In a year in which deliberately-set blazes scorched tens of thousands of dunams of our Holy Land and elsewhere – giving new meaning to the term “wildfires” – we have witnessed the limits of firefighting, especially in forested areas, even with the most high-tech equipment and manpower. Residents displaced, homes destroyed, precious trees reduced to cinders.
It occurs to me that the word aish resembles ash – the ruin that results when a malevolent actor (the “i”) decides to wield fire as a weapon of mass destruction. This spring’s arson attacks in Israel were widely, and correctly, condemned as terrorism by everyone from Itamar Ben Gvir to Avigdor Lieberman to Eli Beer. The irony, of course, is that like Iranian missiles shot toward the Jewish State, flames don’t discriminate. They don’t stop to check the religion, ethnic background, moral character, or politics of the people they threaten.
Rashi in Parshat Bereishit tells us that Hashem created the Heavens by combining fire and water. Thus, the Torah, descended from Shamayim, contains elements of both joined in some fashion. There are many parallels between fire and water, most notably their coequal destructive potential and indispensability to human life. We use them, marshal their power, create new technologies from them. But absolute, fail-safe control? Not in our hands.
