Rabbi Ariana delivered this sermon on 18 Heshvan 5780/16 November 2019 at Shabbat morning services.
I want to tell you the story of the town of Centralia. Centralia, Pennsylvania, was a booming coal town. Susquehannock land, the first two mines opened up in 1856. The town was incorporated in 1866, and by 1890, had a population of 2,761 with seven churches, five hotels, 27 saloons. As you can imagine, its principal employer was the coal industry, with eventually five operating mines in the area, and railroads built to take the harvested coal out of town.
The town was booming, in as much as a town fueled by the most dangerous job in the world can be--being lowered into the very depths of the earth to blast, hack, and harvest highly combustible energy from its core. It was all going great, until 1962, when all the companies shut down (bootleggers would mine until 1982, and pit and strip mining will just never stop.)
See, in 1962, there was a fire. Underground. The wide, sweeping networks of coal, the veins of highly flammable material that course underneath the land, were ignited. And just like that, Centralia began to burn beneath the surface, from the ground up.
Now there’s a machloket, some disagreement about how this started--
One theory, is that in an effort to clean up the landfill, the town council hired some volunteer firefighters to burn the trash on May 27 ‘62. The landfill was located next to an abandoned strip mine, and it was a pretty typical thing to set the dump on fire, let it burn, and be done with it. But according to this theory, it was never fully extinguished, and an unsealed opening in the pit let fire enter the coal mines.
Or perhaps, another theory, that on May 26, hot ash or coal from home burners were dumped in the trash pit. The city was supposed to put a fire resistant clay barrier between each layer of the landfill, but they were behind schedule and it never happened, so hot coal dumped in the landfill snuck its way into the mines, starting the fire.
Or, perhaps, the Bast Colliery mine fire of 1932 that started from an explosion was never fully extinguished, and it made it to the landfill by 1962 on the day of the trash burning.
Whatever the reason, we’ve got a subterranean fire on our hands. A problem vast enough to shut down all the mines and all the miners to loose their jobs. And the population would shrink, the town built on this coal mining town. But it wasn’t until 17 years later in 1979 when locals began to realize the scale of the problem. A gas-station owner, and then-mayor John Coddington, inserted a dipstick into one of his underground tanks to check the fuel level. When he withdrew it, it seemed hot. He lowered a thermometer into the tank on a string and was shocked to discover that the temperature of the gasoline in the tank was 172 °F. Then in 1981 a 12 year old fell into a sinkhole (his buddy saved him, go Eric!) But the steam coming from the sinkhole proved to have a lethal level of carbon monoxide.
The townspeople debated if they were really at risk. But now there was no way to avoid the truth, with sinkholes and pure heat and steam coming off the mountains and from holes drilled into the earth. The US government offered a $42 million buyout for relocation, and almost all the residents took it. In 1990 only 63 residents remained in the town. Residents would (and continue) to fight the PA and federal government’s efforts to get everyone out of the town--claiming that they are seeking to get the rights via immanent domain to the mineral rich land.
So now, the railroads are overgrown, only 5 homes still stand, nature is coming back to the town. Paved streets oddly still run through the now overgrown fields. In 2010 the census showed that there were only 10 people living in Centralia.
And to this day, steam comes up from vents in the ground, highway 61 continued to crack and was eventually shut down, and the area is covered in warning signs. The subterranean fire still burns in Centralia. When fire rises up from inside the earth, there is no place to run to.
* * *
I want to tell you another story, news just from this week, from Palestine and Israel. If you’ve read the news, you saw that bombs have been falling. This week strategic aggression from Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu led to the assassination of Islamic Jehad leader Baha Abu al-Ata and his wife, who were killed in their homes while they were sleeping. About 300 bombs were launched into Israel, 90% of them shielded, with one Israeli injured.
Meanwhile in Gaza, the Israeli military responded with an assault that would kill 34 Palestinian people in Gaza, including 8 members from the al-Sawarka family. The youngest killed was 12 years old.
When fire rains from the sky in Gaza, there is no protective Iron Dome, no bomb shelters. And I am personally grateful that friends who are in Israel have access to that protection. But when fire comes from the sky in Gaza, there is no safe place to run to.
Gaza is known by the residents who live there as the world’s largest open air prison. Imports and exports are embargoed, the border is militarized and weaponized such that with regularity Gazans are shot near the border. Water is controlled. Movement is controlled. When fire rains from the sky, there is no place to run to.
I want to tell you one more story, that of Sodom and Gomorrah. In this week’s parsha, after the angel messengers come to Abraham and Sarah and announce their pending geriatric pregnancy and the birth of Isaac, they continue on to Sodom and Gomorrah.
The messengers enter the town, and Lot, Abraham’s nephew, begs the men to allow him to extend hospitality, or protection, to them. They want to sleep in the town square, to really understand how wicked these people are and see if they could survive a night sleeping in public. But they relent to Lot’s begging.
The townsfolk--Rashi explains every single townsperson--they come and bang on the door, demanding the vulnerable bodies of these travelers.
Now--queer interlude, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah has been used to vilify, criminalize, and de-sanctify queer intimacy. But the real cheit, the real sin of Sodom is not anything short of their desire to commit sexual assault. Rabbi Steve Greenberg teaches that it was this that Sodom and Gomorrah are punished for, not an anachronistic story about homosexuality. Interlude over.
So Lot tries to sacrifice his own daughters in place of the visitors, and the angels have seen enough. They blast everyone back from the door, and for some reason allow Lot to live despite what he tried to pull with his daughters. They gather up his wife, children, and the hightail it out of town.
But Lot hesitates. Bereishet Rabbah teaches that his hesitation, his shalshelet, means that: (BeR.R. 50:11)
“He kept on delaying, exclaiming, 'what a loss of gold and silver and precious stones!’”
Familiar, perhaps, to our story of Centralia, in which a precious commodity is reason enough to endanger human life through mining. The fire, which led to such loss of profit--no mention of the displaced people and unemployment.
So Lot, his wife, and his family flee with the messengers. And Genesis 19:23-26, 28 says of the massacre that would follow:
“As the sun rose upon the earth and Lot entered Zoar, the Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur fire from the Lord out of Heaven. He annihilated those cities and the entire Plain, and the inhabitants of the cities and the vegetation of the ground. Lot’s wife looked back and she thereupon turned into a pillar of salt...Abraham saw the smoke of the land rising like the smoke of a kiln.”
When fire comes forth from the heavens, there is no place to run to.
* * *
Earth below: in Centralia the fire that came from human exploitation of our planet, merciless harvesting of its rich resources, “bought” for 500 pounds from the Susquehannock people. The human cost of mining, the far reaching impacts on our planet. This, which causes fire to flow and stretch and take over, is human crime.
Sky above: In Gaza the fire that comes from human violence and colonization and fear, jailing human beings on sacred land, using the pageantry of war to attack and murder innocents. The loss of life caused by militaristic conquering of a people. This, which causes fire to fall and spread and annihilate, is human crime.
But our parsha this week, we read of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, too. It is only G!d who can decide to bring fire, rain down Divine justice, punishment, decide to wipe out, and re-start civilization.
And even then, we humans find what to chafe against, demand answers for, struggle with, about those decisions. Harvesting the life blood from the earth, raining down fire on the sky on colonized people, human beings have no right to play with such Godly technologies.
So a prayer, amidst all this burning and judgement, that the holiness of our earth, the sanctity of human life, the permission to be free and have enough to eat and care for our families, that that is what abides. That we may lay down the weapons we turn against one another and the earth. That from the the sky above, the depths beneath, and the ground we stand on, be a place that models Divine justice, Divine mercy. Kein yehi ratzon.