Chabad Tsunami Relief

Zalman Shneur

Devastating tragedies seem to defy our ideas of a world ruled by a benevolent creator. Yet even during our gravest moments of incomprehensibility and distress, G-d never leaves us. He reveals Himself in our own selfless acts of charity and kindness to people in need, explains Rabbi Zalman Shneur , who completed a mission as a tsunami-relief volunteer for Chabad of Thailand.

The question "Where was G-d when this happened?" has intrigued philosophers throughout the ages. Even Moses was troubled by it. When faced with great tragedy, it still haunts us.

One day, it hit me too.

It all began when I received a phone call from Rabbi Yosef Kantor, director of Chabad activities in Southeast Asia . He was looking for two rabbinic students to intern in Thailand and head Chabad's relief effort in the country's tsunami-ravaged southwestern coast. Being 23 years old and having just completed my rabbinic ordination, I jumped at the offer. I teamed up with Yossi Zaklos, an old school pal. Two days later we landed in Bangkok .

We set up our headquarters on Phuket Island . The once heavily populated Patong Beach , nicknamed "The Highway" for its five rows of beach chairs, lay empty. So did the streets and scores of vacant hotel rooms. Phuket was a ghost town. Thai and Burmese workers were bustling around, trying to re-establish normalcy to what had once been an overcrowded hot spot.

As time progressed, the relief effort shifted from burying the dead and helping the wounded to visiting tsunami camps, giving humanitarian aid to the survivors, talking with the locals, keeping a close contact with the village heads, and teaming up with other relief groups. We helped in any way could.

We must have been quite a sight to behold -- two bearded rabbis with kippot (skull caps) and tzitzit (fringes) running around Thai and Muslim villages distributing sacks of rice, bags of chilies, cartons of instant noodles, mattresses and pillows, rice cookers and water kettles, toothbrushes and toothpaste, sanitary napkins, and toilet paper. Our motto was "Anything that can help them get their lives back on track, we'll bring it."

After about a month in Phuket, we took a two-hour boat ride to nearby Phi Phi Island , once voted one of the most picturesque tourist spots in Asia . Yet now, stepping onto the island felt like walking into a war zone, minus the action. We walked down a road strewn with rubble past shops that looked as if they'd been bombed away. A few lingering volunteers pushed wheelbarrows with somber expressions on their faces as they sweated in the heat of the day. In the distance we noticed a Thai family looking through a heap of rubble at a place they once called home.

After weeks in Thailand trying to be a source of cheer and comfort to the victims, trying to show a strong face and hide my emotions, the visions and experiences of the past four weeks caught up with me. I sat down on a fallen tree and wept.

I cried for those who died and for those who lived. I cried for the dead children, the parents, the orphans, the survivors. I cried for the emptiness in Baan Nam Khem, a fishing community in nearby Phang Nga province where an entire town had been washed away. In the morgue in Khao Lak, bodies still lay waiting to be identified. Some never would be, leaving surviving relatives in a limbo of unresolved grief.

How could G-d let this happen?

How, I pondered, could so many lives have been lost and scores more shattered in such a few moments? G-d, I cried, where were you on that ominous Sunday morning? Why have you forsaken us? How can we understand such an event? Is there any reason for this at all?

That night I lay in bed, the day's events still vivid in my mind. I remembered a homily I had once heard. In the book of Exodus, the Torah tells us of the following incident. Moses once realized that G-d was in an especially merciful state of mind so he mustered up the courage to ask the Almighty: "Show me Your glory!" G-d responded, "You cannot see My face." However, G-d continued in the next verse, "But you will see My back."

Numerous commentators have tried to make sense of this passage. They ponder what Moses sought when he requested to see G-d's "glory" and what G-d meant when he replied that Moses could see his back, but not his face.

A commentary explains it thus: Moses looked into the future and envisioned the tragedies his people would have to endure. He asked G-d, "Why do You hide Yourself in our most difficult moments? Show me Your glory! Reveal the meaning of all this, the great purpose that makes sense of it all." And G-d responded: You cannot see my face. You cannot see me revealed in the horror. However, 'You will see my back.' You will see me there in hindsight. When you look back and reflect on the past events, you will find me."

Two weeks later, sitting on the runway of the Bangkok International Airport , I found myself reflecting on my trip to Thailand . In a few moments our plane would lift off and fly back to New York . I thought about the wonderful people I had met, the relief workers that came from all over the world, mothers and fathers who left their jobs and children behind to do something that would make a difference.

I thought about all the people around the world who contributed so generously to the global relief effort. Everybody was so moved by the plight of those who lay in the wake of the tsunami -- all thinking the same, "How can I sit where I am and go on with my life while so many people are suffering?" I thought about the Thai people who suffered so much and lost everything they owned yet when we came to visit their camps, how kind and selfless they were, sharing with us their meager possessions and the little food they had.

There is no explanation why it happened and why so many people died or suffered. But in hindsight, sitting on the plane and looking back, I saw G-d's back. I was able to say: "G-d, You pushed us to our limits. But we responded. I found You -- in us."

This article was first published by Chabad.org.