blogs/rabbi-huberman

Where and What is Fort McMurray #450

About ten years ago, while visiting my parents' Orthodox synagogue in Toronto, I was asked by the rabbi to speak one Shabbat afternoon about being Jewish in the small city of Fort McMurray, Alberta.

I had just published a book about the history of this unique city, located about six hundred miles north of the Montana border.

But Rabbi Raphael Marcus had one challenge to overcome.

As a rabbinical student serving a Conservative congregation in Long Island, Rabbi Marcus wanted me to "talk Torah" to his 
congregants, but he was concerned about backlash from his strongly Orthodox followers.

"What is more important to you?" he asked. "To be acknowledged as a graduating rabbi, or to get your message across?"

I replied, "It's the message."

"So here's what I what we are going to do," said Rabbi Marcus. "I'll introduce you as a visiting author, and you'll find a way to bring Torah into the conversation."

Later that rainy Saturday afternoon, I sat with members of his congregation and began discussing how the community of Fort McMurray had to come to be -- and how this was part of God's plan.

As soon as I'd begun speaking, a hand shot in the air.

"Why would anyone in their right mind want to live up there?" sneered a fifty-something congregant.

It is the same question that I have been more politely asked this week, as congregants and colleagues have been watching the horrifying events unfolding in the affluent but isolated community of Fort McMurray.

More than 88,000 residents have been evacuated. The insurance claim is already estimated at $9 billion. Entire neighborhoods are in ruins.

"Why would anyone want to live up there?"

"How could this happen?"

I've been responding to these questions, the way I did on that Shabbat afternoon with an understanding that, from the urban centers of New York, Toronto, London or elsewhere, small communities like Fort McMurray might as well exist on another planet.

But to Patte and me, and our children, it is home.

It is where we met, raised children, became part of the community, volunteered, developed and honed our professions, ran a business, and established profound friendships which endure to this day.

At my ordination in 2010, seven friends from Fort McMurray, including the local Member of Parliament, traveled more than two thousand miles to Glen Cove to celebrate with us. And, perhaps, likely because they ran out of people to name things after, there's even a street in the suburb of Timberlea named Huberman Way.

Yet still, for those raised in larger centers, it is hard to understand what would cause anyone to leave a major American or Canadian city and move so far away.

And here is part of the answer. During the early 1960s, entrepreneurs like J. Howard Pew, president of Sunoco (Sun Oil) had a vision. Engineers knew about the oil oozing from the ground in areas north of Fort McMurray, located at the convergence of the Athabasca and Clearwater rivers.

After numerous attempts by many to locate this "mysterious oil well," engineers concluded that the oil deposits were "locked" into the sand, creating a gooey bitumen which local natives had for centuries used to repair canoes.

In 1965, Pew launched a complex mining operation north of Fort McMurray, Great Canadian Oil Sands, which, using multi-story high cookers, would boil the bitumen, separating oil from sulphur, and other minerals. The upgraded product was then shipped across Canada for further improvement and eventual consumption.

In keeping with his explorer spirit, Pew opened a Sunoco station in the heart of the town - the only Sunoco station west of the Great Lakes.

Other companies like Syncrude and Shell would follow. Today, more than 2.3 million barrels are produced daily, and most of them are shipped to the United States.

To the south, the little city of Fort McMurray began to take shape. Neighborhoods, shopping malls, concert halls, arenas, a regional hospital, ball fields, office buildings, hotels, and schools were built.
 
This was centered around a picturesque and historic valley, in the middle of the woods, vulnerable to nature, two hundred and seventy five miles north of the nearest city, Edmonton.

Many came to this Brigadoon looking for a quick and profitable stay. Many, like us, remained for a generation.

It was a boomtown populated largely by thirty- to fifty-years-olds, where you could believe that anything was possible.

Kids were playing on the streets after dark while their parents worked the night shift. "Let's build a Boys and Girls Club," someone said. After a few meetings with oil companies and the provincial government it was funded.

Arenas were built in ninety days. Restauranteurs and other service providers clamored to serve the growing population.

After eighteen months reporting for the daily newspaper, and another working as a photographer and writer in the oil fields, I co-launched a newspaper nine days short of my twenty-sixth birthday.

Our children grew up within this sophisticated community with a sense of safety and security. The big bad world we saw on television was thousands of miles away.

Yes, we could build a new world, with the traditional of the First Nations peoples and its pioneers under our wings.

And that is why hundreds of thousands of Canadians and Americans have passed through Fort McMurray over the years, and why it holds a special place in our hearts.

In 1976, at age 23, I left my home and family ....in the company of strangers. My parents predicted I would be swallowed into the non-Jewish majority.

It didn't work out that way.

Years later, as I met the gaze of the bearded member of my parents' congregation, Rabbi Marcus whispered in my ear, "This is your time to teach."

Rabbi Marcus, who passed away in 2007, understood that community can take many shapes.

While major centers in the United States and Canada offer countless cultural, economic and recreational opportunities, those who venture out of their comfort zones can learn things which are impossible to absorb in larger communities.

When your extended family does not live with you, then you depend on friends and neighbors. Is it so amazing that in Fort McMurray, all twenty-five Jews who lived in the area would meet without fail a few times a year to celebrate holy days, and study together with a rabbi we flew north?

It also enabled me, a restless wanderer, to embrace my Judaism, and to return to Edmonton, and ultimately head east to New York with a better understanding of Jewish values.

And so on that rainy Shabbat afternoon, I turned to the bearded man and quoted Rabbi Isaac Luria, the great Kabbalist, the Ari, who taught that sparks of God are everywhere.

Each time that we perform a mitzvah, extend the hand of friendship, raise loved and socially conscious children, build a Boys and Girls Club, a house of worship, or provide food and shelter for the needy, we liberate God's light.

As the words left my lips, all the men around the table nodded in agreement and muttered under their breath, "Ah yes, the Ari." And a scholar was born.

Liberating God's trapped light is not something that only happens New York or Toronto. It occurs in Glen Cove, in Fort McMurray, or in the little town where your parents or grandparents first lived when they arrived in this country.

The streets of rural America are dotted with the faded signs of Jewish businesses, proudly built by people like your parents and grandparents.

They built communities, became business leaders, supported charities, and helped repair a broken world from little towns and villages throughout the United States and Canada.

As we watch the smoke rising from the ashes of Fort McMurray neighborhoods, as we watch the pain and confusion in the eyes of those 88,000 who have been forced to evacuate, our souls ache.

In Fiddler on the Roof, as Tevya leaves Anatevka, he muses about what a community is made of.  "A little bit of this, a little bit of that. A pot, a pan, a broom, a hat."

But it is more than that.

The towns, neighborhoods and schetls we come from provide a foundation to our lives, and the accent to our souls.

During the past few days, many have sent me email hugs, saying, "Thinking about you." Thank you for wishes, but it really is not about us. Our family lives in a secure, safe, and yes, insulated area of the world.

What is most important to consider is the incomprehensible human suffering. Please think of tens of thousands of displaced residents of Fort McMurray, who have lost all of their possessions and memories: their homes, businesses and neighborhoods.

Pray for those like our friend Julian, who was forced to evacuate his apartment, who is currently parked with his cat under a bridge north of Fort McMurray, his food and fuel running low.

Pray for Mrs Jean, who joined CTI's 2008 trip to Israel, who has witnessed four of six homes of her children and grandchildren burned to ashes.

Think of those who are alone and afraid. Think about how you can help.

"This is the record of Adam's line," wrote the great sage Ben Azzai thousands of years ago, is the most the most important in the Torah. (Genesis 5:1)

We find our neighbors anywhere there is suffering: here, in Fort McMurray, in Ecuador, Haiti or Japan. In an age when we are globally connected, there is no excuse for turning away.

For those of you wishing to help, please be aware that the both the governments of Canada and Alberta have announced they match any donation to the Canadian Red Cross. With a US-Canada exchange rate of more than 20 per cent, your donation can almost triple in impact.  

https://donate.redcross.ca/ea-action/action?gclid=CJWY0tCAxswCFQFkhgod93kB9g&ea.client.id=1951&ea.campaign.id=50639

We are also confident that governments and private industry will move in and during the few years help rebuild the more than sixteen hundred buildings destroyed.

As for the mystery of "Why Fort McMurray?" please don't be surprised. As I told that cynic ten years ago, God's spark can be anywhere, and must be everywhere.

Wherever people congregate, there is work to be done. But natural disasters remind us without warning that we are guests on this earth, and nothing is assured.

As I drove to work this morning, I remembered those days walking with our children along the railway tracks of Waterways, a community now ninety percent destroyed.

I remember slowly sipping a soda on the sidewalk in front of the Marketown corner store, with our kids, watching the ants and the rest of the world go by.

I thought about home towns everywhere, and how they shape who we are.

And I longed to go back there and stand among the ruins, in honor of the dream I had in 1976, and all the other, unexpected dreams that Fort McMurray made real for me and others. 

Indeed, sparks of God are everywhere.

I thought of what has happened, and what will be.

And I thought about youth, and the way we were.

Shabbat Shalom, v'kol tuv (with all goodness)
 
Rabbi Irwin Huberman