The ministry mystery tour: Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen

Anyone who doubts that the prophet Elijah ascended to heaven in a chariot should have been in Israel this week. As if latter-day prophets were lining up their chariots to be whisked heavenward, the wind roared and whistled, churned and twisted, and flung in our faces purple, brown, and yellow sand carried from distant deserts.

The 50-year-old cypresses outside my kitchen window in Jerusalem swayed and gyrated like drunken Hassidim on Purim. The newborn cypresses on Road 1 looked too young to be exposed to such violence as the wind forced them to bow low to its power.

But all that was as nothing compared to what happened on the coast, where torrential rains flooded homes in Tel Aviv and the wind sent 25-foot waves crashing against the ancient port of Caesarea, tore up the boardwalk in the Tel Aviv Port entertainment area, and sank a Moldovan freighter (whose crew managed to escape alive).

The wind, the rain, and the snow that fell late Sunday night on the approach to Jerusalem almost made the horrendous Mount Carmel fire—which claimed 43 lives and consumed 12,500 acres of forest, nature reserves, residential areas, and tourist sites—seem ancient history. But just a few days had passed since the collaborative work of planes from many countries and fire engines from the Palestinian Authority backed up efforts by Israeli firefighters to finally extinguish the flames.

It was not too soon for a journalist to seek an official tally of the fire’s damage. All I asked for was a list of the villages and towns affected by the fire, and, if possible, the number of houses in each that were totally or partially destroyed.

I started with the Government Press Office, which had sent out a barrage of press releases daily about the fire. Andy Luterman of the GPO said the Prime Minister’s Office is in charge of dealing with the fire and should know. The Prime Minister’s Office did not know, but was certain that the Internal Security Ministry should know.

The Internal Security Ministry did not have a clue, but said that since firefighting was the Interior Ministry’s responsibility, it should know. Maybe it should, but the Interior Ministry insisted it had no idea and sent me to the Defense Ministry.

Chava at the Defense Ministry responded with “Why us? Who in the Interior Ministry sent you to us? It’s their responsibility.” Back to the Interior Ministry, where Osnat kindly referred me to the Construction and Housing Ministry (it was houses I was asking about, right?).

Racheli at the Construction and Housing Ministry asked me to put my query in writing. I did. By that time it was Sunday, and the storm was in full progress. And now it is Tuesday, and the Construction and Housing Ministry is still silent.

I came away from my tour of the ministries with my question unanswered. Clearly, they were all so busy dealing with the storm that they couldn’t answer a simple question about the fire. Or perhaps they were being honest when they said they just didn’t know. Ignorance on the part of a government ministry would hardly be surprising.

And that made me wonder how much credence one could give to the prime minister’s promises that everyone affected would be helped, and quickly. How could any government ministry provide help if no ministry knew who needed it?

And perhaps it was this know-nothing attitude that had enabled the fire to cause such damage in the first place. I was ready to hop in Elijah’s chariot and allow myself to be carried away by the wind.

Text copyright 2010 by Esther Hecht. No part of the text may be used without written permission of the author.

Flights of fancy before the rain—the Elijah story in reverse

Monday rain came to Mount Carmel. It didn’t come Thursday, Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, four days during which a devastating fire claimed 41 lives and consumed 12,500 acres of forest, nature reserves, residential areas, and tourist sites.

The rain came only on Monday, after a collaborative effort of planes from many countries—including Turkey, from which Israel had been estranged for months—and fire engines from the Palestinian Authority backed up efforts by Israeli firefighters and succeeded in extinguishing the flames.

Israel has been suffering a protracted drought; Monday’s rain came after more than a month of unseasonably warm and dry weather that made the Carmel forest a tinderbox. Rabbis decreed days of fasting and prayer to open the heavens.

It was almost the Elijah story in reverse. The biblical prophet had prophesied a life-threatening drought that would last as long as King Ahab continued to allow the worship of Baal, that his queen, Jezebel, had introduced (I Kings 17:1–7). Then, after three-and-a-half years of drought-induced famine, Elijah had his fateful showdown with the priests of Baal on Mount Carmel.

The priests of Baal offered their sacrifices. Nothing happened. But when Elijah set out his offering, fire immediately descended from heaven, consuming the sacrifice, and the people of Israel fell on their faces chanting, “Jehovah is God.”

And Elijah prostrated himself and prayed for rain, (I Kings 18:44) “and it came to pass … that the heaven was black with clouds, and wind, and there was a great rain.”

But this week, as if in mockery of the rabbis’ pious entreaties and blasts of the shofar at the Western Wall, the sun continued to shine day after day. It was as if some Moloch controlled the rain, waiting for a human burnt offering to unlock the floodgates. And indeed, only after the sacrifice of 41 men and women from all over the country, both Jews and non-Jews, who had come to help, did the skies turn cloudy and rain begin to fall.

Now the politicians will wrangle and continue to blame each other for Israel’s being so woefully unprepared to deal with this catastrophe. And predictably, Interior Minister Eli Yishai, who is responsible for the country’s firefighting services, has reportedly said he’s being lynched because he is “Mizrahi [non-Ashkenazi], ultra-Orthodox, and right-wing.”

Lost in all this noise is the sorrow of the families whose dear ones died so horribly and the pain of those whose homes were damaged or destroyed and will undoubtedly have to fight the usual bureaucracy to get even a morsel of the promised compensation.

Yet there is a bright side. While the fire was still raging, I received a message from my nephew in Los Angeles, a lapsed pilot, saying that he had been to a Shabbat dinner with some friends, two of whom are pilots, and that there had been talk of finding some wealthy Jews to bankroll bringing in a Super-Scooper, an amphibious firefighting airplane, to help douse the fire. He and his friends were very serious, and I was impressed at their initiative, even though it proved unnecessary.

Meanwhile, Jewish fundraising organizations, which had been in the doldrums because for so long time they’d had no crisis to rally around, started new campaigns to help the victims of the Mount Carmel fire. And very soon, I predict, my granddaughter in Boston will be bringing dimes to Hebrew school, as I did when I was a kid, to plant a tree in Israel.

So perhaps it wasn’t Moloch after all, but a deity whose ways are often inscrutable, who was creating a new bridge over Israeli blood, from Israel to the world and especially to the Jewish Diaspora.

Text copyright 2010 by Esther Hecht. No part of the text may be used without written permission of the author.