The Great Chicago Fire and the Hurricanes of 2005

Imagine the scene: It is October 10th, 1871, and a great fire has swept through the city of Chicago. It has raged for 30 hours and destroyed 18,000 buildings. Some three hundred people have lost their lives. Thousands are homeless. Rubble fills the streets. The city that had by then become “Queen of the American West” has been devastated.

What happened next? How did the survivors respond? Many felt hopeless. One jeweler gave away all his bracelets, watches and rings, thinking his business had no future. Barrels of whiskey were rolled out onto the street, suggesting that many felt it best to eat, drink and be merry while it was still possible. Many also felt despondent. In the subsequent weeks, more than 25,000 residents left Chicago. An editorial in a New Orleans newspapers proclaimed that “Chicago will never be like the Carthage of old, its glory will be of the past…while its hope will be to the end marred and blackened like the smoke of its fiery fate.” Some felt that the fire was divine punishment for a greedy and muscle-bound city. Chicagoans, they contended, had lost their values in the pursuit of profit, and this catastrophe was God’s way of punishing their sins.

By far, however, the greatest reaction was one of hope and action. Sadness mixed with solidarity, and tears with resolve. The Tribune reported that every single one of the 100,000 people left homeless was sheltered and fed that Tuesday night, less than 24 hours after the rains extinguished the flames.” A photograph of the intersection of State and Madison taken just a few days after the fire shows several burnt beams and pieces of rubble. Yet, a closer look at the picture reveals shattered bricks assembled in neat piles and a horse car plodding down the street. Signs of rebuilding already. A Relief and Aid Society was quickly formed, and it took charge of distributing funds to the needy and finding jobs for displaced workers. It was even able to rapidly oversee 64,000 smallpox vaccinations. Chicago did face its share of post-fire problems. The day after the fire, the Chicago Evening Journal reported that “the city is infested with a horde of thieves, burglars, and cut-throats, bent on plunder, and who will not hesitate to burn, pillage, and even murder, as opportunity may seem to offer to them to do so with safety.” Yet, despite the looting and despair, the work of rebuilding the city and continuing life had begun almost immediately. On the eve of the fire, in 1871, Chicago had a population of 300,000. By 1880, it had reached 500,000. And it kept growing and growing.

We know what happened after Chicago fire. What has happened in the aftermath of the natural disasters of our own time? Like the fire, Hurricane Katrina left a huge proportion of the population homeless. Recent reports estimate that at least 200,000 homes destroyed in New Orleans. Many thousand more were blown away in the Gulf Region. As many as one million people have become refugees in America as a result of Katrina. In an almost unbelievable turn of events, Hurricane Katrina was quickly followed by Hurricane Rita. Though targeted on Texas more than Louisiana, Rita rain and winds opened several of the hastily repaired levies in New Orleans, leading to a second flooding of several neighborhoods. Rita also left several hundred ruined homes in wake. According to recent reports, more than 900 people are dead as a result of Hurricane Katrina, and ten people lost their lives in Hurricane Rita.

Many of us were not directly affected by the two hurricanes. But people we know and love have been. We have also been struck by the images we have seen on television and the stories we have read in the papers. We feel frustrated. We feel scared. We wonder what we can do. We wonder about the future. Perhaps we might gain strength from the response of a previous generation of Sinai members.

Several months before the Chicago fire, the board of Chicago Sinai Congregation had invited Kaufmann Kohler of Detroit to serve as its rabbi. He had accepted. The fire, however, had inflicted major damage on Sinai. Its building was totally destroyed. The homes and livelihood of many of its members had been wiped out. Several weeks after the fire, Kohler gave the congregation a chance to cancel its contract. They telegraphed him immediately to come as planned. In the midst of disaster, they looked to the future with energy and hope.

Kohler’s inaugural service was held at Olivet Presbyterian Church. In his sermon, he affirmed the hope and courage of the Congregation that had called him. As he said, “Gather yourself together, with the courage of your faith, with love and hope…we will call upon God in tight dilemma, and God will answer us.” Looking forward to the future, he proclaimed that “The Chicago of yesterday had become great through self-seeking, the Chicago of tomorrow will become great through love.”

Kohler’s words, I believe, offer us two abiding lessons in the midst of disaster. They are lessons that resonate with the themes of the holy days that we have now entered. The first is that the aftermath of a natural disaster is a time for both rebuilding and re-evaluation. When our lives are destroyed and all we have are each other, we look to see where can improve as a society.

In the aftermath of the Chicago Fire, Chicagoans looked to building safer buildings and abandoning the flimsy structures that had been thrown up until then. A majestic new city, with some of the most architecturally-renowned buildings in the world, arose out of the ashes. Chicago had a lot going for it that made its rapid rebuilding necessary. It was a crucial crossroads for American agriculture and industry. Yet, the rebuilding sparked a new sensitivity and reflection among Chicago’s leaders about what kind of city Chicago would be.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we have rightly begun to focus our attention the on the grave differences between the rich and poor, between black and white, that characterized New Orleans and so many other American cities. The lowest-lying and hardest hit areas were predominantly African-American, and their residents had the hardest time leaving the city. Our ancestors in Chicago sought to build a safer city. Our challenge in the 21st century is to develop a more equitable society. Katrina exposed a grave problem that many of us have ignored or sought to explain away. Fixing this problem will not be easy or quick. In discussing the grave poverty and racial divisions that we saw in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, scholars and commentators have pointed out that it was a result of many years of segregation, corruption and indifference. Let us make indifference the chief casualty of these hurricanes. The sound of the shofar on Rosh Hashanah is mean to be a wake-up call, a summons to responsibility. Do not stand idly by while your neighbor bleeds, our Torah tells us. Every one of the hurt and homeless is our neighbor, and we cannot stand idly by as they bleed.

We have begun to respond to the summons here at Sinai. We “adopted” a nine-member family from Louisiana who have taken refuge here in Chicago. A large group of our members has been working with this family, helping restore a basic semblance of normal life and getting them acclimated to Chicago. Rabbi Sternfield has also proposed offering restaurant patrons the chance to contribute five percent of their bill to charitable organizations. These tragedies have given us a chance to show what Sinai is about. Less than a month ago, we dedicated the stunning chapel and new part of our building. At that very same moment, we filled a truck with 7000 pounds of supplies to be given to Hurricane Refugees living at Camp Jacobs in Utica, Mississippi, a camp run by our Reform movement. These acts go together. We made our building more beautiful by what we did outside of it.

The second critical lesson of the Chicago fire is the paramount importance of hope. It would have been easy for many of the fire’s survivors to agree with the New Orleans newspaper editorial predicting the end of Chicago’s greatness. The city was not very old, and its residents could have relocated. Rather, the people responded the clarion call of the Tribune: “The people of this once beautiful city have resolved that Chicago will rise again.” That resolve was translated, as one writer puts it, into “muscle and mortar.”

Hope can be difficult and elusive in the wake of sudden tragedy. Yet we Jews have always maintained it, even in the most trying points in our history. One of the most poignant example is that of Rabbi Akiba. Akiba lived a long time ago. He was one of the great rabbis during the first century C.E., when the central Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. Living 2000 years later, it is hard for us to comprehend the magnitude of this tragedy for our ancestors. It was tremendous, earth-shattering. For hundreds of years Jews had worshipped at this holy cite, which was seen as God’s dwelling place on earth. One entire book of our Torah, Leviticus, is dedicated to describing its most intricate workings. Yet, suddenly, this Temple was destroyed. Many of the great rabbis thought this spelled the end of the Jewish people. One rabbi, quoted in the Talmud, even went so far as to say that we should stop having children because they will be entering such a hateful world.

Rabbi Akiba, however, took the opposite view. He saw the destruction of the temple not only as a crisis, but also as an opportunity. Rather than mourn over the loss of the Temple, Judaism could recreate itself as a stronger, more compassionate and lasting religion. This hope is evident in a legendary conversation he is said to have had with three other rabbis. They were surveying the ruins of the Temple. Mud and stones lay strewn about. Foxes and jackals roamed the area. The other three rabbis began to cry. Akiba, however, began to laugh. Shocked, the three rabbis asked him why he was laughing. He replied: There are two prophecies concerning the temple found in our Bible. The first is that Zion and its temple will be destroyed in war. The second is that Zion will be reborn. There will joy and laughing and the sound of children in its streets. Until the temple was destroyed, I was unsure whether these prophecies were true. Now that the first prophecy has come true—the Temple is destroyed—I am certain that the second will come true as well.

What a profound response. Rabbi Akiva transformed a time of sorrow into a moment of rebirth. He did not deny the desolation he saw. He did not try to minimize it. Yet he maintained his hope for future. He maintained his trust in God’s promise of rebuilding and rebirth.

Just a few minutes ago we heard the sound of the shofar. Over the centuries, many explanations have been given for what that sound symbolizes. Some say it is the sound of our sadness, as we remember our missed chances for doing good. Others say it is a cry to heaven for divine mercy. One ancient tradition holds the shofar to be a reminder of the horn of the ram Abraham offered to God in place of his son Isaac. But as I think about the tragedies of the past year and burdens we now face, I hear several other sounds. First, I hear a sound of warning. I hear a warning, in the midst of the destruction we see around us, not to take life for granted. In the course of a few days, people lost everything they had. I also hear a call to examine our lives. Are we valuing what is truly important? Are we looking at our city, our country, our world with empathetic eyes? Finally, I hear a resounding declaration of hope. To be hopeful is not naïve. To be hopeful is not to say “Don’t worry. Things will get better.” No life is free of pain. No era of human history is free of natural disasters. Rather, to be hopeful is to be like our fellow Chicagoans of the 1870s. It is to dream boldly and act unceasingly. It is to be like Rabbi Akiba, who found light amidst darkness, and Rabbi Kohler, who called for courage amidst despair. It is to be like our ancestors, who never stopped saying “L’Chaim,” to life. In a 1909 Rosh Hashanah sermon, Rabbi Kohler said, “Memory and Hope must ever go hand in hand. The old must be reborn in us.” Let us turn the adversities of yesterday into the achievements of tomorrow, and out of desperation new strength will come. May this be our hope and our prayer, now and forever.