Wall Street’s fragility – and our own

Wall Street tilting

Rabbi Bill Berk, Director of the Center for Rabbinic Enrichment at the Hartman Institute, links the fragility of the current economic situation with our fragility at the Days of Awe in this excellent piece:

If the meltdown has proved anything, it’s the precariousness of the human condition. When properties, pension plans and insurance policies lose their value overnight, and even money in the bank is not as secure as in its proverbial past, one realizes how tenuous the things of this world are, how fragile and fleeting.

This, precisely, is the theme of the upcoming Days of Awe. “Who will live and who will die / who by water, who by fire, who by sword, who by beast… Who will rest and who will wander / who will grow poor and who will grow rich,” we say in our prayers. On Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur everything, all that we own and all that we are, hangs in the balance. Here today, gone tomorrow.

Read the entire piece here.