B’H This is the story of Jake. Jake was the mayor of a small desert town, as was his father and grandfather before him. In fact , for as long as anyone can remember Jakes family had been at the helm of that small desert town. Jake was a particularly industrious fellow and under his mayorship , the otherwise barren landscape began to bloom. By the sweat of his own brow, Jake the led the way in inspiring the townsfolk to create an agricultural marvel. With limited water resources they found a way to grow crops, orchards and vineyards that produced the most luscious fruit, and sophisticated wines. He also built up the town’s infrastructure, adding hospitals, schools, government services, manufacturing plants, research labs and more. Well, it wasn’t long before word started to spread about Jake’s renaissance project and suddenly people who had written off Jake’s little desert town as a malaria infested dust bowl, started pounding on Jakes’ door to try and get a piece of the action. Jake had his doubts as to whether this new found interest in his town was genuine or part of a plan to usurp it from him piece by piece. Being the good natured fellow that he was, Jake decided to ignore the inner and outer voices of doubt and devise a plan to share his desert pie. Jake never considered actually giving pieces of the pie away; the idea was to give his new friends little pockets of self - governance, so that they too could make their share of the desert bloom. When word spread of Jake’s magnanimous generosity, he was hailed as a hero. Elitist intellectuals and socialites welcomed him to their circle and lavished him with praise. No small town had ever shared as much of its resources as Jake’s , let alone with people who had formally shown no interest in contributing to the development of Jakes town and who had at least twenty two other much larger towns in which to live. Well, for all of Jake’s good intentions, his new “friends” saw his willingness to bring them into town as a sign of weakness and lack of pride in the special historical connection his family shared with the town. So while Jake was telling everyone of the great diverse community he was building, his new friends were thinking conquest. At their own parties and gatherings they mocked Jake for his naiveté and salivated at the prospect of now having a foothold from which to incrementally implement the conquest. Jake’s new friends started to build factories and when they were up and running, the people in Jakes’ town started to smell fumes. Jake assured the townsfolk that there was nothing to fear, as he had signed agreements by his new friends that they would abide by the highest standards of environmental protection. Time progressed and increasing numbers of Jakes townsfolk were getting ill. It was becoming clearer by the day that the toxic fumes and waste from Jake’s friend’s factories were the cause of the illness. It was hard for Jake to ignore the linkage between the environmental hazard of the new factories and the toll it was taking on the townsfolk. Jake promised the people he would take action. He dispatched members of the city council to meet with his friends the factory owners. The factory owners promised that they would look into the matter and assured Jake’s council that they had no intention of harming the townsfolk and wanted to live peacefully together side by side. Meanwhile , at the annual board of meeting of the factory owners, it was decided to increase the level of toxicity in all the plants and factories and at every level of production. Special effort was made to ensure that all new machines being built should not only accommodate toxic chemicals but should also be made of toxic parts. It didn’t take long for the increased toxicity to take effect on the townsfolk. People were now dying violent deaths. On the defensive,: to put the tragic deaths of the townsfolk into proper perspective, Jake explained them that those who died were “sacrifices of peace” and that the strength of restraint was greater than the strength of action. Years passed and despite the perpetually rising levels of toxicity from the factories and the resultant casualties, Jake continued to hold up the paper signed by the factory owners that they promise to abide by the highest standards of environmental safety. It was of course because the factory owners publicly professed their abidance to the environmental agreement, that Jake had been willing to allow them to build factories in the heart of the west side of town. Any objective evidence to the contrary could not possibly trump the paper they had signed. .. To be sure, there was a different group seeking Jake’s piece of the desert pie. This group of factory owners never even pretended to agree to abide by any environmental standards. Jake wasn’t going to allow his magnanimous generosity to go so far as to give these guys space for toxic factories close to the heart of town, so Jake decided to evacuate and expel a small community from the southern outskirts of town and allow the overtly toxic factory owners to set up shop there, far away from the center of town. Things didn’t quite turn out as Jake had hoped. As time passed, the toxic fumes and waste at the southern edge of town, starting infiltrating not only the townsfolk at the southern end of town but the whole town was now at risk. This was intolerable. Jake decided that he must bring in the EPA to thwart the infiltration of toxicity coming from the south. Jake told the EPA to be assertive yet cautious. As the EPA started its operation, going after all the toxic installations, mounting criticism started being leveled against Jake for taking such decisive and aggressive action. The elitist intellectuals and socialites who’s approval Jake so desperately sought and who’s company he so enjoyed, were now turning on him. Jake and his advisors couldn’t understand why they were being so roundly condemned and criticized. Did they not have the right and obligation to protect the townsfolk? While the EPA bravely hunted down the toxic installations at great personal risk, the mounting pressure on Jake , halted the EPA’s operation, short of the presumably rational and justified goal of destroying all the toxic factories and installations. For all the confusion Jake and his council felt at the criticism being leveled against them, it really isn’t confusing at all. You see Jake – the decent, peace loving, life affirming, and eternal optimist that he is, made a fatal mistake long ago . It is a mistake in which Jake became deeply invested and for which he was (Initially) so lauded, it is very difficult for Jake to extricate himself from it, despite knowing in his heart how grave an error he made. You see Jake’s mistake was his assumption that all people are like him: decent, peace loving, life affirming, eternally optimistic. To be sure Jake, was weary at the outset about sharing his desert pie but he let his (unrealistic) idealism get the better of him. He rationalized to all that bought into his vision, that it is easy to do business with honest and upright people. The challenge Jake decided to “rise to” was to do business with people whose intentions were dubious at best and destructive at worst. Big risk and high stakes. Jake thought it was a risk worth pursuing as he envisioned a utopian mosaic society in his desert town. In those early heady days, Jake won the Mayor of the year award and was exulted in his newfound popularity. He was after all the champion of the poor and the persecuted. The “new friends” that he brought into town, were armed with all that they needed to share the desert pie. The darlings of the world, unlimited funds flowed their way, to help them build a brighter future for themselves. Sadly, Jakes “new friends” never saw things as Jake did. The only industry they managed to build was toxic. And all they ever aspired to do was to increase the production and dissemination of the toxicity. They never drank Jake’s cool aid. With the passage of time, the environmental standards agreement they signed on to became so transparently false, that one would have to be blind not to see it. And yet...... And yet, Jakes’ former friends in high places refused to see it. To Jake they said: you can’t have it both ways dear (former) friend. You cannot give your “new friends” limited autonomous zones without going all the way and giving them the dignity of total independence. You cannot call someone a new friend one day and an old foe the next. It’s confusing and it’s inconsistent. And so since our dear Jake you decided to share your pie with them, we shall continue to pressure you until their slice is totally independent from your pie. Jake is now left with two options: 1) continue holding up the original agreement signed by the factory owners – an agreement that the factory owners have wilfully violated from day one and have never disavowed themselves from its violation 2) Jake can finally come clean and acknowledge the mistake, destroy the toxic installations and their owners and declare that agreement once and for all – what it is and always has been- null and void. Yeah, Jakes former friends in high places will scream bloody murder. Who cares? Their doing it now anyway. For the most part after the dust settles, Jake’s declaration of truth will bring the world a big sigh of relief. The longest charade in history will finally be over and life will go on. In this week’s Torah portion Moshe says: “The eyes of G-d are always upon the Land.” Let us not fear the truth. Let’s declare it loud and clear and may the ever watchful Eye of G-d continue to protect us and may the House of Jacob rise again. Amen.
Posted on: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 21:53:35 +0000
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