Wired Mesh

Start the Year Off Right

Make a donation to Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), the first international relief organization to reach Banda Aceh in Indonesia. Aceh is on Sumatra, the closest Indonesian island to Sunday's undersea earthquake that triggered a massive tidal wave. International officials estimate that the tsunami death toll in Aceh alone will reach 80,000, and survivors are huddling in makeshift camps set up in mosques. Indonesian officials have resigned themselves to digging mass graves in the mud to bury all the children.

I don't generally plug charities, and what you do with your money is your business. But I am aghast at the stories trickling in from Asia. The ocean simply rose above all its channels and overflowed all its banks, and swept to sea thousands upon thousands of children who were playing their Sunday morning games of cricket. I don't have any words about it, no pious assurances of comfort. But I remember that in Jewish theology we are described as God's hands to the inconsolable, and that the Pauline epistles tell us to care for the widows and orphans. So I ask you to consider that, before you offer your toasts to 2005.