For thousands of years, we have been asking why G-D lets bad things happen to good people and good things happen to very bad ones. On Yom Kipur we read the medieval poem Eyleh Ezkera which is a moving story of great rabbis tortured death for defending their faith against Rome and Christianity. Why did they suffer? All G-D can say, according to the Talmud, is that “It was My will.”
There were earlier Mesopotamian and Egyptian stories of good people suffering. But none that go into such theological and poetical detail. In the pagan world, humans are just the playthings of the gods. Think of Ulysses thrown around the Mediterranean by competing gods and goddesses. The mention of Satan in the Book of Job came from a period when many cultures believed that there were two conflicting forces at work in the universe, a force for good and another one for bad. On the face of it, this story ascribes evil to Satan. But clearly, it is not the case, because here Satan has no independent power. Satan can only function with the permission of G-D.
The Talmud offers many different responses, to this issue; in this world and the next. But the most moving and comprehensive attempt to find an answer is in the Biblical Book of Iyov, we know as Job. It tries to explain the inexplicable. Did we do something to deserve it? Does G-D really care or intervene?
The book introduces us to Satan. The Torah usually uses the word STN as a verb meaning to block, to oppose or get in the way negatively. Anything that prevents us from doing the right thing. Only towards the end of the Tanakh, does Satan become personified. But in post-exilic Judaism, he is not seen as an opponent or competitor of G-D. Rather as one of G-D’s underlings.
At a gathering of angelic forces in Heaven, G-D asks Satan whether he is not impressed by how G-D-fearing and righteous Job is. Satan replies that Job is good only because everything has gone well for him in life. G-D allows Satan to test him. Job’s property is taken away, his children are killed, his health taken away from him. Job sits on the earth in mourning and curses the day he was born. But he neither curses nor blames G-D.
The book is devoted to a series of conversations, in difficult and poetic Hebrew, between three friends who come to comfort Job. Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. Often called “Jobs Comforters.” Ironically, they do not comfort him at all, only agitate him more. They sit with him on the earth for seven days in silence. From which comes the custom (more adhered to nowadays in the breach) of not starting a conversation with mourners until they start.
Job wonders why he was born if he has to suffer. And how can a human possibly come up to Gods expectations. We, all of us, inevitably fail to some degree. Humans are born to toil, to struggle.
Eliphaz replies that G-D has created an amazing world for us to inhabit. So that when bad things happen it is G-D disciplining and directing us to try to be better. Things will turn out well in the end. But then why does G-D seem to punish some and not others? Job can see no logic, no hope and just wants his agony to end.
Bildad says that G-D only punishes those who deserve it. It is just that Job-like all humans may not know the whole story. Perhaps his family did wrong. G-D cannot be unjust says Bildad. We just do not know how G-D works. But Job replies that we cannot expect G-D to be just in the way humans can be just because G-D is not human. Besides if Job has done wrong without realizing it, then it is G-D’s fault for making him that way. Why does G-D create humans altogether if they inevitably fail.
Zophar believes that Job is suffering because G-D wants him to. Bildad argues that there is a reward for good deeds or punishment for bad. He seems to be saying the world is random. Zophar says that G-D punishes those he loves. But what kind of love is that? Job is annoyed with the comforters who trot out the conventional banal wisdom. Job wants to challenge G-D directly. To put G-D on trial. Then Elihu arrives and says that G-D does indeed care. If G-D does not respond in the way we expect G-D to, it is because G-D does not want to for G-D’s own reasons.
Finally, G-D responds angrily asking them all to look at creation and see what G-D has done. It is so beyond human imagination or capability. Humans shouldn’t think they are so important as to try to understand G-D. What do humans really understand? Job capitulates. G-D is angry with the comforters and demands they atone for their failure to comfort Job. G-D rewards Job by returning his wealth and giving him more children.
Notice that there is absolutely no mention of an afterlife or reward in the next world throughout the Book of Job. And the idea that G-D allows the world to function without intervening contradicts the Talmudic idea that not a blade of grass moves on earth without G-D commanding it. You might even say the book is heretical in terms of orthodoxy nowadays.
The simple person, Tuvya the Milkman, believes that the good are rewarded even if they suffer. They are being tested like Abraham. And G-D knows best and has a much longer view and agenda. Everything that happens, happens for the best. Goodness will be rewarded, if not in this world then in the next. The rationalist, on the other hand, cannot make sense of a world of divine intervention if tragedies like the Shoah are allowed to happen. One simply has to stand silent in the face of horror. It is not that G-D does not care, or is remote or unfeeling. The mystics say that G-D suffers too when we do. Neither on the other hand, does G-D do whatever everyone asks for. It’s like expecting G-D to ensure that competing soccer teams at the same game both win. G-D is the universe and more, and it is this sense of being part of something so much bigger than we are, that we cannot totally comprehend.
G-D is hidden as the Kabbalists say. We humans have to accept our fate and make the best of our lives. Some of us are created with better brains, healthier or stronger bodies. Some of us waste our talents. Others achieve far more than anyone would have expected. The person of simple faith has no questions. The rationalist has no answers. The Mishna in Avot honestly admits that we simply do not know. We cannot explain it. The G-D that is small enough for my mind is not big enough for me.
I often hear such nonsense spouted by people (doubtless well-meaning) who claim to know the mind of G-D and how G-D works. They say such things as that G-D only tests you to the limits of your capacities. Or G-D only gives you as much as you can bear. As if G-D has nothing better to do than to play games with us.
Rabbis, ministers, counselors, and friends are desperate to help (or to enrich themselves). They mean well but they often spout rubbish at houses of mourning or tragedies. They try to give simple answers when there are none. The greatness of Job is that he rejects false, irrational arguments. And yet his sense of G-D is so overwhelming and powerful that he accepts it as it is. Regardless of what may happen. And that is his comfort.
Nowhere in our tradition does it say that pain, suffering is good or necessary. But we do regard it as something we can learn from. That is as they say, after the event has happened one can draw conclusions from it.
At this time of the year, we have time to think about such issues. G-D is indeed a different kind of phenomenon. We can only know G-D in our own minds. And we can know how we are to behave and cope with life through Torah. G-D can offer an emotional support structure, even when we do not understand what or why something is happening to us. Just as a mother can only comfort a child in pain through her presence and love. The one thing we know for certain is that it is up to us to make the most of our lives on this earth, as human beings and as Jews, whatever life throws at us for better or worse.
If anyone ever tells you he or she knows how G-D works, you know you are in the presence of a charlatan.