Q&A: Justifying Nature
Justifying Nature
Question
Hello Rabbi,
In tractate Shabbat, around page 32, there appears a series of aggadic passages dealing with the reasons why a person's children die. (If I remember correctly—tzitzit, theft, mezuzah, Torah study, vows, the sins of the generation, and more.)
My question is this: in their time, child mortality was extremely common (as Yuval Noah Harari described well in his book, regarding the dramatic change in children reaching adulthood today compared to the past, even in royal families), so perhaps the sages of the Talmud, who saw children dying everywhere, felt a need to explain it away and attribute it to many external causes that would help preserve the power of religion? That is to say: lots of children are dying? Let's derive religious benefit from that and stir people to repentance even though there is no connection.
What do you think?
Answer
Quite apart from the number of deaths, one has to discuss whether there need to be reasons for the deaths of children. I think that at least nowadays (when the Holy One, blessed be He, is not intervening), no. Repentance is always good, and if there is an event that awakens us, then it is certainly worth making use of it. But without lying to ourselves.
By the way, I'm not sure the Sages themselves meant to make a factual claim here. It could also be exhortation to be careful about observing these matters.