cop-out. If I am going to thank God for the good in my life, then isn't it just plain honest to blame God for the bad? Doesn't God need to take some responsibility?

I've been trapped in the past when it comes to my belief in God. According to Judaism, God is the God of everything, light and darkness, good and evil. To pray to a God who is good and only good is not a Jewish prayer, according to the Talmud, our book of law, 2000 years ago. That's the problem with Hell. It would need someone running it and we have a problem picturing the God we pray to running a place of eternal torment. So too, we have a problem praying to a God who would allow 32 innocent people to be slaughtered.

So, where was God? I believe God was there at Virginia Tech. Not pushing the buttons and deciding who would live and who would die. Not controlling the sick man with the guns nor the heroes. But rather crying along with the rest of us. Disease, natural disasters, mindless rampages all can be explained, not as easily with freewill, but rather with the incomplete nature of creation.

Even if we agreed that God is perfect, we must admit that God's works are not. The world we live in, the bodies we live in are not perfect. Cancer, AIDS, hurricanes, earthquakes, Columbine, Virginia Tech. The world is imperfect and our job, as human beings, as God's partners, is to finish the work of creation. To find cures. To build better buildings and warning devices. To make better laws and help the mentally ill. I believe that all the tools we need are on this earth already. God has put it all within our reach. If we could live 1000 years, do we not think that we will find the cure to cancer? If the buildings in rural China were built like the buildings in urban Los Angeles, would as many people die in an earthquake? Even world peace is up to us. God has given us the tools, but it's up to us to use them.

The world is incomplete and we must complete the work. The world is broken, we must fix it. Cho Seung-Hui was broken. The laws that allowed him to buy a gun are broken. And God is crying. Why? Because we don't fix it.

God is the ultimate parent. As parents, we teach our children all we can. When they are grown, we send them out into the world and pray that they learned well. To bring them back into our homes is to give up on them. God has not given up on us yet, that would be the coming of the Messiah. But it is taking quite a while for us to get it right. We must learn from our mistakes. We must listen to God. We must use the tools that we have been given. Then we can make a difference, for the better. And, as the children of God, we can make God proud.

May God bless us all with peace, Amen,

Rabbi Alex Greenbaum

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