by Eliezer Schulman and Michal Ish-Shalom

After working with Libyan rebels, David Gerbi faced an angry mob at the ancient synagogue in Tripoli.

Dr. David Gerbi, a Libyan-born, observant psychologist living in Italy, spent the summer in a Libyan rebel encampment, joining the revolutionary forces and providing them psychiatric care. But their gratitude didn’t last for long. He was nearly lynched and then booted out of the country when he tried to clean up a desecrated synagogue that hadn’t seen a Jew since Muammar Gaddafi took over the country 42 years ago.

Dr. Gerbi, international director of the World Organization of Libyan Jews, was the first Jew to cast his lot with the Libyan rebels when he joined the Benghazi Psychiatric Hospital staff to teach the techniques of healing post-traumatic stress disorder among the fighters. Throughout the summer, Dr. Gerbi, holed up with the revolutionaries, assisted rebel leaders in formulating strategies and restoring unity within their ranks when internal conflicts arose.

After Gaddafi was ousted, the interim government, the National Transitional Council, talked about giving him a position in the soon-to-be-formed parliament, as an official voice for religious tolerance in a country run by an extremist despot for four decades.

Although the new Libya is struggling for a more democratic identity, Gaddafi’s 42-year rule succeeded in brainwashing the public with virulent anti-Semitism, propagating the myth that the Jews absconded with the country’s wealth to Israel — when in reality Gaddafi had kicked out all the Jews who remained after the Arab riots of the 1960s. He then confiscated all Jewish property, worth about $500 million, adding it to his private fortune estimated at $200 billion, which he amassed by embezzling Libya’s wealth.

While Gerbi waited for a new government to take shape, he decided to spend the High Holidays in Libya. For Rosh Hashanah, he traveled to Tripoli along with the rebels, where he was to deliver letters from the World Organization of Libyan Jews to Mustafa Abdul Jalil, leader of the revolution and president of the interim government. At that point, he was being treated as a future member of parliament.

But a man like David Gerbi is not one to idle away his precious days in the newly freed country of Libya. Gerbi sought to become the first Jew to pray in the abandoned, decaying Dar Bishi synagogue in Tripoli, where his forebears had prayed. That simple act of devotion proved that undoing Gaddafi’s work would not be simple after all.

When Dr. Gerbi peered into the interior of the shul, he was confronted by a horrifying sight. The entrance was blocked by a brick wall, and the house of prayer that had displayed its glory before the expulsion of Libya’s Jews had turned into a den of iniquity, a place desecrated by society’s degenerates. Piles of refuse were strewn throughout the sanctuary.

“When I entered the shul, the first words that came out were charam kabir — a grave offense. I could not tolerate that God’s Name had been defaced in such a way,” Dr. Gerbi told Mishpacha on his return to Rome.

Dr. Gerbi activated the connections that he had amassed in the previous months, including four sheikhs, to clean out the synagogue. “I spoke with the police force and with members of the army who knew me. We were all friendly after all the time I had spent in the area. They permitted me to clean out the shul and to pray there.”

The only way to remove the accumulated trash was to demolish the wall that blocked the synagogue’s doorway. “I bought equipment for ten people to work together — brooms, hammers, work tools, and cleaning supplies.” In the meantime, a team of photographers and journalists stood by as Gerbi brandished his sledgehammer and struck the wall repeatedly. Perspiration streamed from his brow; the job wasn’t easy. At one point, Gerbi even burst into tears and promised that he would not allow himself to be broken until he entered the shul and carried out his mission.

It was now Monday, the fifth of Tishrei. Dr. Gerbi had set a goal of rendering the shul usable by Yom Kippur at the end of the week. He recruited a team of six additional men and paid them each 4,000 dinars. He also brought his own Book of Psalms and a sign inscribed with the phrase “Shivisi Hashem l’negdi tamid — I place God before always, that is traditionally mounted in many shuls.

Gerbi spoke with Sheikh Jamal, one of the most influential religious figures in the new Libya. The sheikh agreed to the shul’s restoration and agreed to accompany Gerbi on his visit to the cleaned-up shul.

Going for Blood

The day before Yom Kippur, Gerbi entered the shul and lit three traditional lanterns. While he was in the middle of a silent prayer, “a group of Libyans ran inside and told me armed men were coming and planning to stab me to death,” he recounts. “I was standing there and praying, and I said, ‘I am not leaving. First I want to say Tehillim.’ That actually kept my fear level down. Meanwhile, the sheikh arrived, agitated; I was praying and he was panicking. He urged me to leave, and said that he wanted all the journalists to leave the shul. Then chaos began.

“I said, ‘Just a few more pages and I’m done. Then I’ll leave calmly. If God wants me to die within the sanctity of a shul, I am prepared for that, but I will not disgrace God’s Name. I am trying to make a Kiddush Hashem here.’ In the meantime, people advised me to escape through the back door. For my part, I said, ‘I’m going to leave through the front door, as is appropriate, with self-respect — because I am not acting only out of respect for myself, but out of respect for all Jews. I will honor the Jewish People this way. This is a shul, and I will not demonstrate disrespect for the Jewish Nation.’ The sheikh then said I could leave through the front. I said, ‘Come, let us go out together,’ but even he suddenly grew afraid and ran out the back door.”

Gerbi was driven by the desire to prove that a change had taken place in Libya, that the revolution he had assisted had not been in vain, that Gaddafi’s rule had ended from the Jewish perspective as well. In an interview with a CNN correspondent after the event, Gerbi explained that if Libya were to undergo a democratization process, it had to include the recognition that Jews had lived and thrived in Libya for 2,300 years before they were evicted, a fact that Libyans who had grown up after the Jewish expulsion could not swallow.

“In the Arab countries,” Gerbi says, “the Jews have always fled from the Arabs.” That is the situation he wants to change. “I wanted to show that this time the Jews are not afraid. That’s why I walked around with a black yarmulke on my head and with my tzitzis blowing in the wind. The Tehillim I recited helped me feel my faith in God in the midst of the pogrom that was developing around me.”

When Gerbi finally emerged from the shul, the security personnel who were protecting the journalists were waiting for him. He then broke down in a torrent of tears. “Why was it necessary to hate the Jews? What was my crime in wanting to daven in a shul and to clean it? I couldn’t understand or accept what had happened,” Gerbi relates bitterly.

David Gerbi’s one-man act of religious sensitivity created an outburst of latent anti-Semitism. On Erev Yom Kippur, the anti-Gerbi protests reached Benghazi, where a huge rally against him took place. At the same time, a massive protest was held at Tripoli Square, along with another one below the luxury Corinthia Hotel where he was staying. It was the night of Yom Kippur. For five hours, hundreds of people shouted that they wanted Gerbi to come downstairs; they wanted to seize him and kill him.

“When I was aiding the revolution, being Jewish was just fine with them. Suddenly they wanted me to discard my Jewish identity?” he says, still hurting. “I refused to give in on this point. I was born in Libya and I am Jewish. The Italian consul called and begged me, ‘Come; run away. People will come to rescue you.’ The hotel staff and officials from the government also came, but I insisted that I would not move from the spot, because it was Yom Kippur, and I remained there. I decided that if God had decreed for me to die during the 10 Days of Repentance, that was what would be. I didn’t want to be a hero or a martyr,” Gerbi emphasizes. “I only wanted what we deserved, our rights.”

Gerbi emphasizes that he did not blindly risk his life without thinking. “I knew that if they did anything to me, the entire international community would be aware of it. The media was there. I understood that I had to leave, but I didn’t want to run away. This was like the exodus from Egypt, when the Jews left in an honorable way, rather than escaping like thieves in the night. The ambassador, the government officials, and the hotel staff all begged me, ‘You will be aiding the revolution if you leave.’ They were afraid for the safety of the guests and the hotel workers. Ultimately, I agreed to evacuate by plane on the night before Sukkot.”

Gerbi remained in his hotel room under de facto house arrest. “The protestors were waiting to pounce on me. I trusted no one, and I remained in my room. For security reasons, I switched rooms. I didn’t answer the telephone, and I took various steps to mislead anyone who might be trailing me. I would take an elevator to the wrong floor and switch elevators in the middle, so that no one knew where I was. In the meantime, I was summoned to the police station; they claimed that I had entered an archaeological site without permission.

“This approach — that it’s an archaeological site and therefore entry is prohibited — this came from Gaddafi,” Gerbi deduces. “I said, ‘All right, I’m prepared to be questioned.’ They were incensed by my acquiescence. They had hoped that I would plead for my life.

“I was amazed that this hatred was spurting forth. Gaddafi had brainwashed the country to believe the Jews had fled to Israel with all of Libya’s wealth. They didn’t even know that any Jews had been born in Libya; they thought I had come from Israel to take over the country. That’s how brainwashed they were. They asked me, ‘Do you have an Israeli passport?’ I said, ‘No, I have an Italian passport,’ and they didn’t believe me. When I told them I had been born in Libya, they were shocked.”

The Long Road Back

David Gerbi hasn’t given up on his mission to salvage the Libyan Jewish heritage dating back to the third century BCE, and believes that, with Gaddafi’s demise, it might again be possible. When Colonel Gaddafi came to power in 1969, the Jewish community of Libya had already been decimated by pogroms carried out by Muslims angered over the Israeli-Arab conflict. From a peak of around 30,000 during the 1930s, only a few hundred remained, but it was Gaddafi’s policies that brought about the community’s elimination. He confiscated private and communal Jewish property, withheld civil rights for Jews, and forbade those who had taken refuge abroad from returning. He destroyed the Jewish cemeteries in Tripoli and Benghazi and converted the synagogues into mosques.

David Gerbi was 12 when his family was exiled from Tripoli, and he says that the trauma of that time — which he carried into adulthood — was what actually motivated him to enter the field of psychology.

“Suddenly, after the Six Day War, the Arabs began persecuting us. As a child, I didn’t understand the reason, and it took me years to get over the inner turmoil of that time,” Dr. Gerbi remembers. “Libya is close to Egypt, and Nasser encouraged the murder of Jews. They took over a portion of our property and placed a dividing wall on our porch, which I could not cross.

“So the entire community fled. Many went to Israel, but my parents fled to Italy. My father had been in the gold and diamond business; he left everything behind. Two years later, when Gaddafi came to power, he confiscated all Jewish property and prohibited Jews from reentering Libya.

Dr. Gerbi made several trips back to Libya before the revolution. In 2002, he succeeded in rescuing his aunt, the last Jew remaining in Gaddafi’s domain; in 2007 he was invited to Libya by Gaddafi himself, after expressing his interest in visiting the land of his birth and restoring one of the synagogues located there, but he was quickly expelled; and in 2009, he met Gaddafi.

In 2009, Dr. Gerbi accepted an invitation to meet Gaddafi in Rome to speak about improving relations between the regime and Libya’s exiled Jewish community. In recent years Gaddafi held irregular talks with Libyan Jews, preferring to deal with those in Italy over those who had settled in Israel, which he would vilify in overblown tirades. He had on occasion even promised to consider returning property rights, but nothing practical ever came of those talks.

“I can still see his face in front of me,” Dr. Gerbi told a Jerusalem Post reporter on his return to Rome after the synagogue debacle. “He had the eyes of a Bedouin, someone who could find water in the desert, but he could not connect with our reality.”

Dr. Gerbi still has hope for a democratic Libya but says the interim government has to make a choice — either to go with the hate-filled Islamists, or to open a new page in relations with the Jews.

“It’s easy to get rid of Gaddafi the person,” he said, “but much more difficult to get rid of the Gaddafi within.”

—Rachel Ginsberg contributed to this report

This article originally appeared in Mishpacha, the premier weekly magazine for Jewish families. Click Here to receive Mishpacha’s free weekly newsletter. Click Here for subscription information.

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This article can also be read at: http://www.aish.com/jw/s/Near_Lynch_in_Libya.html

by Rabbi Shlomo Slatkin

Protecting the sanctity of our marriage.

Who is mighty? The one who conquers his evil inclination (Ethics of the Fathers, 4:1)

Whether or not we are following the drama of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s admission of infidelity and the breakup of his 25-year marriage, we can learn a few lessons about protecting the sanctity of our relationship.

Lesson #1: Protect yourself

Those who scoff at Jewish law as being archaic or out of touch with modern times will surely see the wisdom of our Sages in setting up protective measures.

The laws of yichud (seclusion) prohibit a man and woman who are not married to be secluded with each other in a private area. This is to prevent them from being tempted to engage in promiscuous acts. The Sages realized that there is a slippery slope when it comes to these matters and that by preventing the possibility of committing such acts, greatly decreases the temptation and likelihood of their occurrence. 

These safeguards are not a judgment on our capacity for self-control or a call to distrust ourselves; rather they are a realistic assessment of human desire and a way to protect the sanctity of our relationships.

Lesson #2: Make your marriage holy

When a couple gets married under the chuppah, the husband proclaims to his wife, harei at mekudeshes li, “behold you are betrothed to me,” as he places the ring on her finger. It is with these words and his action that he accomplishes what is called kiddushin (betrothal), which comes from the Hebrew word that means holy and separate. Marriage sanctifies the relationship by making it exclusive. You are no longer “available;” you are mine and I am yours.

When couples are able to honor this commitment seriously, they can build a strong relationship full of trust and joy. Unfortunately, our society does not always honor that. We live in a time when the lines of “appropriate” behavior between sexes are increasingly blurred.  It is quite common for married men and women to flirt with members of the opposite sex. While this may seem innocuous, it detracts from the exclusivity we have to our spouse. What appears to be a cute comment or glance can easily become something more serious. When statistics show that 60% of men will cheat on their wife and 50% of women will cheat on their husband, we cannot dismiss the slippery slope effect.

Related Article: Emotional Infidelity

Lesson #3: Finding fulfillment in your marriage

We need to focus on finding fulfillment in our own marriage. In order for a marriage to be a vibrant, living entity, energy must be invested in the relationship. When we are satisfied with our marriage, we will not be tempted to look elsewhere. When we feel unloved, ignored, or unappreciated we go everywhere but to our spouse to get those needs met. We find other people and activities to feel those needs, feeling hopeless about ever getting what we want.  

Without the proper communication skills, it is often too threatening to share our frustrations about these unmet needs with our spouse. It is a lot safer to call a friend and complain or just withdraw and move further away from your spouse.  

When we make our relationship a priority and we learn how to work on our marriage, making it the best it can possibly be, we can refocus our energy where it needs to be. Otherwise, if you are experiencing stress in your marriage and feel ignored by your spouse, a little attention from another man or woman can turn into emotional and physical intimacy.

Although we may feel our marriage is invincible, if we don’t consciously make an effort to honor our relationship, protect its sanctity, and nurture it with love and care, we run the risk of it being terminated.

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This article can also be read at: http://www.aish.com/f/m/Schwarzenegger_marriage_Terminated.html

by Rabbi Benjamin Blech

Does Bin Laden’s death bring a sense of closure? It better not.

Was it just a coincidence?

Or was there perhaps some divine message in the striking link between the day on which Osama bin Ladin was finally brought to justice and the Jewish calendar which marked it as Yom HaShoah - the date selected to commemorate the Holocaust?

I have no doubt that Osama’s death deserved a great measure of jubilation. The angels may have been told by God not to sing when the Egyptians drowned because it was inappropriate for them to rejoice when the Almighty’s creations perished. But God offered no such criticism to the Jewish survivors of Egyptian cruelty who lifted their voices in song at the sea when they witnessed the death of their oppressors. The angels hadn’t suffered so they didn’t have the right to celebrate. But those who bore the brunt of Egyptian evil were entitled to exult when their enemies finally had to pay for their crimes.

The day Osama died was a day for us to be glad. We were the victims of his barbaric wickedness.

But the almost universal response to the passing of this paradigm of evil seems to ignore a powerful truth - a truth we ought to be starkly reminded of by the calendrical coincidence of Osama’s demise on the very day dedicated to remembering the Holocaust.

Related Article: When Evil Falls

I’ve watched with great interest the media’s coverage of this historic event. Commentators seek out relatives of victims on 9/11 and repeatedly ask them the same question: Does Osama’s death finally give you a sense of closure?

Imagine if the same kind of question were to be asked of Holocaust survivors or relatives of those who perished: Now that Hitler is dead, do you feel a sense of peace and tranquility? Are you able to finally gain closure for the horrors of the past?

To believe that the unspeakable cruelties suffered by six million could in some way be diminished by the death of those who perpetrated them borders on the ludicrous. There is no closure possible for the crimes committed by a regime that declared genocide a civilized option.

To speak of closure in response to evil is in a sense to bring any further discussion of it to an end. We build Holocaust museums, we reflect on the Holocaust in works of art, literature and film, and we recall its victims on Yom HaShoah precisely because we know that if we were to reach a point of closure we would no longer be inspired to draw any lessons for the future from the tragedies of the past.

That’s why there is such strong danger of rejoicing too much at the death of an enemy.

When Hitler died, we needed to realize it was the death of the man but not yet of his ideas. Nazi Germany proved what anti-Semitism left unchecked could ultimately lead to. In its aftermath it would be our mission to speak out against bigotry, to defend human rights and to ensure that “never again” would not be an empty slogan.

The death of an evil leader still leaves room for myriad followers to keep alive his ideology. In the final analysis it is still easier to kill one man who threatens us than to annihilate the influence he succeeded in inspiring in his disciples.

What I fear is that our joy in killing Osama leads us to the mistaken belief that we have destroyed the power of his message.

There are still far too many in Osama’s world who continue to believe in his ideas. His voice is still heard among all those convinced that violence is the only way, who justify the mass murder of innocents in the supposed name of religion, who choose suicide bombing as a divinely blessed means for gaining world domination.

Osama’s death hasn’t changed them. Quite the contrary, they may now feel duty bound to avenge his killing.

The biblical commentators have a profound insight on the verse that introduces the Shirah - the song of Moses and the Jewish people. “Then,” says the Torah, “sang Moses and the children of Israel.” Then, explain the rabbis, and not before. Only after the entire story was over and all the Egyptians were dead did the Jews feel it proper to finally rejoice.

Singing the song too soon would have been a sin.

More than 50 years after the Holocaust, we still do not feel like singing. We reflect, we study, we continue to mourn those who perished. But we do not diminish the tragedy of the six million by daring to suggest that we have found closure.

Less than 10 years after 9/11, we can take some comfort in knowing that the mastermind behind the death of more than 3000 innocent Americans has at long last received his just punishment. But it is not yet time to sing. We need to continue to mourn for those we lost. And we need to commit ourselves to persevere in the battle against Osama’s followers who remain dedicated to destroying us.

When we finally succeed, then and only then will our mouths be filled with laughter and our voices with song.

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This article can also be read at: http://www.aish.com/ci/s/The_Day_Osama_Died.html

By Arlene Mathes-Scharf, Kashrut.com

Copyright © 2011 Kashrut.com

Quinoa has become a part of the Passover diet for many observant Jews since the Star-K published an article Quinoa, The Grain That’s Not, in the Kashrus Kurrents for Pesach, 1997. In this article the Star-K explains that quinoa is not related to the five types of grain that can become chometz, nor it is related to millet or rice. It is a species of goosefoot (Chenopodium) related to the beet and spinach. (www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/afcm/quinoa.html). The Star-K tested quinoa to see if it would rise It did not, it decayed. The result was as Chazal termed, sirchon; the quinoa decayed - it did not rise. (www.star-k.com/kashrus/kk-passover-quinoa.htm.)

It is grown in the Andes mountains in locations that do not support growth of the five grains which can become chometz: wheat, rye, oats, barley and spelt.

Quinoa fills a diet hole for many people for Passover. These include people on gluten-free diets, vegetarians, and vegans. It is also a non-meat protein source for dairy-intolerant people. It has become so mainstream that Susie Fishbein has featured recipes using quinoa in her bestselling Passover cookbook that was published last year by Artscroll. Some of the companies that process quinoa do so in a chometz-free environment to enable the product to be consumed by people on a gluten-free or wheat -free diet.

The custom of not eating kitiniot evolves from the fact that it is similar to chometz grains.

The question is, is quinoa kitniot or not. Rabbi Blech in Know thy Beans Kitniyos in the Modern World quotes the following characteristics of kitniot that are listed by authorities: cooked grains which may be confused with chometz, grown in fields adjacent to chometz, and ground into flour and confused with chometz. Rabbi Moshe Feinstein (in Igros Moshe O”Ch III:63) said that there is no halachic basis to extend this to new foods. The Chicago Rabbinical Council accepts the use of quinoa that has not come in contact with chometz on the basis of this ruling.

The OU has written the following at oukosher.org/index.php/passover/article/7555: “There is a difference of opinion among Rabbinic decisors (machloket ha-poskim) as to whether quinoa is considered kitniyot. Ask your Rabbi for his guidance. Additionally, while quinoa is not one of the five grains that can create chametz (wheat, oat, barley, spelt and rye), and quinoa is not grown in the same vicinity as the grains mentioned above, the processing of quinoa is sometimes done at the same location where they process wheat and wheat flour. It is highly doubtful that the mills are effectively cleaned between grains. The concern of wheat flour or particles finding their way into the quinoa flour would be a serious one.”

Quinoa has become a very popular commodity and additional companies and areas have been producing it since it a very high value agricultural product. The Star-K this year has found barley present in one of the packing facililtes that they certify that also does quinoa and therefore has become concerned about the presence of chometz grains. This year they issued the following ruing:
“As a result of a recent investigation, we have found it possible that quinoa’s kosher for Passover status is compromised when it grows or is processed in the proximity of certain crops. Therefore, Quinoa will only be accepted with reliable Kosher for Passover supervision. “ www.star-k.org/alerts/alerts-February2011.htm

The Chicago Rabbinical Council  has done additional research and has issued the following ruling at www.crcweb.org/alerts.php:
“The cRc approves the use of whole grain quinoa for Pesach on the following conditions:

• The quinoa is imported exclusively from Bolivia.

 Ancient Harvest is one of the brands that only imports quinoa from Bolivia; there may be others. The label should state the country of origin.

• The quinoa must be carefully inspected by hand before Pesach.

This is done by spreading one layer of quinoa at a time on a board or plate and checked to be sure that there are no other grains or foreign matter mixed in with the quinoa.

This does not apply to Quinoa flour which is not permitted on Passover.”
 :

My research has determined that different manufacturers provide different conditions for the packing of quinoa. Osem is importing Sugat Quinoa bearing the Passover certification for people who eat kitniot from Badatz Beit Yosef.   A gluten-free label does not guraranttee a chometz-free proceessing environment, since at least one brand processes gluten-free oats on the same equipment. Ancient Harvest states on their website “As a grain, quinoa is gluten free. Our Ancient Harvest Quinoa is grown exclusively in the high Andean Altiplano regions of Bolivia. Our quinoa is grown at 12,000+ foot elevations in very arid conditions which will not support traditional gluten bearing grain production, therefore insuring us no possibility of potential field contamination with such grains. Our Traditional, Inca Red and Black whole grain quinoa is then cleaned, processed and packed in our quinoa-only organic and gluten free facilities.” (http://www.quinoa.net/11301.html) Ancient Harvest quinoa flour is produced in a different plant. Ancient Harvest also produces the Trader Joes white quinoa when bearing the Star-K.

I also researched other manufactuerers to see how their quinoa was packed. Each of these companies also packs other grains or products on the same lines or in the same facility. Arrowhead Mills packs their product on the same lines as they do flour, though on different days, after a clean up. OK Laboratories have reported that EDEN brand Quinoa is not co-packed with chometz. (Ed. note: The OK is not certifying quinoa for Passover). Earthly Delights Quinoa, which is certified by the OU, is packed on a line that also packs chometz grains. Bob’s  Red Mill packs gluten-free oats in the same area.

You should always follow the advice of your own rabbi. Purchase the quinoa befor Passover.Consumers are urged to carefully check grains before Pesach for extraneous matter.

Quinoa should also be rinsed to remove a bitter saponin layer that is found on the outside of the quinoa.

This information is accurate only for Passover 2011.

by Rabbi Benjamin Blech

What could go wrong? The significance of unexpected events in history.

A black swan isn’t just a ballet role played to perfection by Natalie Portman that won her an Oscar for best actress.

As developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his masterful scholarly work The Black Swan, praised by many as one of the most important books of the century, the black swan is a metaphor about the significance of unexpected events in history. As he explains it, it is an event with three attributes. First, it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme impact. Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.

Simply put, black swans are things we were certain could never happen.

Related Article: When Bad Things Happen

And recent tragedies that have captured world headlines have been perfect illustrations of experiences that were supposedly out of the range of possibility.

Japan is today struggling to cope with its largest disaster since the nuclear devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Years ago, architects and engineers joined to create quake-proof buildings and planned backup generators and thick containment vessels at nuclear plants. Nothing could ever go wrong they assured their countrymen. Their mantra was that humankind had triumphed over risk. Technology had finally achieved mastery over the vicissitudes of nature.

Recent events make clear how wrong they were. They had foreseen the possibility of an earthquake, but not one of a magnitude of 9.0. They built a sea wall to protect against an expected tsunami, but not one that rolled six miles inland, devastating towns, obliterating villages, and causing partial meltdowns at three major nuclear reactors.

This disaster was not a failure of human engineering, but of human imagination. No one dreamt it could happen; that made everyone certain that it was impossible.

The tragedy in Japan revealed the fragility of our knowledge of the world and its workings. The wisest fell back on the lame excuse, “But no one could have expected this…” Black swans happen. We choose to disregard them due to hubris, human arrogance that prevents us from acknowledging that with all of our knowledge we are still not divine masters of the universe. Surely, we all thought, the engineers and the scientists and the weather forecasters and the technicians and the nuclear specialists were intelligent enough to make proper plans to stave off catastrophe. But they weren’t. And human mastery of events was not as total as we presumed. The experts were wrong.

Hurricane Katrina also couldn’t happen. We built walls around New Orleans to contain raging waters. We felt secure because we arrogantly told ourselves we were so smart the forces of nature no longer threatened us. And we were similarly mistaken.

The financial collapse of 2008 and 2009 couldn’t happen. Our Wall Street wizards were too brilliant to allow for a financial meltdown. The people who annually received multimillion dollar bonuses couldn’t have created prime loan strategies that would prove worthless. The real estate market couldn’t collapse forcing an untold number of foreclosures when “those in the know” assured investors there was absolutely no risk involved. And yet they too were all wrong.

The oil industry finally figured out how to pump liquid gold from beneath the ocean without any fear of spillage or contamination - or so they assured us. Until the BP catastrophe last summer proved them wrong. Again, it couldn’t happen because that’s what the experts told us - until it did, with all of the horrible consequences. The collective wisdom of the marketplace and the scientists proved wanting. It was yet another Black Swan.

The unexpected overwhelms us because our egotism doesn’t allow for considering the possibility of human error.

The ancient Greeks understood overweening pride as the underlying cause of man’s downfall. Human hubris, they said, “is the pride that comes before the fall”. The greatest antidote to man’s exaggerated sense of self-importance was, for the longest time, a religious sensitivity that acknowledges a Higher Power. Recognition of God could at least place a limit on man’s ego. But a contemporary world that could make Christopher Hitchens’s book, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything an international bestseller is a world that suffers from the delusion that we are all self-made heroes who have no need to worship anything but ourselves. As Dorothee Sölle put it so beautifully in The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance, “With the disappearance of God, the Ego becomes the sole divinity.”

Without faith, we worship our own truths as if they were the sole reality. Without faith, we believe we are the sole captains of our destiny. Without faith we put our trust in the works of our own hands and confuse our talents with divine perfection, our limited knowledge with the possession of infinite wisdom.

That is why we continue to be stunned by black swans. They starkly remind us that in spite of all of our achievements, we are still ultimately mortals. And if the many tragedies we have endured in the past decade can teach us that lesson, perhaps we may, in spite of their horrific consequences, salvage a measure of blessing from them.

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This article can also be read at: http://www.aish.com/ci/s/Japans_Black_Swan.html