Life and Death

Did you know that there were no deaths of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan last week?

I learned this on Friday night, before the recitation of the Mourners' Kaddish during Shabbat services at Beth El Temple in Harrisburg, PA. I didn't see it in newspapers, although this morning I found references from the Associated Press to January's casualties being the lowest monthly number since 2008, with an explanation that it is related to troop withdrawal. If PBS's News Hour reported it with their weekly list of the troops lost in the war, I missed it (because I was in shul).

I was powerfully struck by the announcement. Instantaneously, I had an image of how for one week, no parent of an American soldier got the dreaded knock on the door about their child losing his or her life. Regardless of the political or tactical reasons that would account for the number, at that moment when our prayer service instructs us to think of death, there was one place where I realized that death did not reach this week.

Our liturgy is filled with ways to not only help us pass through suffering, but also opportunities to regularly be thankful for peacefulness and wholeness. I view the morning prayer, Asher Yatzar, thanking God for the inner workings of our bodies, as well as prayers for healing and mourners kaddish, as brilliant reminders for us to notice the gift of each moment.

Rabbi Eric Cytryn has included the names of the soldiers who died that week during Beth El's Shabbat services since 2003, when he began his tenure. Rabbi Cytryn said that it's possible that some people thought that it was a political statement, but he always considered it the role of a religious community to create awareness of matters of life and death. That is the power that is possible in a religious community of practice. For me, it was a beautiful example of how our communal practice of prayer can help us connect with matters that transcend politics, and continually give us opportunities to reflect on the gift of life.