2008 Woodie Awards
Individual Suffering and Religious Growth
David Lasher
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Understanding the first word of Lamentations as a question is particularly fitting, as the answer is ultimately reassuring. In fact, we read the reasons behind the tragic downfall of the temple every day. “Take care not to be lured away to serve other gods,”[2] which, as Rashi points out, has its roots in a separation from the law, “for the Lord’s anger will flare up against you.”[3] God promises us that if our hearts are not turned towards Him, then He will take away His precious gifts. Although our punishment was devastating, it was also a fulfillment of a promise that God made to us. Through our chastisement at the hand of God, we palpably felt His presence in our communal destiny. The very fact that we were still in His plan should remind us of His other promise, the promise of our eventual redemption.[4]
However much we are reassured regarding our communal destiny, the suffering that comes to an individual has no such guarantee. We all stand alone before God’s judgment. We have no prophetic assurance of our individual delivery. Exactly opposite, we know that we began in dust and we most assuredly know that to dust we shall return. We see suffering and jubilation, magnanimity and miserliness, but in all this, we see no rhyme and no reason. Moshe asked God, and we ask in every generation, “Lord of the Universe, why do some righteous men prosper and others are in adversity, some wicked men prosper and others are in adversity?”[5] The initial answer in the Gemara gives us very little comfort; “He replied to him, Moshe, the righteous man who prospers is the righteous man the son of a righteous man” etc. The continuation of the discussion in the Gemara identifies with our inability to accept this answer. The discussion ends with the position of R. Meir, that an answer to this question “was not granted to him [Moshe]. For it is said: “And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious,”[6] although he may not deserve it, “And I will show mercy on whom I will show mercy,”[7] although he may not deserve it. Now as then, questions about suffering reverberate in our minds regardless of what answers we propose.
These questions take on momentous significance when the suffering person asks them. As his instinctive cry of aicha comes to his lips, he will often also be asking these questions to God. Lord of the Universe, why is it that you have caused me to suffer? With no answer forthcoming, unfortunately, some lose their faith.
In this light, Raba’s view on suffering makes a very concrete contribution. "Raba (some say, R. Hisda) says: If a man sees that painful sufferings visit him, let him examine his conduct. For it is said: Let us search and try our ways, and return unto the Lord.[8] If he examines and finds nothing [objectionable], let him attribute it to the neglect of the study of the Torah. For it is said: Happy is the man whom Thou chastenest, O Lord, and teachest out of Thy law.[9] If he did attribute it [thus], and still did not find [this to be the cause], let him be sure that these are chastenings of love. For it is said: For whom the Lord loveth He correcteth.”[10] His perspective is grounded in a causal view of individual suffering. Although this viewpoint is compelling, it ends up leaving modern man unsatisfied. Our awareness and experience of randomness has left us traumatized and like no other time in history, Moshe’s question plagues man.
It is with some version of these concerns in mind that Emmanuel Levinas, in his Talmudic lectures, asserts that in times of suffering- those times in which God is not apparent, we must affirm His role in our lives. He explains that it is specifically when we cannot sense God’s presence in our lives that we can move from our shallow faith in a father who is always there, to a truer and more penetrating realization that He is the facticity of the world. This compelling rhetoric is on first glance sound. However, nothing separates this faith-action from the creation of a specter that is not there.
I think by considering the background to the questions that are provoked by suffering, we can find a different approach to this issue. How does this experience of questioning God come about? I am speaking strictly for those who have had an experience of God and believe in Him. When we encounter a crisis, our sense of our place in the world is turned upside down. Everything we thought we knew yesterday no longer applies. This breakdown often goes so far as to cause us to question the root of all that happens to us: God.
When the process ends in a destruction of our faith, it is because we judged God and found Him wanting. It proves that our faith was both contingent and semi-idolatrous.[11] Contingent because we believed only as long as God did what we expected or charged Him to do[12] and idolatrous because we are only interested in selling ourselves to the highest bidder, seemingly regardless of whom he is.
If, as it seems to be the case, most of us are not blown away by the question of theodicy, why does our faith only hold out until we ourselves are suffering?[13] It seems that either we are so insensitive to the rest of the world that that question only matters in regards to ourselves, or the question is not really driven by intellectual considerations. The first is true ga’avah and as the Gemara tells us, this perspective consequently pushes God out of this world.[14] On the Other hand, the second path indicates the lashing out of an individual. To defend the ground he feels has slipped from beneath his feet, he fights to carve himself out a space. His attack on God is not an intellectual one per se, rather it is the attack of a wounded animal.
In other words, the situation engenders negative feelings in the person; God becomes the bad guy. The individual disconnects from the entity that he perceives has done harm to him. However, the truth is that God is not any different today then He was yesterday. The only thing that has changed is the person’s relationship with Him. With this realization, the process of rebuilding a connection to God can begin.
We know that when an individual loses a loved one, they are charged with being chazzan- leading the congregation in blessing Hashem and publicizing His name. For the individual this isn’t the first in a series of davenings. This is not the first time that he has proclaimed “Hashem elokeinu Hashem echad,” rather this is a link in the continuous chain of a Jew’s life of realization of his creator. He has not affirmed God in the void, rather he has rather deepened his understanding of the God with whom he talked yesterday and to whom he will talk tomorrow. The onus upon us is to realize that the God who caused us this hardship is the very same God who blesses us with the breath of life. We must realize that not only does our transient suffering come from God, but that all the good in our lives is due to His will.
David Lasher is Co-Managing Editor of Kol Hamevaser
[1] I would like to thank Rav Shalom Carmy, Rav Aharon Bina, and Rav Shai Gerson as many of the ideas in this article have their origins in their words.
[2] Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures. (Dt 11:16)
1997
[3] ibid. 11:17
[4] See Makot 24b and Deut. 30:1-5
[5] Brachot 7a. The quoted Germaras have been taken, with small changes, from the
Soncino translation of the Talmud.
[6] Ex. XXXIII, 19
[7] ibid.
[8] Lam. III, 40
[9] Ps. XCIV, 12
[10] Prov. III, 12
[11] Also, see Lonely Man of Faith, 104
[12] This may be why this moment is so important to Levinas.
[13] I am not hereby dismissing the question of theodicy, rather, as I am discussing a believer, I am pointing out that since this individual’s faith was not destroyed by the question in the past, why should it be now.
[14] Sotah 5a. This move to self-centeredness is indicated by what happens to the question of theodicy when it is centered on the individual. Instead of “how could you do this,” the question becomes “how could you do this to me.”