c. 2006 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) “How great are Your works, O Lord! You have made them all with wisdom … There is the sea vast and spacious teeming with creatures beyond number …”
These verses from Psalm 104 became real for me during a recent 10-day sail in the Caribbean Sea. As a sailing novice, I joined my friend, Capt. Bob Berger, along with Lenny Zarlin, both from New York City, and Larry Schaap of Denver _ all superb veteran sailors _ in a 47-foot sailboat. We traveled from Antigua with stops at Barbuda, St. Kitts, Nevis, St. Eustatius, St. Barts, and ending at the Dutch/French island of St. Maarten/St. Martin.
Traversing an ocean under sail is an ancient form of human transportation. As my days on the sea went by, I grew more appreciative of the energy and technical skills required to control and guide a sailboat.
Our boat weighed 25 tons and yet with only a jib and a main sail, we harnessed enough wind to move 50,000 pounds through the Caribbean at about eight miles an hour.
Of course, our boat differed greatly from sailing vessels of biblical times. We had a global positioning system to provide precise latitude and longitude readings, ship-to-shore radio, compasses and excellent sailing charts that detailed the positions of dangerous shoals and reefs.
But the Psalmist’s words, written thousands of years ago, were relevant because a sailor’s dependence on God’s wind remains the same even though much else involving human travel has changed.
My most dramatic spiritual moments came during the long lonely sail across the open sea from Barbuda to St. Kitts. For most of that nine-hour journey, our four-person crew was totally alone on the beautiful teal-colored Caribbean. No other ships or boats were in sight, no planes flew overhead, and no West Indian islands were in view. In our modern highly developed world, there are few places that can provide such a solitary experience.
Happily, during the 10 days of sailing, we saw almost no television, read no newspapers, heard no radio programs, and our cell phones were inoperative. Nor did we have any Internet/e-mail “fixes” to satisfy our computer addiction.
Thanks to the scholarly efforts of my late colleague, Rabbi Malcolm Stern, and his wife Louise, I was aware that vibrant Jewish communities once existed in the West Indies more than 200 years ago. When we made shore visits to Nevis and St. Eustatius (Statia), I visited the well-maintained Jewish cemeteries and the remains of two synagogues.
Between 1775 and 1800, the custom-free port of Statia (a Dutch colony) was one of the world’s busiest harbors, with 3,000 ships landing each year. The Dutch provided a religiously tolerant society that permitted Jews, who arrived on the tiny island as early as 1680, to practice their religion in freedom. Sadly, in 1781 British Admiral George Rodney captured Statia and looted the wealth of the island. Rodney deported several hundred members of the Jewish community.
Alexander Hamilton was born on Nevis in 1755 and his birthplace is a tourist attraction. Some historians believe that Rachel Lavien, Hamilton’s mother, was Jewish, but there is no conclusive proof. The Jewish cemetery is a historical landmark in Nevis and contains the remains of more than 50 Jews, many of them buried without gravestones. Standing among the graves, I wondered whether Hamilton’s mother was among them.
Just a few hours after leaving the United States by air to begin the sail, our captain received the sad news his 96-year-old aunt had died. I conducted an on-board memorial service for Hannah Berger Friedman that happened to coincide with precisely the same day and hour her funeral service was taking place in New York City. It was my first shipboard service since the 1960s when I was a military chaplain in Japan and Korea.
Sailing on the high seas is not for the faint of heart or amateurs. It takes physical stamina, mental alertness and lots of experience to safely sail a boat. It was true in ancient times and it remains the rule today.
Like any other discipline, sailing has its unique vocabulary. I learned the meaning of bimini, painter, lazy jack, gimple, scuppers and reefing the sail.
If you don’t know their meanings, just ask a sailor, or better yet, go sailing on the “vast and spacious” sea. It will be an unforgettable spiritual experience.
KRE/JL END RNS
(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser, is the author of the recently published book “The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the Rest of Us.”)
Editors: To obtain a photo of Rabbi Rudin, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug. If searching by subject, designate “exact phrase” for best results.
