when i heard that people were saying that hurricane katrina happened because of the gaza pull out i was sure someone was making that one up. why would poor blacks in new orleans who probably never have met a jew in their life be the receptors of the punishment for the israeli pull out from gaza? its too pat. one can connect every dot to form any conclusion one wants. i don't buy it.
after the disaster in haiti someone told me that they thought this happened because the people of haiti practise avodah zarah. well isnt that a simple solution.
others like to say that the holocaust began in germany because reform judaism began there. well, what about the fact that at the same time sara schnierer started the bais yaakov movement to counter the spiritual decline and many of her students were brutally murdered al kiddush hashem.
the problem i have with all these "reasons" for these tragedies is because they make life too simplistic. furthermore, we do not have any prophets in modern times, so there is NO WAY of knowing that any of these conjectures of these rabbis are real or not. there is however a reason we do not have prophets these days. this i do know. probably because if we knew the true reasons for these tragedies we wouldn't be able to handle it or perhaps no one would listen to them anyway, so its better they are not around for us not to listen to. or we would be too petty if we knew the real reasons these tragedies have befallen mankind. oops! we are being petty which is exactly why we dont have prophets or know the true reasons for any travesty .
all this finger pointing is rather useless. bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people and though we have to believe there is a reason it is not necessary for us to know what the reason is . sometimes its best to just put one's faith in hashem and assume he has his reasons but we as people aren't wise enough to understand them. THIS is what i was always taught.
4 comments:
"...or perhaps no one would listen to them anyway, so its better they are not around for us not to listen to"- There is evidence that even in the First Temple period people were unsure which prophets were correct and which were false. Only later on did certain ones become canonized and others ostracized. So even then things weren't entirely simple. (Then again most Israelites were polytheists, so they had their own prophets anyway.)
interesting thought.
"after the disaster in haiti someone told me that they thought this happened because the people of haiti practise avodah zarah."
Never knew Haiti is the world capital of avodah zarah. You can learn so much new stuff by listening to frummies...
Well, believing prophecy today is no different than believing in prophecy in the days of yore. People were less skeptical then and more readily accepted what they were told, and time cemented it. If you believe in prophecy 2000 years ago, it's because you were told it's true by your parents, teachers and surroundings. There is no evidence that they were prophets. So, too, if your parents, teachers, and peers tell you the tragedy in haiti happened because of XYZ, you should accept such a proposition just as much you accept past prophecy....
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