Why Did God Do This to Us?!

Posters of Hamas hostages at a protest last week (TOI)

One of the more troubling aspects of the tragedies that befall the Jewish people is the tendency among some rabbinic leaders to explain why God did this to His people. The granddaddy of such questions is of course the Holocaust. That is always what I think of when I am asked why someone suffers a particular tragedy. Especially when it involves a very young child. 

Why? …How could God do this to someone who so obviously didn’t deserve it?! Why indeed do bad things happen to good people? The answer for me has been a clear and unequivocal ‘I don’t know!’

There are no prophets in our day. There has been no prophesy since biblical times. Anyone making that  claim is either a fool, a charlatan, or insane. And yet that question begs an answer.

There are some religious figures that find convenient answers among their own biases. On the religious right it is almost invariably related to what they see as immodest behavior among their people – usually women. If I recall correctly one such ‘explanation’ for some sort of tragedy was that women’s Shaitels (wigs that are used for the religious requirement for married women to cover their hair) were too long.  

That ‘explanation’ never sat well with me, to say the least. To take one’s pet issue and say that a calamity befell the Jewish because of it is beyond ridiculous, in my view.

Even more outrageous are people that try to explain the Holocaust. One such explanation I have often heard is that many Jews of that time were increasingly leaving the faith! Personally I find it appalling to suggest that my fervently observant  parents lived through unimageable hell because of what other people did. To even suggest that without the benefit of prophecy takes hubris of immense proportion in my view. 

On the other hand would the following argument (mentioned by Professor Joshua Berman) that might be made by the Religious Zionist right - or the extreme religious left be any better?

Do we suffer because we uprooted settlements from Gush Katif, or because we worked to weaken the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank? Is it because we haven’t done enough to secure rights for LGBTQ members of our society, or because we have normalized such identities? The list is potentially endless. We will affirm our own values with the assuredness that it is the others who are in the wrong.

We cannot possibly know the mind of God in the post biblical era. Attempting to do so is a fool’s errand! Just like the religious right cannot know the mind of God, so too the religious Zionist right and and religious left cannot know it.

And yet Professor Berman makes a very valid point with respect to the current tragedy that has befallen us: 

From the Bible through the Shtetl our forefathers believed that when collective calamity befalls us, we must stand before the Almighty in recognition of our failings. 

At every stage of our history, our greatest texts have affirmed that collective calamity is caused by our own misdeeds. Every story in the Bible where Israel suffers teaches this lesson. The notion was codified by Maimonides: “It is a commandment from the Torah to cry out… over every calamity that befalls the community… for when calamity strikes and they cry out… all will know that it is because of their misdeeds that calamity has befallen them…

Obviously there is a reason that we, the chosen people, suffer Divine collective punishment. I have never contested that. To say otherwise is in fact blasphemous. It would be as if we were saying God punished His people for no reason. My problem has only been where one seeks to find blame based on their own biases. As if a woman wearing a wig that is too long might have caused the tragedy at Meron to occur a few years ago. (I used this example for illustrative purposes. I don’t know if that was ever cited  by anyone for that tragedy. But I have heard it cited in other instances of tragedy.)

So if we are to be introspective about our own responsibility for October 7^th, what should we focus on?

Professor Berman has suggested focusing on the things that I have myself considered. Not that either of us has the inside track to God’s mind. But that it has a far more rational basis than does relying on personal biases: 

But what sins should we acknowledge when there is no prophet to guide us? Maimonides believed that punishment comes to us by the natural consequences of our actions. If we drive unsafely, the accidents we cause are the natural consequence; they are our “punishment.”

We are accustomed to taking stock of our individual behavior, but given the collective nature of our crisis, we need to take stock for ourselves how we may have contributed to the cultural winds that led us to this calamity; what are the collective attitudes that we may have helped foster. For instance: Did I believe and support radical overhaul of the judicial process on the barest of parliamentary majorities?

Conversely, did I support volunteer reservists who suspended their service in opposition to the government’s proposed reforms? Did I demonize those who opposed my position? Did I understand the impact these positions would have on our national unity? Did I heed the warnings of the security establishment that these positions were eroding our deterrence as our enemies saw us tearing ourselves apart from within?

If we want to avoid war from without, we ought to first avoid war from within. Food for thought.