I am, however, somewhat puzzled by the following characterization of the congregation’s thoughts. To them, ” ‘Davening’ involves reciting words that are old, that conjure up memories, that join us instantly to generations past, that appear in a book whose pages are worn with use.”

My questions: 1) Aren’t the present circumstances somewhat analogous to the situations that gave rise to newly-composed prayers, like “Av Harahamim” for the martyrs of the crusades, the various qinnot for 9 Av related to this same events, or, to take a more modern example, the “Tefillah lishlom hammedinah,” written for the government of Medinat Yisrael? Obviously, congregants had to get used to these prayers, as well, because the words to all of them are innovative, even as they draw on the rich fund of earlier Jewish literature. Why should a new misheberakh, whose form is well-known, be any different? Shouldn’t it, by virtue of its form, at least, “join us instantly” to Jews who have prayed before us? 2) Couldn’t this be a “teachable moment,” in which the congregants could learn that tefillah has a history, and that the words were not always “old”? Couldn’t one, in introducing the misheberakh show both the points of continuity and the innovations that it exhibits?

Uh, I think that the earthquake shows quite the opposite. That God did NOT have compassion and mercy upon a poor and impoverished nation.

That’s the belief we had regarding the destruction of the Temples – “if only they knew how the world was sustained by the Temple, they’d never have destroyed it” was our refrain. The Temple’s value was objectively demonstrated, we thought, by the leaders of foreign lands sending gifts on Sukkot. “The rain falls on Jews and non-Jews”, after all.

In the time of Moshiach, we envision our interests again as being synonymous with those of the world. We don’t have to ask them if they’re in pain – if things are good with us, they will be gratified.

So, it seems to me that what we are seeing is a chauvinism that tries to strike the balance between the particularism that keeps us an identifiable whole by placing it in context of “service” to the world – the distant sort of “service” that typifies consumer era functionalism, that sees reality only in results, and not in feelings and meaning and purpose. More about this in a moment.

This service perspective is a sort of “let them eat cake” way of looking at it, and in recognition of this Jonah was excoriated by G-d in the episode of the gourd for his not seeing value in G-d’s creations, though they be enemies of Jews in that instance. You’d think then that the most orthodox amongst us would be at the forefront ALWAYS of inventing prayers of the sort you speak of. Yet it’s not them, it’s the non-orthodox who are most likely to be the source of this kind of creativity, but it’s usually at the expense of their letting go of particularism – and in that process of letting go they lose the glue that keeps them whole as communities.

The lesson I get from this is like most lessons in our religion. We’re SUPPOSED to do the heavy lifting that events like the Haiti disaster require of us, not just look for formulaic and formalistic answers of the sort that typify what Jews look for from rabbinic leadership. It’s in doing the heavy lifting TOGETHER that we form a better “public service” approach to our particularism.

The question is why it’s not this way. My view is that rabbinic leadership has evidently been eviscerated by a consumeristic tendency in religion that demands “off the shelf” answers. Problem is, when someone else sells it to you, when you didn’t come to the answer yourself, when you didn’t do the heavy lifting and can find it in a book that defines itself as “authoritative” you don’t grow and neither does your community. And neither does your community’s able to serve in its role as a “light unto the nations”.

What you’re seeing and discussing here is a symptom of something more distressing than what’s missing in our liturgy. It’s what’s missing in US in our generation that we need to address, IMHO.