Stories of goodness have more than ever come to our attention following the events of 9/11/01. I was given two impressive examples that I want to share with you, "Ecumenical Vigil" and "The Sun and the Moon."

The Ecumenical Vigil

From the New York Times, November 6, 2001

Stretching a Jewish Vigil for the Sept. 11 Dead
by Jane Gross

In the darkest hours of the night, Judith Kaplan, dressed in Sabbath finery, sat in a tent outside the New York City Medical Examiner's office, singing the haunting repertoire from the Book of Psalms. From midnight until 5 a.m., within sight of trucks full of body parts from the World Trade Center, she fulfilled the most selfless of Jewish commandments: to keep watch over dead, who must not be left alone from the moment of passing until burial.

Normally, this Orthodox ritual, known as sitting shmira, lasts for only 24 hours and is performed by one Jew, customarily a man, for another Jew. But these are not normal times. Thus the round-the-clock vigil outside the morgue on First Avenue and 30th Street is already in its eighth week. The three sealed trucks may or may not contain Jewish bodies. And the shomer, or watcher, is just as often a young woman as an old man.

Ms. Kaplan, 20, a senior at Stern College for Women, a division of Yeshiva University, is one of nine students who have volunteered for this solemn task on weekends, working in shifts from Friday afternoons until nightfall on Saturdays, the holiest part of the week.

The rest of the time, the task is performed by scores of volunteers from an Orthodox synagogue, Ohab Zedek, on West 95th Street.

Devout Jews cannot ride on the Sabbath, putting the subway or taxis off-limits for the long trek from Ohab Zedek to the morgue. So the Stern students, whose dormitories are within blocks of the morgue, have filled the breach. They were recruited by Jessica Russak, 20, a student who takes the dawn shift, peeking out of the tent as the sky brightens to time her morning prayers.

Ms. Russak, Ms. Kaplan and the others have won blessings from Christian chaplains at the site, and their dedication has moved police officers and medical examiners to tears. The burly state trooper who guards the area has learned the girls' names, and a bit about their religion.

At first, the trooper demanded identification, not knowing that carrying anything on the Sabbath was prohibited for Orthodox Jews. Now he keeps an eye on the prayer books and snacks that the Stern students drop off before sundown on Friday and retrieve Saturday night. The trooper once called Ms. Russak at home when she was a few minutes late, in case her alarm clock had not gone off.

The young women have the full support of Dr. Norman Lamm, president of Yeshiva University, who agreed without hesitation that the normal gender rules--women can sit shmira only for other women, while men can sit for any deceased person--could be waived under the circumstances. The school is also providing security guards to escort those who sit the late-night shifts.

While the tradition is a peculiarly Jewish one, Dr. Lamm said he felt that the mitzvah, or good deed, reached across denominations. "The idea that you can have companionship even in death is a very consoling thought, whether you are Jewish or not," he said. Dr. Lamm called "the loving watching of the corpse a very human act" and noted that the shmira is "the truest and most sublime" of the 613 mitzvahs "because there can never be reciprocity."

But there are other rewards, which the Stern students discussed on Friday, at Ms. Kaplan's apartment while preparing their Sabbath dinner--four different kinds of kugel, pepper steak and honey-glazed chicken. All of them had felt so helpless after the terrorist attacks. They donated money to the Red Cross, but were turned away as blood donors or volunteers because those needs had quickly been met.

Then came the pleas for Sabbath shomers. "This is something I can do," Ms. Kaplan said. "And it's surreal. You absolutely feel the souls there, and you feel them feeling better." Each volunteer said she had begun with fears about sitting within sight of the trucks full of remains. Instead, they said, they have found peace and a kind of joy.

Ms. Russak does not sing the psalms as Ms. Kaplan does, but rather mutters them, in whatever order moves her, often starting with No. 130, which she knows by heart. The effect is meditative. "The meter and the rhythm, one after the next after the next, it calms you," Ms. Russak said. "That's the magic of the psalms. They put you in the right place."

Ms. Kaplan made up slow, sad tunes for each psalm and sings them in a clear soprano, sweet as birdsong. If she mumbled them, without melody, Ms. Kaplan said, she might lose a word here and there and thus the full meaning of each line. By singing, she said, she is fully mindful. "Time completely stops," she said. "Now I understand what it is to pray with your heart."

Two weeks ago, during her regular four-hour shift, Ms. Kaplan sang 128 of the 150 psalms and grudgingly gave up her place to Ms. Russak at 4 a.m., begging her to finish the cycle. Last week, determined to do the full canon on her own, Ms. Kaplan pleaded and won an extra hour. "It's very completing for her," Ms. Russak said. "Like finishing an entire book of the Torah."

But before Ms. Kaplan's middle-of- the-night vigil on the brown leather benches in the tent, others had taken their turns, among them Anat Barber, the newest recruit, who was full of nervous questions. "The bodies there, do they know who they are?" Ms. Barber asked as Ms. Russak escorted her to the site for the first time.

Ms. Russak did her best to be reassuring, telling Ms. Barber that she would be fine, that "the irony is that it feels too easy." Outside the tent, the last of the men, a volunteer from Ohab Zedek, was rushing toward his Sabbath observance in Brooklyn. It was time for the women to begin their watch, to fill the night with poetry and prayer.

Quotes and insights of the Lubavitcher Rebbe

The following is a quote from the Lubovitcher Rebbe. Let me say that the Lubovitcher Rebbe is "Zaddik," a "Righteous One." This is a high station (spiritually speaking) and equivalent to the Guru (the genuine guru). In like fashion, the theme resounds with the wisdom of the Vedas, that there is an overarching Entity or Force, an entity that is the Source and the Witness of All. At the same time there is manifestation of Its many parts. The parts are not similarly constant, but under the supervision of the Constant One.

The Sun and the Moon

"Each one of us is both the sun and the moon. The sun is constant--every day the same fiery ball rises in the sky. But the moon cycles through constant change--one day it is whole, then it wanes until it has disappeared altogether. Yet, then it is renewed, reborn out of nothingness."

"So too, we learn and progress by quantum leaps and bounds, yet the timeless, constant wisdom of Torah doesn't budge from its place. On the contrary, the more we move forward, the deeper we fathom the truths behind us."

Even though these stories come from Jewish sources, they are truly world-wide, for we are One, after all. And what they illustrate is in every one of us. And so the aftermath of vigil shows not only the good-hearted love of these very, very orthodox students, but also how love surmounts and makes flexible, in the interest of service, otherwise rigid boundaries. That is, after all, what any true religion teaches. It shows the profound love of all. It shows the holographic network in which we are all a part of a single, universal web.

"The Sun and the Moon" is a teaching transmitted to me by my rabbi, taken from a mystical Hebrew text, the Tanya, yet it is remindful of the teachings of the Vedas and Upanishads of the Hindus: Brahma is the Creator of all, constant, hovering over the scene, giving of His and Her Essence, manifesting into the Many. The constancy of Brahma hovers over the scene while at the same time witnessing the change and mobility and infinite diversity of Brahma's (the All's) so many manifestations and creations.

And so it goes ... two religious groups revealing the same essence of spiritual insight. The same core truth manifesting in slightly different ways in's (Brahma's) power of creativity. All religion leads to the same core truths. In the light of that, Truth shines forth when each and any of us finds our essence within, when we know we are truly one, united, feeling each other and affected by each other.