Rabbi Lewis' message for February 2005
How do we explain when bad
things happen to good people? When the tsumani
first hit,
I thought of Rabbi Harold Kushner. When he
wrote When Bad Things Happen to Good
People, he carefully titled the book “When” and
not “Why.” We know that bad things
happen.
Good people get sick, they suffer, they die,
just like bad people. The “when” is
clear to
us. It’s the “why” that
is not apparent (unless, as one of my astute
Religious School students
pointed out, there is a clear cause and effect
like smoking and lung cancer – although
even
then, how do you explain why some people
who smoke get lung cancer and others don’t?).
After the tsunami, people asked, “Why
does God cause these things to happen? Why
does God allow these things to happen?” You
may have read the position of some religious
thinkers who claim that we bring these things
upon ourselves due to our inherently sinful
natures, but that is not a Jewish belief.
The Talmud tells us, “Nature pursues
its own course.”
Rabbi Harold Schulweis explains what this
means when he tells us to distinguish between
two aspects of God, the side we call Elohim
and the side we call Adonai. Elohim is the
name
we use for the source of nature, the God
of Creation; Adonai is the name we use for
that
aspect of God that is involved in human affairs,
the God of Morality. Both are aspects of
the
one God. At the same time that Elohim teaches
us that nature is not within our control,
Adonai teaches us that our human response
to nature is within our control.
And so the Jewish response to tragedy is
not to dwell on “why” but more
to focus on
“What can we do?” The answer
is always the same: Give tzedakah and perform
deeds of
lovingkindness. This is the answer whether
it is how to respond to tsunamis or how to
react
to someone who has cancer, how to respond
to earthquakes or mudslides or hurricanes
or
how to relate to someone who is suffering.
Repentance, prayer and tzedakah do not prevent
bad things from happening to good people;
they merely give us, as mere mortals, a way
of
trying to make things better. Sometimes that
is all we can do; and sometimes, that is
enough.
Rabbi Ellen J. Lewis
February 2005
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