Q&A: A Righteous Person Who Suffers?
A Righteous Person Who Suffers?
Question
We all see great righteous people who have been caught up in wrongdoings, with one offense or another.
I personally believe that there are righteous people who, through the power of Torah, attain certain spiritual heights, can perceive things, and can influence reality in the sense of “the righteous person decrees and the Holy One, blessed be He, fulfills.”
And I would like to know whether it is naive to think that perhaps a righteous person might take it upon himself to be falsely accused in order to sweeten the harsh decrees hanging over the Jewish people?
It is written that there will be people who oppose the Messiah—and today we see righteous figures who, on the one hand, are opposed and accused of terrible things, and on the other hand there are miracle stories told about them.
And more generally, can I, as an ordinary person, decide matters involving righteous figures, or is it better for me not to get into it?
Thank you,
Answer
Unfortunately, I overlooked this question.
Miracle stories are usually baseless inventions. Rabbi Moshe Feinstein once heard a story about a great rabbi and said to the storyteller: if you heard what people tell about me while I’m still alive, you wouldn’t believe any story about someone who’s already dead. (And I once heard this story itself too.) Therefore, the fact that there are stories should not affect your position.
The other claims raised here also strike me as inventions. Anything is possible, but I know of no indication that such things happen. The “righteous people” who are accused—if they were found guilty (Motti Alon, Eliezer Berland, and the like)—then they probably are not such great righteous people.
Discussion on Answer
I don’t deal with the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), because in my opinion you can learn almost nothing from it, and its interpretation can be done in many different ways, and in many cases there is no real way to decide what is correct.
Not very long ago I trolled a certain troll here (I now see that the messages were deleted, as was proper and fitting) who linked the punishment of the Haredim to their attitude toward the saint of Berland, and I argued to him (something I heard with my own ears from several of that holy man’s followers) that surely the rabbi did everything in his power to make mystical repairs, and that his understanding is profound, etc.
Rabbi, apropos of the question, I was reminded a bit of your attitude toward the Christians’ videos: how do you actually interpret Isaiah 53—as referring to the Jewish people as a whole, or to a specific figure (even Jeremiah)?
And how does the Rabbi understand the idea of substitution, that the suffering of the righteous person or righteous people atones for others? It hardly appears in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). But there it appears in an extreme and almost isolated form.