With the final death toll in Asia yet unknown, analyzing the calamity can appear callous, especially in light of the ancient Jewish admonition to refrain from even comforting mourners whose dead still lie before them. Still, once we have, in some human way, associated ourselves with the disaster by means of financial or other contribution, we surely are obliged to try and learn something from it. Sometimes, before the answers can be found the right questions must be asked, and there are certainly questions well worth asking. It is, however, important not to be distracted by the wrong questions.

"What sort of God would have let this happen?" is one example of the wrong question. First, it is a perfect example of narcissism. The questioners convert an international human tragedy of mind-staggering proportions into a maudlin expression of their own spiritual angst. This question escalates self-indulgence to new heights of obnoxiousness.

It reminds me of the older man sitting in the next seat during a certain memorable flight I took back in 1980. As the flight attendants graciously served my special kosher meal, he began a conversation. "I am also Jewish" he unnecessarily informed me, as he tucked into his bacon omelet. I responded politely and he continued: "I used to keep kosher, but after Hitler I could no longer believe in God."

"And do you by any chance remember how old you were when you first abandoned Jewish religious observance?" I innocently asked.

"Sure I remember," he responded. "It was my eighteenth birthday and I walked into a non-kosher restaurant for the first time."

Later as our flight neared its destination, we exchanged further personal and family details. In response to another question of mine, he revealed that he was sixty-five years old. The arithmetic wasn't hard to do. As we touched down, I leaned over and gently said, "Look, I don't mean any offense, but you didn't abandon Judaism as a result of God allowing the Holocaust. You entered that restaurant in 1933, well before World War II began. Hitler and his Holocaust merely provided you with the excuse you needed to feel comfortable abandoning your faith."

To find the same comfort, those who shape their lives according to the doctrines of secular fundamentalism take an evident delight in stating the usual "Where is God now?" questions after tragedies, especially those natural ones like earthquakes that can't be blamed on human actions.< BR>
However, the horrifying consequences of these calamities can certainly be blamed on human inactions. Look, I know that it's nowadays considered distasteful to attribute any complicity in a problem to the victim. It's as if being a victim today automatically confers moral virtue. But being that delicate can cost us truth.

The simple truth is that American seismological specialists in Pasadena and elsewhere were horrified that no warning systems are in place in these Asian countries by means of which residents can be alerted.

Remember, there were several hours' worth of warning time available. "A warning center such as those used around the Pacific could have saved most of the thousands of people who died in Asia's earthquake and tsunamis," according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Many lives could surely have been saved. Some countries have pleaded poverty, but that is not an adequate explanation. We are not talking rocket science here, but about sirens on poles. Remember them from the cold war era? This is World War I technology and very inexpensive.

In 1953, nearly two thousand Dutchmen drowned when the North Sea breached a dyke and flooded part of low-lying Holland. Within a few years they had commenced the world's largest civil engineering project and Holland has never flooded significantly since. Sadly, this is far from the first time that some of these nations have faced natural disasters in which people died by the tens of thousands as the result of monsoons, typhoons, flooding, and earthquakes. Yet few warning systems exist, let alone seawalls and evacuation routes.

On December 26, 2003, over 30,000 victims perished in the Iranian earthquake in the town of Bam. To explain the vast death toll inflicted by an earthquake no stronger than that which struck the Californian town of Paso Robles within a few days, Iranian authorities pleaded poverty. It costs considerably more to engineer large-scale nuclear capability as Iran has done, than it costs to retro-fit buildings for safety in an earthquake-prone zone. The problem is not poverty, it is priority.

Here in the United States, the standard-bearer of Western civilization, we have two cultural imperatives imbedded deeply within our national DNA. Both flow from the Bible with which our founders were intimately familiar and by means of which they sculpted their world views.

Our first distinctive cultural imperative is to render ourselves less vulnerable to nature. We believed we were following Divine will when we developed medicine and medical technology to dominate disease. We found insecticides to protect our food supply, and we built dams to control rivers. We took seriously the commandment in the twenty-eighth verse of the Bible, "And God blessed them (Adam and Eve) saying 'Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it.'"

We never understood "subdue the world" to mean obliterate nature or otherwise despoil the environment. We knew it meant responsible stewardship and making ourselves less vulnerable to nature. We knew we were pleasing God by making ourselves safer and more secure, and this knowledge lent added urgency and meaning to our efforts. Not by coincidence did the overwhelming majority of these scientific and technical developments take place in the West.

Western civilization's second distinctive cultural imperative is the importance of preserving human life. This too derives directly from our biblical roots and distinguishes us from the peculiar fatalism toward death found in so many other cultures.

Together, these two values enshrined in the West in general and in America in particular, are chiefly responsible for the vastly diminished impact that natural disasters inflict upon our society.

God runs this world with as little supernatural interference as possible. Earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, and, yes, tsunamis happen. It is called nature, which is not always benign. Fortunately, God also gave us intelligence and commanded us to make ourselves less vulnerable to nature. He also implanted in us a culture in which each and every life is really important. That is why Deuteronomy (chapter 30) states, "I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your seed may live."

God may have allowed the earthquake to happen, just as he has allowed germs to exist and just as he has allowed cold weather each winter. But under the influence of biblical culture, people have defended themselves against germs and they have learned how to produce energy to defeat winter's frigid conditions. A long time ago, God in His book provided the incentive and encouragement to survive nature. He isn't to blame for the deaths in the Asian disaster. Many of those fatalities are attributable to misguided cultures.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, a popular author, lecturer and radio talk show host, is president of Toward Tradition, an organization uniting Jews and Christians in the common defense and promotion of biblical values.

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