by Rabbi Avi Billet
I had a conversation this week with someone who is struggling with what I’ll just call “God-issues.” The timing is certainly appropriate as I imagine many of us may have similar questions – though much bigger questions – when we consider the Shoah and when we consider how many people have lost their lives in defense of the State of Israel and at the hands of terrorists – numbers we remember and contemplate on Yom HaShoah and Yom HaZikaron.
It’s the question of theodicy. Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do good people suffer? How could God allow terrorist attacks?
And then to bring it home, how could God “choose” us for a mission, when that mission seems to be “to be subject to the hatred of haters?” How can we say “All that God does is for the good” when there is so much pain in the world – especially when we look at the incomprehensible numbers of the items mentioned in the first paragraph?
While I certainly don’t have good answers to these questions (I don’t know that anyone does), I’ll take one parting shot at the question through noting that most of the evil and horrors that exist in the world come from the free choices that humans make. God created a world in which human beings have a Yetzer HaTov and a Yetzer Hara, and the ability to do good with their skills and talents or to do bad or even evil.
God did not put into the order of the world that He would stop every human who chooses to engage in a criminal act or even an evil act. So the evil perpetrated by humanity is not “God’s fault.” Had He created a world in which everyone just did goodness, we’d be living in Utopia, in the Garden of Eden, or even in heaven itself, where humans would essentially be angels. There would be nothing to strive for, nothing to build, nothing to fight for, nothing to create, nothing to challenge ourselves to be better, because we’d all be perfect.
So we are left with natural events in God’s hands – such as natural disasters, weather phenomena and disease. Even in these, it is hard to measure what man’s contribution has done to change the way God intended. I am not thinking of conspiracy theories or even global warming, but of how the way humans treat the planet and certain approaches to medicine and healing are not always to our benefit (just as an example, read the warnings that come with every medication).
In our Melachim class we are learning about the drought in the time of Eliyahu, and discovering that it was Eliyahu who caused rain to stop, in response to the evil of King Achav. And while illness exists, somehow we only truly credit God (and Him Alone) with bringing people back from the dead (see Eliyahu and Elisha as examples, as well as our Shmoneh Esrei).
Which brings us to our parsha, and the affliction known as tzaraas. The Torah first gives us a depiction of tzaraas on the body, then on the garment, and then¸ later on in Parshat Metzora, we hear of tzaraas on houses. There is a passage in Vayikra Rabba which notes that the order of how these afflictions actually came into a person’s life was the opposite – first on the house, then on the garment, then on the body, if the message wasn’t received by the individual.
The Slonimer Rebbe noted that the Bnei Yisrael were beloved because we were surrounded with Mitzvos. Whether it’s Tallis and Tefillin, Mezuzos on our homes.
I’ve also heard it is said in some education institutions that the clothing we wear as observant Jews is also meant to serve as a reminder of who we are – for all of us our relatively modest garb, whatever head coverings we might wear (kippot, hats, tichels, wigs), and a line I heard in the name of a Seminary teacher to young women, “Girls, your skirt is your yarmulke!” All of these are meant to remind us that we serve a Higher Authority, and is further meant to keep us on the path we want for ourselves – of being mitzvah oriented, and not falling prey to the ways of aveirot – whether between us and God or between us and our fellow man.
Tzaraas, the Slonimer Rebbe argued, was an affliction given only to Israel, on account of how much we were beloved to God. It seems counterintuitive – but the holier we were, the more deserving we were of having God’s intervention come instantly when we strayed. We had to have a connection to a holy person (a Kohen) to tell us we had tzaraas and that we’d have to go through the process of corrective behavior.
Have you ever looked over your shoulder knowing “Maybe I shouldn’t do this” while thinking… well, noone’s watching? In such holy times, the look over the shoulder would almost predictably be a trigger for the tzaraas. If on the body, it was to rebalance the deepest level of disregard a person had for one’s personal equilibrium, while if it was on the garment or the home, it was a lower level discretion.
So the Rebbe explains that the Torah tells us of the tzaraas on the body first to demonstrate God’s love for us. What other nation was deserving of having this kind of divine intervention to correct bad behavior, in such an immediate way? It is presented in backward order in the Torah, from the way it would actually befall an individual, so that the reader will know that there are levels of kedusha that help us be a distance removed from the affliction, if the transgression was not as serious as one that would cause a reaction on the body.
To put it simply, the tzaraas affliction was meant to inspire Teshuva in an individual who was at a level that s/he would accept the rebuke, get the message, and undertake the necessary changes.
Not being in such a time, with such Divine immediacy, is a reflection of all of us being on a lower level than our people were once on. It means we don’t have God intervening in that way to help remind us to improve. As the Slonimer Rebbe puts it, “anything that happens to a person isn’t a punishment. It is merely a calling from Heaven Above.”
This still does not answer our initial questions. But it is a perspective on God’s role in the world. And perhaps it gives us pause to wonder when is God calling us, and do we get the message?
People most often ask “Why me?” when bad things happen. Maybe to raise ourselves ever higher, we can begin to ask “Why me?” when good things happen. That will help us appreciate God’s role in the world even more, and His hand in giving us bounty and goodness far more often than we might even see at this point in our lives.
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