And does the Rabbi agree with that claim? Doesn’t it seem cruel and disproportionate to allow mothers to cook tender infants who had not sinned? The descriptions from the destruction are hard to read, and it seems cruel and harsh on an unbelievable level. Is that what a compassionate and gracious father looks like? Would you educate your own children that way?

Even regarding the Holocaust, it is not enough to say that it was the work of human beings. It is still difficult why the Holy One, blessed be He, did not intervene and prevent it.
As for the destruction, human beings suffer terribly all the time. For a given person, it does not really matter that there are thousands around him suffering as well. So the difficulty raised by the destruction or the Holocaust does not seem to me harder than the terrible suffering of human beings in every place and time.
As for the very assumption that the destruction was an act of God, that is reasonable regarding the First Temple, since there were prophets there who foretold it. But regarding the Second Temple, I am not at all sure that it was not a human act.
In general, I do not have a good explanation for God’s mode of conduct. But it is clear that this should not be compared to a parent’s education of his children. In particular because children are not guilty even if they do not do what is good in their father’s eyes, whereas adults are guilty. Also because God knows better what the consequences of actions are and how critical they are, and apparently this is more severe than wrongs done by children. So these comparisons make no sense at all. I assume that those things that really are His acts are probably a response to actions with very grave consequences.

In Ezekiel’s prophecies it is told how he rose up on the chariot and left the Temple.

Thank you for the patient answers; if I may, one more thing.

I agree that the answer that this was done by human beings does not answer everything, but still there is an essential difference between a situation in which the Holy One, blessed be He, chose a general policy of non-providence, and does not intervene in any situation even when there is a Holocaust,
and a situation in which His policy seems to be intervention, and nevertheless He does not intervene in such a great evil as the destruction.
The difference is that in a state of affairs of an interventionist policy, there is much more room to think that this is personal planning by the Holy One, blessed be He, and not merely His non-intervention in human wrongdoing.

That is also the difference between the suffering of one person and the suffering of an entire people; there is more reason to assume that the suffering of a whole nation is planned in some way than the random suffering of this or that individual.

As for the comparison to a father and son, that is the comparison the Sages make, but you may disagree, and I also more or less accept that… But even if one chooses the comparison of a king and a people that is mature and responsible for its actions, this is a king who seems very cruel, and it is hard to call him compassionate and gracious…

In conclusion: what benefit did you actually want to achieve with your argument about the Holocaust, that it was done by human beings, if that does not answer it, and the difficulty is not all that great either?
Thank you very much!

As I wrote, in a situation where He is involved, then the destruction was His act and not merely a case of His not intervening. The comparison between one person and many does not touch the question of why He does not intervene. The law for one is the law for a hundred.
My claim regarding the Holocaust is that in principle evil is the result of human actions. There is a general policy of God not to intervene, and it is hard to draw a line from when He is supposed to intervene instead—why doesn’t the suffering of one person justify intervention? But if He goes back to intervening in everything, then we have no choice, and there is no meaning to any of our actions or to the creation of the world בכלל.
The example of the Holocaust came to explain the principle. I did not mean to derive anything special from the Holocaust.
As stated, I do not think you can conclude that He is cruel. In a period when He managed things, apparently one needs to understand the significant consequences of our actions and the necessity of punishment in order to judge His actions. And in a period when He is not involved—I already explained there that it is very important to Him to give us choice, and His involvement neutralizes our choice. Without that, there is no point in the creation of the world at all.
People inflict things on themselves—that is, on other people, but this is an indictment of humanity as a whole—and we should not come with complaints against the Holy One, blessed be He, who gave us the freedom to do this.

A demagogic question.
What is special about the Holocaust or the destruction? Human beings die every day.

Why don’t you ask why God does not intervene and prevent old age, disease, and death?

Answer: It is not God and what happens that bothers you, but your difficulty in grasping that we human beings are cruel.

People die every day, and a Holocaust and a destruction do not happen every day. Old age is natural, and a Holocaust is not natural. Need I find more differences?
You did not explain why the question is demagogic; you simply declared that it is so, and added a demagogic statement asking why I do not ask about old age, disease, and death. Who said I do not ask? In my opinion that indeed is a question…
But there are levels of difficulty: level 1, old age, disease, and death. 2, a Holocaust that took place in a period when there was no providence. 3, a destruction in a period when there was prophecy and providence.
Do you have a satisfactory answer to all this? If so, excellent. What does demagoguery have to do with it?
Actually, the Rabbi’s last answer does relatively set my mind at ease…

It is demagogic because, factually, far more people die from old age and disease than in the emotional events you mentioned.

If what bothered you was death, you should have asked about old age and disease. That is to say, what bothers you is not death but the gimmicks.

Let’s stop here. This is not the culture of discussion I am used to, and I greatly doubt it can lead to the investigation of truth. You do not know me and have no way to make assumptions about my hidden intentions. If you have a claim about the substance of the matter, make it and I will be happy to discuss it in a substantive way. If not, let’s stop here.

Indeed, I did not try at all to conduct a discussion. It was a general remark pointing out that from the outset the question was not meant to investigate the truth, but quite the opposite: it was meant to evade the truth.
And the truth is that human beings are cruel and stupid, and they die with or without connection to their cruelty and stupidity.

Simcha, apparently you do not know the site well enough. The way of “The Last Decisor,” as his name suggests, is not to conduct discussions but to make forceful declarations. That is how his words should be treated (or not treated—that is what I usually do).

🙂

With God's help, 12 Av 5781

Already in the Torah, the Holy One, blessed be He, warned that violating the covenant with Him could bring exile and destruction. These things were said in the Torah and repeated by the prophets in the generations close to the destruction. Even decades before the destruction of the Second Temple, there were ominous signs. The Sanhedrin left the Chamber of Hewn Stone because murderers had become numerous. And Rabbi Tzadok fasted for forty years, foreseeing the approaching destruction.

The warnings of prophets and sages in advance did not prevent the destruction, because the people did not listen to them, but they were still useful, because after the destruction the people realized that the warnings had come true, and a process of repentance and repair began. After the first destruction, the severe sins of idolatry, sexual immorality, and bloodshed disappear from the horizon of the Jewish people. Only hundreds of years later did hatred and polarization arise and bring the second destruction.

After the second destruction as well, a process of rehabilitation and re-formation of the entire people began around the leadership of the sages in Yavne and its successors: Usha and Shefaram, Tzippori and Tiberias, and the academies of Babylonia. The polarization and rift that marked the end of the days of the Second Temple gave way to relatively unified leadership centered on the Oral Torah and its sages. That relative unity lasted about 1,800 years until the outbreak of the Enlightenment and modernity, which brought down the walls of separation between Israel and the cultures of the nations of the world.

During the days of exile there were processes of calm and integration into the cultures of the surrounding peoples, which ended in the awakening of gentile hatred, persecutions, and expulsions. When Jews awoke from the illusion of an imagined refuge in Spain or in Germany, gates opened in other lands, in the Middle East and in Eastern Europe, and so on in cycles, as described by the Meshekh Chokhmah on the portion of Bechukotai.

The peak of the mistaken thinking that one could break through the iron barrier between Israel and the nations and reach a state in which “the house of Israel will be like all the nations” reached its height in Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, when Jews thought that European “enlightenment” would allow the erasure of distinct Jewish identity, until we could think that “Berlin is Jerusalem.”

But here the warning of the prophet Ezekiel was fulfilled against the assumption that “the house of Israel will be like all the nations.” The Holocaust was the fulfillment of his prophecy: “With a mighty hand and with outpoured fury I will rule over you.” Those very nations with whom we thought to merge spat us out and persecuted us to destruction, and their terrible hatred reminded us that we have no escape but to return to our land and proudly preserve our Jewish identity.

The destructions are hard and terrible, but they also heal us and “return us to the track” to which we were intended—to cleave to our divine mission.

With blessing, Amihuz Yaron, may his light shine

The Second World War was also the beginning of a process of worldwide repair. If until that terrible war, war had been an inseparable part of world culture, the trauma of a world war with sixty million dead, and the development of weapons of mass destruction that created a “balance of terror,” produced a trauma that removed war from the world’s “lexicon,” and “the land has been quiet” for more than 75 years!

Rabbi Michi,
with regard to the destruction of the First Temple—could you describe how, in your opinion, God was involved?
The Babylonians who set fire to the Temple—did they not have free choice and behave like robots?
And if they did have free choice, in what ways did God assist them?
Was it through open miracles or hidden ones?

I have no idea. I know there were prophecies about it and it was fulfilled, so apparently it was from God. If He did it through a mosquito in Nebuchadnezzar’s head or a fly on the city wall, ask Him. How should I know?