IT IS NOT IN OUR POWER . . .

May I give you a brief Hebrew lesson? Repeat after me: “Ain bi-yadenu – It is not in our power . . .” Pat Robertson must have missed the day in seminary when the phrase was taught as prelude to a maxim spoken by one Rabbi Yannai. Had Pat been there, he would have known that Rabbi Yannai encapsulated hundreds of years of suffering and thousand of years of theology in two sagacious words: “Ain bi-yadenu,” Yannai said, “it is not in our power to explain the well-being of the wicked or even the sorrows of the righteous.”

What are we able to say about the victims in Haiti? Round and round the theological track we blunder, only to return to “ain bi-yadenu.” Is God impotent over natural disasters? Ain bi-yadenu. Is there no God; only the chaos of nature? Tell me that, as you smell a rose on a magnificent spring day or witness the tenderness of newborn life. No, ain bi-yadenu.

Then come along Pat Robertson and his cadre of tin-whistle yesmen, and claim, yes, bi-yadenu, we do have the power to understand. It’s all part of God’s plan to slay the innocent and devastate their land.

No use excoriating Pat Robertson. Every generation brings more than its share of smug demagogues up the pop-chart. They will always find a way to cloak their misanthropy in virtue. As they proffer more and more Biblical passages to defend their position, it should prod further the resolve of decent people to articulate the higher truth – that we commoners actually do know more about God and theology than Pat Robertson: Ain bi-yadenu.

The real vexation is about their benign supporters, the silently acquiescent – the ones who quietly believe that Haitians are getting what they deserve and the earth is being cleansed because Pat or El Rushbo, or their local preacher told them so. Are they evil? Are they dupes? Are they just stupid? Have they no sense of moral autonomy – the innate knowledge that something is wrong or sinful, regardless of whatever an attractive demagogue tells you to the contrary?

A friend whose father was incarcerated in Buchenwald and whose grandparents perished at the Nazis’ hands, gave the following opinion:

People basically want their own comfort and well-being. As my Father would say: The German people were nice, and they were sad that they couldn't buy from him anymore. But that didn't stop them. They were quiet and just followed their leaders. Perhaps deep down they were saying, “Let's get rid of the Jews.” They really didn't care. But to the Jews, the neighbors expressed sadness.

Yes, of course, the analogy to the Holocaust and Nazis is a gross overstatement, except in one respect: Those acquiescent people in the pews or in front of the radio are silent accomplices to terrible wickedness. We should not let them off so easily. As one of my rabbis underscored the point, remember that only four percent or so of the Israelites actively engaged in the Golden Calf, while the sin of the remaining 96% was that “they sat by on the sidelines,” maybe too intimidated to complain or maybe just not caring to upset their own comfort.

The good news is that the vast majority the hoi polloi like you and me do hold the Robertsons and Limbaughs in disdain, see the plight of the Haitians as a horrific injustice, call it an “Act of God” without grave theological distress, and donate time and money selflessly to right such a tremendous wrong, whatever its source. We have marginalized the voices of hate into “nutcases” and their amen-corner into malcontented gabble on right-wing talk shows.

Most of us, knowingly or not, have already come to understand and accept the reality of “ain bi-yadenu.” A bitter pill. Don’t we wish God would explain it once and for all? I’m not so sure. You see what happens when ill-spirited people think they know more than God is showing. Stuff them back in their squawk-boxes and drown out their evil pronouncements with words and deeds of benevolence and love. And tell the silently acquiescent in the pews that for however little we know about why the righteous suffer, we know full-well how to stop the suffering.