Friday, July 22 - 7:30pm, July 23 9:30am, 8:00pm Mincha/ Maariv

      (EARLY SERVICE TIME  -- SHABBAT UNDER THE STARS)

"Dr. O" has returned from Rwanda. He had an amazing time and his reports are both moving and awe-inspiring... . Here is a final email to his friends and supporters here in Bloomfield......

This email is a very difficult email as what I saw today made me more upset that I could have imagined. Ian, the tour guide and taxi driver, met me here at the hotel at 9am on the dot and we set out to the Genocide memorials. It was a beautiful ride out in the Rwandan countryside, the hills, the papyrus trees, the sugar cane fields and the coffee trees. Ian and I discussed the politics of Rwanda that lead up to the Genocide, he is extremely smart. Ian is self taught as he had to leave school when he was 13 to help pay for his brother and sister's education. He taught himself English, French, Swahili and is learning Spanish. We talked about his future too.

After about 40 minutes of driving, we pulled off the main tar road onto a dirt side street in the midst of a settlement of very poor looking shops. Ian followed the road for what seemed to be miles, past deserted homes, past children running, mothers and babies and banana trees, tons and tons of banana trees. We finally reached a compound across from a school in NTARAMA (Narama). It was the sight of an old Catholic church but now was the sight of a vicious moment in the Genocide. Back in 1992, before the main Genocide, there was a smaller less well known Genocide that took place under the old regime. People flocked to the churches and were safe. Little did them know that this was a test case for the main Genocide that was to come in 1994. When the Genocide began in April of 1994, the Tutsi's and Twa of NTARAMA fought bravely. The women and children were back in the church compound safe, or so they thought. As militia from around the area began to converge on the church compound firing rockets and grenades into the compound, the church, sacristy and the Sunday school. As the guide that I hired discussed, the people were fooled into believing that they were safe. We had not entered the church yet, we were still in the court yard. The guide explained that the Hutu's separated the women and children, women in the church, men would soon join them and children were taken next door to the Sunday school building. Both buildings were small, made of red clay brick. The church had wooden benches and strong metal grills on the windows and the doors were made of hardened metal on hinges. No pictures were allowed, I now understand why

PLEASE DO NOT READ FURTHER IF VIVID DESCRIPTION UPSETS YOU.

As we entered the church, it was dark with the only light coming from the 3 small windows. It was a dank, musty smell, the floor was dirt. Once my eyes became accustomed to the light, on my right were 2, ten foot long sets of metal shelves. On the bottom and top shelves were leg and arm bones, neatly arranged in rows. In the middle shelf was all skulls. there had to be a few thousand skulls. The guide, seeing me upset, urged me to move forward into the main body of the church. He explained the clothing that was hanging everywhere. He said,"these are the clothes of the people murdered here." Yes, to be honest, they were. Hanging off the church rafters, piles on the seats were the blood stained clothes of men, women and children. The babies made me choke back tears. Every where you looked you saw the beautiful cloth of the Rwandan women stained with dirt and blood. We now went to the front of the church. The guide went to the right of the altar, there was a window with mid morning light beaming through - almost as if the sun was trying to cleanse the site. The guide picked up a machete, a club and an ax. He said, in 1992 through 1994, young Hutu boys, when they hit 13, were brought to the French and Rwandan army training areas for instruction in the art of killing. I just didn't believe it so I asked him twice more to explain to me this fact. The guide continued, "when the young boys graduated, they received the gift of a machete or an ax, that way they could be prepared to defend Hutu's when called on." It was so unbelievable to me, that I asked him to please bring the articles outside and please let me take pictures of these items. Ian said something to him and he agreed. Behind the bag of weapons, were coffins stacked to the ceiling of the church, behind the coffins was an empty and shot up tabernacle, doors wide open. My eyes were full of tears, I took a deep breath and he continued. "There were so many dead, that they were sometimes left in the fields." "We are still uncovering bodies as people plant, when they find them, the Genocide commission, brings them here." Then what I asked ? He never answered. On the old altar was a banner in purple and white that said in Krawandan - "If you knew me, you wouldn't have killed me."

We walked into the sacristy - a separate building where the priest would get dressed before mass. In the sacristy were children's work books and bibles. What struck me was that there was a bible written in Hebrew. I said, this doesn't fit. The guide said, "Catholics came here so did Adventists and Jews were welcome." Everyone died together. 5000 bodies were left here.

We then walked up a small hill to the Sunday school. It was a building of about 40 feet long and 20 feet wide, a tin roof and you could see where the window was blown out by a grenade. The guide said, "this is a most tragic place.". He had me stand at the door while he explained that children were brought here and put in this building. The were up to 5 years old. They were taken by the feet and their skulls were smashed against the back left wall. The clothes and the large blood stain is still on the wall. "The guide said, "It does not come off." I had to leave the room.

Finally, the guide took me to the well. We stood in front of it and he explained that people had hidden in the well to try to escape. The Hutu militia hurled rocks at them until they died. Everything is draped in purple. The sun was shining and there were birds singing. If you knew me, you wouldn't have killed me rang in my head. Ian and I left to go to the next site.

As Ian and I talked about the politics of hate and how his family was affected, he made a very astute statement. He said, "Joe, there is a tree in Africa, I do not know the name. It has flowers that are white and red and yellow - all on the same tree. It is like us we are all different flowers on the same branch. Sums it all up pretty well.

We arrived in Nyamata - about 10 miles Ntarama. It was the sight where in 1992 and Italian nun - Sister Antonia - stood up against the first genocide by calling the BBC and going on the air to ask the world to help. Then after it stopped, she was walking, delivering milk to the poor families and one of the government police shot her dead. Her body lay in the street. Ian told me that he would not go in to this site. I should have taken this as a sign. The guide was a 29 year old , very attractive woman who spoke wonderful English. She said, "This is a very sacred site, not because it was a church but because so many souls were lost on this ground" We walked in to the main part of the church. It was probably built in the mid 1980s - very attractive building. She asked me to look up - there were holes in the roof. The guide said - these are bullet holes from men on the roof shooting the people as they came here for safety. The church probably sat 600 - very large by Rwandan standards. Every where you looked there were piles of bloody clothes. The tabernacle was completely shot up and the altar cloth - pink with the stains of human sacrifice. I made the sign of the cross and said the Memorare - a prayer to the Virgin Mary that my Italian great grandmother taught me. I was beginning to choke up again. The guide pointed to piles of clothes, separated from the clothes in the main part of the church. They were brown and smelled odd. She said - "these are the clothes of people who were thrown in the sewer." Tears were coming down my face as we kept walking. I had to compose myself. I hope that my emails have shown you how beautiful and brilliant the people of Rwanda are - yet why? How much hate has to exist before such atrocities take place? Can anyone hate someone that much? I just don't know where that level of hate - whether it in Rwanda, WW2 Poland or Cambodia, where do you find that hate?

The guide took me past the shrine to the nun then to the mass graves. It was a catacomb much like you see in Rome. We walked down into the ground almost 20 feet. There, on both sides, were the human remains of almost 45,000 people. For some reason, my mind flashed back to the prayer for the dead we said for Bob Berman's mother in Beth El Synagogue when I spoke there in June - then I just said a small prayer and asked God - please, never again. No one deserves this.

On the way back, we were coming down one of the mountainous hills going back toward Kigali. Ian and I were very quiet and he said -"you should know that this is the river Nayaba Rongo - it is called "the short cut." Ian told me that when Rwanda was settled many years ago - this was a short cut from Uganda and the river (flowing north as it flows to the Nile) has been used for simple transportation for many years. During the Genocide, because the Hutu militia just wanted to clean up the bodies - they would throw the bodies of the dead in the river. The bodies showed up in Lake Victoria hundreds of miles away.

I debated all the way home whether to write this email. This was a reality check for me - and I appreciated the minister's words yesterday when she said to me "we must use what has happened here as a teaching tool so that others that come after us remember what defines hate and if we are brilliant, we can work together to never allow someone to be killed for senselessness." This is a teaching tool - it is a gut wrenching reminder that we have a moral responsibility to stand up for those who can not stand for themselves. I think of the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that we offer children in Bloomfield. How many times I am in my office at 9 PM it is dark and there is knock on the door and a student says, "Hey Dr. O, can I make a sandwich?" They even bring a friend. I always thought it was great that they felt comfortable coming to the rehearsal room door but those sandwiches represent how much we all care for those kids. Why did this Genocide happen? Why does my heart ache so right now? Hate is a terrible sin when acted upon - yet these people, whether they Christian, Jew or Muslim, came together to find sanctuary. Now they find rest. As Ian said, - "we are all flowers of the same branch." May perpetual light shine upon them. 

One of the pleasures of staying in a home with hundreds of cable channels is the wide choice of movies one can watch. While on vacation I skimmed through the movie choices and found a film that would not be on my normal cable channel. It was entitled Creation directed by Jon Amiel and starring the real life husband and wife, Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly. I was fascinated by the movie.
Based on a biography of Charles Darwin written by his great grandson, it tells the real story of Darwin, his wife Emma, and his struggle regarding his religious faith. Darwin's faith is truly tested by the death of his beloved daughter Anna, who keeps reappearing in flashbacks. He debates whether to move ahead with the publication of his great work Origin of Species, in conflict with his deeply religious wife and his fear that the book will undermine religious faith. Only when Alfred Russell Wallace, a rival biologist, comes up with an equivalent theory of natural selection, does Darwin finally decide to publish the book.
Underlying the entire movie is the idea that one must make a choice in life - science or faith. For Emma Darwin the choice was clearly faith. Charles Darwin was deeply torn, but in the end chose science. Their marriage was tested by this choice, but their shared love allowed them to stay together. Ironically, in the end Charles Darwin received a Christian funeral and was buried in a cathedral.
I recommend the movie, but with a caveat. It is based on a rather simplistic notion that to accept evolution is to reject faith, and to accept faith is to reject evolution. Certainly if God made every species as an individual act of creation, this would contradict evolution. But if we accept that species evolved over billions of years through natural selection, one can still accept the idea of God's providence. We merely need to say that evolution has a direction - what philosophers would call teleology. A religious believer would say that evolution is not a blind process but is leading towards something.
What is the goal of evolution? Could it be that evolution is moving towards a creature with the ability to speak? A mammal that speaks is a mammal that is able to develop culture. It is a mammal able to teach from the wisdom of the past. A mammal that speaks is a mammal able to make moral choices. Speech gives humans a power which other creatures lack. In a sense, to speak is to imitate God. For according to the Biblical vision, God created the world through the power of speech. With speech we humans become qualitatively different from all the other creatures great and small.
This week's portion begins with a powerful warning about the power of speech. When a person makes a vow, he or she must fulfill that vow. The spoken word is not something idle which disappears into the air. Words have power. In fact, this idea has become a fundamental part of Jewish liturgy. On the holiest day of the Jewish year, before Yom Kippur services begin, we gather in synagogue for a ceremony called Kol Nidre. Any vows we said during the previous year that we were unable to fulfill must be annulled. (This applies only vows to God; we must seek forgiveness for unfulfilled vows to another human being.) Words spoken during the year have power. We do not want to approach God for forgiveness with unfulfilled words hanging over us.
From a religious point of view, evolution is a kind of a miracle. For billions of years, through natural selection, countless forms of life have developed upon the earth. These forms of life became more and more complex. Eventually a form of life evolved with the power of speech, and perhaps the power to direct its own evolution. In the evolution of humanity, one can see the power of God at work.