Q&A: Everything the Merciful One Does — Is It for the Good?
Everything the Merciful One Does — Is It for the Good?
Question
There is a famous story in Berakhot 60b, as follows:
Rabbi Huna said in the name of Rav in the name of Rabbi Meir, and likewise it was taught in the name of Rabbi Akiva: A person should always accustom himself to say, “Whatever the Merciful One does, He does for the good.” Like this incident involving Rabbi Akiva, who was traveling on the road. He came to a certain town and asked for lodging, but they did not give him any. He said: “Whatever the Merciful One does, He does for the good.” He went and stayed in the field, and he had with him a rooster, a donkey, and a lamp. A wind came and extinguished the lamp, a cat came and ate the rooster, and a lion came and ate the donkey. He said: “Whatever the Merciful One does, He does for the good.” That night a troop came and took the town captive. He said to them: “Did I not tell you that everything the Holy One, blessed be He, does is all for the good!”
And the question is: where exactly is the good here? This is preventing one harm by means of another harm! The preferable path, seemingly, would have been that no troop should come at all, and Rabbi Akiva would not need to lose his rooster, donkey, and lamp!
Answer
A very good question. The same question arises regarding any thanksgiving to the Holy One, blessed be He, for a miracle and rescue. After all, He also brought about the trouble in the first place (a car accident, illness, and the like). The answer I give myself is that these are opportunities to thank Him for the world He created. When a person experiences rescue, it makes a stronger impression on him and creates more of an opportunity to give thanks. But the thanks are not really for that specific rescue itself, but something more general. This is especially true in our generations, in which, in my opinion, the Holy One, blessed be He, is not involved at all. So here the whole idea of thanking for a particular event falls away completely, and what remains is only gratitude for the creation of the world and its maintenance. About this I wrote that a “miracle” that happens to us is an opportunity to thank for everything.
And by the way, it is true that everything the Holy One, blessed be He, does is for the good, but that good is sometimes not pleasant for us. And the Hazon Ish already wrote in Faith and Trust that trust does not mean that things will turn out well, but that what should happen is what will happen.
Discussion on Answer
And what about giving thanks for being saved from illness or wild animals?
The questioner assumes that not everything is for the good. Or more precisely, he assumes that he knows what is good and what is not good.
If he understood that everything is for the good, he would not ask.
The difficulty is only a difficulty for someone who thinks that every leaf that falls in autumn is made to fall by God, every spider that devours a fly is made to devour it by God, and every time a person stubs his finger below, God made him stub it. And that really is a strange view, and those who follow in the path of Maimonides do not think that way.
But even though there is individual providence, as a rule the world follows its natural course, and lions prey in order to feed their cubs and choke things for their lionesses, and God does not intervene but lets them do as they wish. Why? Here your well-known approach comes to our aid: that the compassionate and gracious God is very interested in laws of nature, and apparently there are no better laws that would advance His hidden purposes with fewer collateral damages. And when God does intervene on rare occasions, it is appropriate to thank Him.
When a rescue is out of the ordinary, then if one believes in individual providence one can attribute the rescue to unusual divine intervention. Especially Rabbi Akiva, for whom, according to a person’s spiritual level, so is the measure of help that God extends to him, since “He guards the feet of His pious ones.” Therefore, when an unusual incident happened to him—he presumably was not negligent enough to place a lamp where an ordinary wind would extinguish it, so this was apparently an unusual wind; and a cat does not usually attack roosters, and a lion does not come into an inhabited area—these are eyebrow-raising things—he took it in his own mind to be the hand of providence. In general, it is always possible that the rescue too is part of the laws of nature, but if one believes in providence then it is certainly also possible that this is providence, and at the very least, because of the doubt, one gives thanks.
“The same question arises regarding any thanksgiving to the Holy One, blessed be He, for a miracle and rescue”
And the same question applies to those who pray to be saved from trouble. After all, whatever He does — is for the good.
To Mr. Aharon Tabory,
I’d be happy to share with you an incident involving the preacher Rabbi Reuven Karlenstein of blessed memory.
About 30 years ago, Rabbi Reuven needed a kidney transplant. He left his family and flew to Borough Park, where he waited two years for a kidney transplant, but none came. (Because of his blood type.)
One of the community activists suggested moving to a hospital in San Francisco. Rabbi Reuven raised a concern about not knowing the language there, unlike in Borough Park, and the activist suggested flying with him together. The flight took 6 hours, and they arrived at 3 in the morning.
At 6 a.m., police knocked on the door of their hotel room and informed them that the activist’s wife was urgently looking for him. Two suitable kidneys had been found for Rabbi Reuven in Borough Park.
The activist panicked and immediately called Borough Park, but he was a quarter of an hour too late, and the kidneys had been given to the next people on the list.
Crushed, the activist returned to Rabbi Reuven. Rabbi Reuven sensed something and got the truth out of him. He immediately began dancing and thanking God. The activist asked him: What is there to be happy about? Rabbi Reuven answered that he was “thanking God for the miracle that they did not put into my body a kidney that was not mine.” He then called his family again to inform them of the great miracle that had happened to him.
Most likely, anyone else would already have been convinced that a heavenly decree had been issued against him regarding a kidney…
In any case, Rabbi Reuven waited another two months, and a suitable kidney was found, and he lived another 30 years in good health.
And the other kidneys?
The activist followed up on the transplant recipients, and it turned out that they lasted a month and died, because the kidneys had been contaminated internally.
Is there meaning and reason in thanking the Holy One, blessed be He, for the creation of the world?
The Dissenter, allow me to refer you to this response: https://forum.otzar.org/viewtopic.php?t=33741&start=120#p365722
It is a response to two stories brought there earlier, similar to the story about Rabbi Karlenstein.
The troops have free choice, and God does not want to prevent them from having the ability to raid a city when they want to (or to influence the balance of considerations within each of them). That is not the case with wind, a lion, and a cat, which presumably do not have free choice, and it is easier for God to intervene through them (and even if they do have some kind of choice, there is less importance in preserving it).