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A spiritual comment and prayer to start the day with Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg

Good Morning.

I like to feed the birds while saying my morning blessings. I hear their songs as God’s music, because God inhabits all life.

I’ve never believed in all-powerful God who reaches down from heaven to direct earth’s affairs. There’s too much injustice and suffering.

Rather, I believe God’s presence dwells within us all. It’s from inside our hearts that God speaks to us. But it’s hard to be attentive enough to hear it, and harder still to follow.

Etty Hillesum understood this deeply. A young Jewish woman in Nazi occupied Holland, she kept a diary from 1941 until she was deported from the transit camp of Westerbork to Auschwitz.

Today marks the date in 1942 when she and all Dutch Jews were forced to wear the yellow star. On this date, too, the Nazis executed 71 members of the Dutch Resistance.

Soon afterwards Etty wrote, "Dear God, these are anxious times. But one thing is becoming increasingly clear to me: that You cannot help us, that we must help You to help ourselves. And that is all… that really matters: that we safeguard that little piece of You, God, in ourselves. And perhaps in others as well"
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Etty lived, and died, by this deeply humane creed. In Westerbork she devoted herself to helping others. The grief-filled letters she wrote there are filled with care. Her last communication was a card she threw from the train carrying her east. "Opening the Bible at random I find this: ‘The Lord is my high tower".
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That tower, her God, was in her heart.

May we, too, hear the spirit of compassion in our hearts and in all life.

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