Reflecting on Judaism

In June 2009 there was an earthquake in China which cost thousands of lives. This natural tragedy caused great anguish to Rabbi Cardozo who wrote the following article, published in the Jerusalem Post. Following the recent, even greater, natural tragedy in Haiti, one can only imagine Rabbi Cardozo's greater anguish, for he circulated the article via the internet, after details of the disaster in Haiti were known. One can understand his reaction to this apparent arbitrary taking of life, and more, which runs contrary to our religion's concept of a just, caring and loving God. I entered into correspondence with Rabbi Cardozo and since it was he who brought his feelings into the public arena I am sure that he will not mind if I, too, discuss the matter openly. He wrote as follows : -     

Machon Ohr Aaron & Betsy Spijer

God and the Earthquake

In memory of the victims in Haiti

This essay was published in the Jerusalem Post on 

10.6.08 after the earthquake in China.

Nathan Lopes Cardozo     

It has become very difficult to go to synagogue lately.  Praying to God has become a real challenge. Watching China’s great misfortune on the news, seeing children buried under rubble and collapsed school buildings, and knowing that there are thousands and thousands more of them makes it hard to speak to the Creator in a gentle tone of praise and thanksgiving. By now, we know that 41,000 have died and millions have lost their homes and all that was dear to them. An incredible disaster has happened and it was not wrought by man, but by Heaven. What religious person does not feel traumatized at such a moment? Who does not experience a moment of rebellion against the Lord of the Universe? Who does not ask whether it is still possible to stay religious after such immense pain?    

Shall we, then, ban Him from our lives, declaring Him dead and irrelevant? Consider Him a mistake in the thoughts of our forefathers? Would it help? Make more sense? Would it solve any problem? I have read many books, from Epicurus to Richard Dawkins, suggesting that I become a non-believer. Not impressive, too superficial; not enough soul and too much self interest.    

Once again, though, what the earthquake in China teaches me is that my understanding of God is far removed from the reality of His existence. I am forced once more to radically change my thoughts about God and admit my ignorance when thinking about Him. Trying to understand God is like explaining a three- dimensional reality with the help of a flat surface. I realize that there is a huge expanse beyond the shore of my reason. I am aware that there is a metaphysical murmur trying to penetrate my thinking, but it is unable to get through and stops halfway before it crashes my skull.    

I live in infinite tension; I am a citizen of two worlds which make up my life. I see and sense God everywhere, but realize that I am blind because I cannot stop converting His realities into my opinions, my belief in Him into dogmas, and His sublimity into clichés.    

In these two worlds, the overwhelming sense of God’s existence and the constant pressure asking me to deny Him become the foundations of my life.  And in that land of many contrasts and paradoxes, I need to face Him and serve Him, being pulled in opposite directions of love and bitterness towards Him. My humble prayer, the sense of awe when I observe His magnificent world, and my need to thank Him for every breath of air He grants me mixes with my need to storm the heavens and shout a protest against Him as I carry the tears of millions of Chinese fellowmen, and so many others, and place them in front of His throne. This is my lot…as a Jew.

God is more than existing. Existing is only His minimum capacity.   

He is more than existing, more than infinite, and more than timeless. He is not less than real, but more than real. When speaking about Him, I must become aware that I use words borrowed from the general sphere of human experience, words which do not fit into the world of faith. Faith, itself, is mostly starved of language. And so are my thoughts. They depend on language, and once I yearn for something beyond this, I am wordless and realize that my words and thoughts can only carry me until the moment I confront Him, after which they evaporate in meaninglessness since they need to convey that which is more than meaningfulness.       

If He would only exist, I would not believe in Him. So, I will continue to speak to Him, argue with Him, observe His commandments, knowing that when I am confronted with calamity I am confronted with the knowledge that my wisdom is inferior to dust. I become aware that I cannot even endure the heartbreaking splendor of sunset, much less my meeting with Him in the pain of this world. So I will continue to pray for the Chinese and for all people in pain and helpless.  

I wrote to Rabbi Cardozo along the following lines.  

Dear Rabbi Cardozo,    

You are an honest man for writing as you have and I am proud of you. Ever since the Haiti tragedy occurred last week I have again thought, 'what does God have to do with this'? and my answer is, He has nothing to do with it. This represents a problem I have had on my mind for many years but it has been impossible to get any rabbi to discuss it, until you have now done so. I believe that rabbis may be reluctant, and fearful, to express their doubts publicly, as you have now done.   

I have put my thoughts on this subject on to paper several times, in different essays, and distributed them to some twenty rabbis, including many that I know well, but with no response. Because of this, I go to synagogue regularly but find it difficult to recite the standard prayers. I mostly sit there and think. Last night I logged on to Google and asked for a list of the natural disasters which had occurred in 2009 and was shocked by the large number and the seriousness of some of them.      

I believe that I know how we Jews, and other religions, got in to this situation and also think that we will never get out of it.   

Thank you,

Woolf Abrahams.  

He replied  

Dear Woolf,  

Thanks for this nice email.   

The problem is that in an earthquake, the argument of freedom of will does not really work. Unless we get it into the dangerous topic that we brought it on ourselves by violating Gods words!  

I think that we have to admit that God is not so nice as we want Him to be and that He seems to have other criteria which Kierkegaard would call the  suspension of the ethical.  

Be well and love to home, Nathan Cardozo.   

I sent him a further letter.   

Dear Rabbi Cardozo,   

Further to my yesterday's letter to you, I wish to share my further thoughts with you. You wrote, 'I am aware that there is a metaphysical murmur trying to penetrate my thinking, but it is unable to get through and stops halfway before it crashes my skull'. Rabbi Cardozo, I see the problem more simplistically.    

As I mentioned yesterday, I logged on to the website of 'reliefweb' and searched for the list of 'natural disasters' from the beginning of 2009 until today. There has been well over 100 such disasters worldwide during this period, ranging from earthquakes, floods, mudslides, volcanoes, droughts, cyclones, tsunami etc. many of them bringing horrendous loss of life, particularly so, the recent tragedy in Haiti.    

Like you, I believe in God, I believe He created the world. He also created Nature, and also like you, I like many things in Nature but you and I are both shocked and dismayed at the results of other natural phenomena such as those mentioned above. So how do we react? We have options.   

Do we believe that all those who died were judged and punished, as our prayer books would have us believe. If so we must also believe that God interfered with Nature's natural functioning in order to ensure and arrange for the deaths to occur. We must then also believe that God interfered with peoples' free-will decisions to ensure that they were, where they were, so that the death penalties could be carried out.    

Or do we believe that the deaths were unfortunate coincidence and the dead happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?   

We are taught that God does not interfere with Nature for if He did we could not anticipate the results of mundane actions. 

Another teaching is, and Rambam strongly stressed it, that man has absolute freewill over his actions, within his natural temperament.    

We are also taught that the age of miracles is well and truly over.   

In a way you are more fortunate than I. You think that 'you can storm the heavens and shout a protest against Him as I carry the tears of millions of Haitian fellowmen'. I wish you luck.   

I think that God is not involved in altering Nature and that Nature will have its way. Prayer, and shouting protest, will not affect it.   

I am sharing this exchange with a number of other rabbis. As I wrote yesterday, you are very brave and honest in bringing your thoughts into the public arena  and I have no reason not to share my thoughts on the subject. It will be interesting to learn how other rabbis react.

Sincerely,

Woolf Abrahams     

I received just two replies from the rabbis to whom I wrote. The first wrote 'Completely agree.'

I give the exchange I had with the second rabbi.    

Dear Woolf,  

You most probably have become aware that I don't often write answers to some of your questions.  Essentially, while I feel we have tremendous respect for one another and a liking, both of us are on a different line of thinking.  Therefore its difficult to communicate.

Your last question to Rabbi Cardozo is obviously one of the most difficult questions in Jewish thought "Why so many catastrophes?"  

We will never have an answer for this.  We certainly cannot say that all those who were maimed or killed were deserving of punishment.  There were so many young innocent children and even adults.    

There is also a saying that "once the Angel of Death is given the power to take G-d's revenge, even the innocent suffer.  

All of us, I think, who have experienced life, recognise that there is no real answer to your question. - only if you are on that line of thought, that we accept G-d's decisions, even when they seem irreconcilable with man's humaneness and pain, when he sees other suffer.  

Maybe we be blessed to be able to accept what seems so difficult to accept.  

Rabbi XXXXXX  
 

I answered the rabbi along the following lines.    

Dear Rabbi,  

Thank you for taking the trouble of writing to me. The problem under discussion is constantly in my mind and whilst you acknowledge that there is a problem, generally our prayer books don't reflect it. We, as a community, say our prayers glibly as though the content of our prayers are absolutely definite. For example, Ha'shem, Ha'shem, El rachum ve'chanun, (God, God, merciful and gracious, etc.), was said at a specific time for a specific purpose. But the congregation sings it along as though it is a general statement of fact. If you think that it is, indeed, a statement of fact and should be said as such, please show me how it could possibly apply, by any stretch of the imagination, to the hundreds of naturally caused tragedies that occur each year. As you admit, such tragedies run counter to any humane concept of natural justice as defined by the Torah. Should we say that God is unjust?  

My question was not 'Why so many catastrophes'. I roughly know the answer to that. The earth has a very hot and liquid centre, which is constantly shifting,  causing fierce movements to its surface. My question was 'Does God deliberately control these movements'? 'Are they ‘moved’ by His decision'? My answer is, No! He is not involved, Nature takes its course and God does not interfere with the Nature He created. Incidentally, this belief is also what some rabbis taught.  

If only we gave sufficient thought to our prayers then my reaction could be different. Should you reply that we can't understand the mind of God then please show me where God asks for all the numerous formal prayers we recite. The Amorayim and Tanayim (the compilers of the Talmud) didn't include many prayers in their daily prayer formula and they would have known. When did 'Ha'shem, Ha'shem' enter into our prayer book? I would guess it was at a very much later date.   

Sayings which quote the 'Angel of death' really have no place in a serious discussion. Whoever quoted it, how would he know?   

I am comforted that the only other reply yet received from a well known rabbi, is that he completely agrees with me.  

Thanks again, I enjoy the exchange.  

Woolf.   
 

For many years I could not accept that our prayer book reflected reality. I was reassured and supported in this belief when I read a book written by Prof. Reif. The fact is, according to Professor Stefan C. Reif’, as stated in his book ‘Judaism and Hebrew prayer’, that obligatory worship was a Temple activity only, and that there were no communal prayer services inside Palestine before the destruction of the Jerusalem shrine. It is generally agreed that communal prayer came into being as a substitute for the Temple sacrifices. He does stress (page 48f) that communal services existed, in Batei Knesset, among some sects outside Palestine just before this period.  Jews attended them to do business, study and read the Torah, pray and discuss matters of general interest.    

I believe that many, if not most, of our current prayers were written by poets and mystics, and they were gradually introduced into our prayer book and for this reason we misunderstand, we are conditioned to misunderstand, the inter-relationship between God and His world as implied by Rabbi Cardozo in his letter to me, above. Very few prayers, I suggest, were written by rationalists and philosophers.   

Prof. Reif explains that personal prayers have always existed, but not all of the early sages agreed that communal prayer services were an appropriate substitute for the sacrifices. When the concept of communal prayer services was generally accepted, its liturgy was arrived at during the Talmudic period by consensus. It probably comprised the Shema, the Ten Commandments, the Priestly Blessings, the first and last three paragraphs of the Amidah, short passages from the Torah; psalms and perhaps, other readings. For R. Joshua Ben Levi, it was sufficient to thank God in the morning for bringing him through the night; to thank God in the evening for allowing him to see the sunset; to beg God in the evening to bring him through the next night (page 102). I have tried to summarise Prof. Reif’s detailed discussion on prayer as accurately as I can and hope I have done him justice.   Professor Stefan C. Reif’, was formerly the Director of Genizah Research Unit, Cambridge; Head of Oriental Division, Cambridge University Library and Professor of Medieval Studies, Cambridge. 

This essay discusses natural tragedies; whether they are caused by God's intervention or by natural causes. One aspect that has not been mentioned is the fact that there were three main Jewish sects at the time of the Second Temple; (1st) The Priests (forerunners of the Sadducees), (2nd) the Essens and (3rd) the Pharisees, (forerunners of the rabbis).  

The history books describe the beliefs of these three sects, simplistically, as follows. The Priests (Sadducees) believed that God does not intervene, the Essens who believed that God always intervenes and the Pharisees (rabbis) believed in both. Moses gave the the Torah to the Priests to be our teachers, and they were our teachers up till the time of say, the Maccabeans when the Pharisees replaced them.   

So the Jewish concept that God does not intervene is older than the concept that He does, and this supports my belief.