Q&A: To You, Silence Is Praise
To You, Silence Is Praise
Question
Hello Rabbi Michael, may he live long and well,
For several years now a question has been nagging at me regarding giving thanks to God.
I don’t recall asking to be created, and if God decided to create me in the world—and moreover as a conscious human being—then seemingly He ought to provide me with the best possible conditions. Forgive me for being blunt. If parents bring a child into the world and do not invest their utmost efforts so that his life will be good, they are in the wrong. And seemingly one should also say that it is immoral for a child to thank his parents if during some years they mostly invested in him, and during other years neglected him, standing by while six million of his limbs were slaughtered.
And even though “in all their suffering, He suffers,” and when a person is in pain, what does the Divine Presence say? “My head is too heavy for Me,” etc., it is still hard for me to thank Him, for it is accepted among us that He is “the Master of all powers,” and He has the ability to prevent my pain and His pain, to do good to me and save us from the hands of the oppressors, may their names be erased, yet He chose not to do so.
If a person suffers in the world because God gave him free choice to harm himself, or allowed the forces of nature to cause him to get cancer, or allowed the Nazis to slaughter his entire family, or allowed him to perceive reality incorrectly in a way that causes him pain, that is seemingly an injustice.
The Sages teach that God is beyond good and evil, “no thought can grasp You at all,” and “any definition of divinity is spiritual idolatry,” in the words of Rabbi Kook. From this I conclude that when we say “The Lord is good to all,” we say it only metaphorically—a positive attribute we prefer to use rather than others, which would be even more pejorative and even more false. As Maimonides and the Kuzari already wrote.
Should this be understood to mean that giving thanks to God is like prayer—just as prayer is meant to affect us, and does not pertain to God Himself, so too thanking Him, which contains a certain logical failure, does not pertain to God Himself? For it seems absurd to thank Him, since He is also the source of evil in the world; rather, should we thank Him only because it makes us better people?
And perhaps this is the meaning of statements in the style of: “Even if our mouths were filled with song like the sea—we would still not suffice to thank You,” because it is not really possible to thank. And therefore, specifically silence is praise to You. It feels very non-religious to think this way, but for now it seems logical to me. Could the Rabbi explain where I am mistaken?
Thank you in advance, and happy Festival of Lights!
Answer
Hello.
You are assuming several premises here that I do not agree with. I think the Holy One, blessed be He, really did do the best for our benefit. The evil in the world (including the examples you gave) divides into two: human evil—He did not do that, and natural evil—which is an unavoidable result. Search here on the site, and in greater detail in my trilogy, in the second book.
Beyond that, there is an obligation of gratitude simply from the fact that we come from Him. This is philosophical gratitude, beyond moral gratitude, which depends on how He relates to us. See my article on gratitude (and at the end of the first book of the trilogy).
Negative attributes are a baseless invention. I wouldn’t build anything on them. When I say that the Holy One, blessed be He, is good, I mean that He is good.
Discussion on Answer
With God’s help, eve of the holy Sabbath, Parashat Anokhi E’ervenu, 5780
To Elisha—many greetings,
Why is there pain? So that we will treat the illness. The evil in the world begins first and foremost with man’s improper conduct. The desired state is that from the outset we conduct ourselves properly, without needing to reach an “explosion”; but when we have not conducted ourselves properly, suffering comes and teaches us that things cannot continue this way, and that all our powers must be mobilized to bring about a better state.
When Elisha sees in pain that his great teacher is being taken from him, and he cries bitterly, “My father, my father, the chariot of Israel and its horsemen,” he grasps that from now on he must have “a double portion of his spirit,” and he is granted doubled and redoubled energy—to fill the void that has been created and to add good with even greater force.
And so too in the awakening of the Maccabees, we did not merely return to the state of “before Antiochus,” of bearable subjugation to foreign kingdoms, but to a state of political and spiritual resurgence. Had it not been for the unnecessary feud among brothers, the kingdom of Israel would have endured as a power and would not have fallen into the hands of the Roman Empire. We too should learn from their mistakes the path to repair, so that there will not be a third destruction.
In short: suffering is what spurs us to act with all our strength to repair the world.
With the blessing of ever increasing, Shatz
Hello Elisha.
The answer is yes (the Holy One, blessed be He, is limited by logic. That is no limitation at all), and I already told you that if you search here on the site you will find discussions that explain this.
The question of whether He is good or not is answered in the texts. You can accept that or not (or offer a creative interpretation, if you see a reason to do so), but it is logical and really not baseless. The claim that one can speak about Him only in negative attributes is logically meaningless, and there is also no reason to assume it. I believe I have already discussed that here as well, and also in the second book of the trilogy.
Interesting topic…
A question regarding your answer to Elisha:
“the Holy One, blessed be He, is limited by logic. That is no limitation at all.”
What does that mean? Is He limited or not?
I’ve read a few things of yours in the past on this specific point, and they don’t help me understand the apparent contradiction in that sentence.
Can you rescue me from my confusion?
Doron, this has been explained here several times in the past.
“Here” is a state broadcasting authority.
Do you have a link or reference?
I’m really in distress by now.
https://mikyab.net/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA/%D7%9B%D7%A4%D7%99%D7%A4%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%A9%D7%9C-%D7%94%D7%A7%D7%91%D7%94-%D7%9C%D7%97%D7%95%D7%A7%D7%99-%D7%94%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%92%D7%99%D7%A7%D7%94
To the dear rabbi and public representative, many thanks for your response. But I did not understand why the fact that there is benefit in suffering leads to a conclusion about the goodness of the Lord, given that it is accepted among us that He could have brought political and spiritual resurgence to the Maccabees even without the feud among brothers, and likewise could have brought Elisha a double portion of his spirit even without the pain over his great teacher, since He is “the Master of all powers,” in Nachmanides’ phrase, and “perfect in every kind of perfection,” in Ramchal’s phrase.
Perhaps you will answer: we must merit good specifically through suffering, so that there will not be a sense of “the bread of shame”; but the Creator of the bread is also the Creator of the shame, and He is also our Creator, who could have created us without these distressing feelings.
So I remain perplexed as to how I can thank Him wholeheartedly for His goodness, hidden from my understanding.
To Rabbi Michi, again many thanks for the answer, but as Doron also wondered, I too did not understand the meaning of the paradoxical sentence, “the Holy One, blessed be He, is limited by logic. That is no limitation at all,” and I will have to trudge through your broad-handed website.
As for the goodness of the Lord, which is logical and really not baseless in your view—you can discuss that with the survivors of Treblinka and Auschwitz.
Isn’t it more logical to say that just as He is not evil, so too He is not good, but rather above these two human definitions?
Elisha, in the message above yours I referred you to the place where this was explained. As for divine evil, when I said that this is plausible and not baseless, I meant on the a priori level and from the texts. The question of how this accords with evil in the world was dealt with here in the past, and in more detail in the second book. Here I explained it briefly, and you can search for it.
Thank you.
I didn’t quite understand, though I also haven’t read the trilogy. But until I do read it—“natural evil is an unavoidable result”: does it make sense to use the phrase “unavoidable” with respect to God? Is anything impossible for Him? Is He limited?
When Leibniz said that this world is the best of all possible worlds, he was limiting God, who then cannot create a better world. Do you agree with Leibniz that God is limited?
And regarding human evil—isn’t it God who created the evil inclination in the heart of man from his youth?
And how can I thank Him for my own personally good life, when around me there is suffering and evil?
And regarding negative attributes: why are they a baseless invention, whereas the claim that God is good is not a baseless invention? Because the claim that God is good is written in the Torah? Many things in the Torah are not to be taken literally. The Torah also says that He was grieved to His heart and that His anger burned—is that literal too?
Negative attributes are a far more logical conclusion than the assertion that the Lord, blessed be He, is good.