Yoni, you didn’t ask for my opinion, but I’ll give it anyway. In my opinion, the rabbi’s answer is plainly unsatisfactory for this question. A dry, philosophical justification for a bloodbath and a tragedy factory that has been operating day after day for millions of years. Try to be honest with yourself and think whether this answer really satisfies you. In my opinion, if you believe in God and you’re honest with yourself, there’s no escaping the admission that He is monstrously evil (at least by your standards). It’s already more comfortable to believe that there simply isn’t anyone to blame for this horrible mechanism.

Sh, in order to claim such a thing, first of all you need to think that, logically speaking, a better world is possible (without losing things that would make it even worse). What was written in the answer above is that there is no reason to think this is logically possible. If it isn’t logically possible, then your claim is meaningless nonsense.

I know, Danny, I understand the rabbi’s excuse. To cripple God and claim that He had no choice but to create such a cruel world. If He nevertheless had a choice, and He chose to create this world (instead of creating nothing), then He is guilty. And in any case, is this really the God you believe in? A cripple who isn’t capable of creating a good world? That is certainly not the God most of Judaism believes in (in fact it seems that what He did in Genesis chapter 1 was precisely to create a good world, it’s just not clear why He also put there a serpent and the Tree of Knowledge), and in my opinion the whole excuse is forced and strained (but believe whatever you want, of course).

Sh,
If anything, it’s crippling yourself, not God.
The claim is that you are saying meaningless things (assuming they contain a logical contradiction), and complaining without understanding what you’re complaining about.
In other words, for some reason we do not know, this is the best option for a world, and the very fact that we ask and wonder stems from our limited understanding. It doesn’t seem to me that this departs from what “most of Judaism believes” (I’d say this is the classic answer).
It certainly makes more sense than the option you suggested (that He is evil—which is really logical nonsense).

By the way, in Genesis that really was a world that couldn’t endure.

Sh, it seems you actually didn’t understand what I said.
I explained that creating a world with rigid laws that brings about all the results of our world without the bad parts is like a round triangle (= creating a triangle but without the corners). Therefore, one who cannot do that is not crippled. It’s impossible to do such a thing because it does not exist at all and is not defined. For example, can the Holy One, blessed be He create a rigid world that behaves non-rigidly? And if not—is He crippled because of that?

Besides, if we think a little, we’ll understand that it isn’t all that cruel. Apparently animals don’t have consciousness that experiences suffering at a high level, and usually they die quickly (and no animal is sad after losing a close relative).

And when one animal eats another dead animal, that really isn’t cruel, and there is no suffering and/or wickedness on anyone’s part. Granted, to an ideological vegan it may look that way at first glance, but the reasonable person understands that this is the way of the world, and bottom line there’s no problem with it.

Right, and I only pointed out that this limitation is something you attribute to God, but it seems that most rabbis throughout the generations דווקא thought that God absolutely could create a better world—in fact, they spoke about the World to Come. This whole idea that it is logically impossible to create a better world seems ridiculous to me. You can insist that the burden of proof is on me (even though I’d say this is actually a pretty intuitive statement, that if you asked any random person on the street whether God could have created a better world he would answer yes), but I think it should be obvious to anyone with a little respect for the suffering of others that this is nothing more than dishonest philosophizing. In any case, sorry for the sharp tone; I said what I think, without any special pretension of convincing anyone of my position.
David, mammals definitely feel suffering at a high level, and I truly can’t imagine anything scarier than a lion chasing you down and catching you. Try putting yourself in their place. Go watch National Geographic yourself and hear their screams, and then say it isn’t cruel.
And of course a mother would be sad when her son dies! Why do you think they protect them with their bodies?

That too is not correct. Throughout the generations they spoke of the “World to Come,” which can come only after this world.
No one spoke of a “World to Come” that exists on its own and was not preceded by this world, and no one thought that such a world would be better in the overall accounting.
It’s also not clear why you think there is dishonesty in this claim. It sounds to me like a logical and reasonable claim.

And I’ll just add that this whole idea that it is preferable to create a world in which one can fulfill commandments rather than create a world without suffering seems horrible in itself. I truly do not understand how a sane person can call an entity that prefers to create a world full of suffering and evil in which one can worship it and keep its arbitrary commandments, rather than a world in which there is no suffering and no Torah, good (read that twice maybe). All these justifications for suffering are extremely infuriating, and it would already be preferable to adopt God’s position in Job, that we simply understand nothing. (Not that I agree with it, but it is certainly preferable to these ridiculous excuses.)

Danny, that is exactly the crippling I was talking about. Do you seriously think that if I asked an average religious person whether God could give someone the life of the World to Come without his having lived in this world, he would say, “No, prove that it’s even logically possible!”? Obviously this is a non-intuitive rationalization in order to keep believing that He is good. Again, suit yourself.

Sh, you are assuming that the commandments are arbitrary, which is a strange assumption (and also illogical). You are also assuming that the purpose of the world is only the commandments, and that too is an unclear assumption.

It isn’t so important how an “average religious person” would respond. But if you ask, he will presumably tell you that God’s ways are hidden. And that is really exactly the same answer, just in a less explicit and defined form.

I’m referring to the thread in which the rabbi said that one has to prove that a better world can exist *that has the same commandments we have*, as though the matter of commandments somehow comes close in importance to preventing suffering (especially in God’s eyes).

That is really not the same answer. To say “God’s ways are hidden” is like saying “I don’t know.” The rabbi is not saying “I don’t know”; he is saying, “Prove that it is possible to create a better universe.”

To say that God’s ways are hidden means that only the Holy One, blessed be He knows why only this way works, and what the significant downsides are in every other way (and in fact it is implicitly understood that there necessarily must be downsides in every other way).

Sh, what does the World to Come have to do with it? It doesn’t operate according to laws. Clearly God can bring us there immediately; no one is saying He can’t.

Danny, I don’t understand what God has done to earn this belief that whatever He does must be the best. If you really believe He is good, you can explain away until tomorrow why the world is so terrible—but why do you believe He is good in the first place? From contemplating the world alone, that is not the conclusion that ought to occur to you, in my opinion.
David, then why doesn’t He do that? Any excuse you give me will be too weak. It won’t be able to justify all the suffering in the world. Not for me, at least.

Sh, because in my view being good is a necessary condition of perfection. And evil is deficiency and absence.
So who is doing the crippling here?
Note that the answer you got above is not a “weak excuse,” and in fact it is not really an answer at all. It explains that the very question is probably an oxymoronic word game with no logical content behind it.

Well, why do you assume He is perfect? It’s not as if He has proven Himself to be so.

Sh, because why should He do that? He could also just not create us at all, if so.

Why? Maybe so that we wouldn’t have to suffer and be tormented in this world? Can you think of anything more important than preventing suffering?

Imperfection can appear only in something that is acted upon by constraints that detract from its perfection, which is not relevant to one before whom nothing existed.

*something to which nothing preceded (that is the correct wording).

Strange. He can have traits that cause Him to do good but not traits that cause Him to do evil? Well, this is no longer especially interesting.

Sh,
There is nothing that limits Him, and therefore He is necessarily perfect. Here too, a claim of imperfection is a mistake at the level of logic.
If it doesn’t interest you much—there’s nothing I can do about that (:

Hello everyone, and sorry for the late response.
First of all, there must necessarily be some lack, some flaw in the perfection of the Holy One, blessed be He, because of which He created the world and within it us, beings with free choice. The rabbi explained this on some occasion based on the words of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, that the only lack of one who is absolutely perfect is that he cannot become more perfect. And therefore He created a world in which we can perfect ourselves.
This is indeed a wonderful answer regarding the very fact of our creation, but it still does not explain the problem of evil in the world. And to claim that it is impossible to create a better world within the framework of the current laws of physics seems puzzling to me.
A – Because history shows ups and downs that also occur within the framework of those same rigid laws, so what would prevent an omnipotent Creator and absolute good from positioning the world at a good point forever?
B – The rabbi’s claim to the questioner was that erasing only the suffering from the world in its current format is like creating a round triangle, since the rigid laws of nature also dictate suffering. My question is: why can’t the component of suffering itself be isolated from the overall set of laws (at least wherever it is unjust, such as harm to babies and innocents)? The only answer is that the Holy One, blessed be He wanted specifically this system of laws, which would also dictate suffering (as a goal, or as a side effect), and the question is why He wanted specifically this system of laws, which on its face appears lacking in justice and arbitrary, at least in the eyes of His creatures.

Hello Honorable Rabbi, as you requested, the question about suffering is threaded here. In the last comment.

I didn’t understand the relevance of these arguments, and especially what they add to what has already been said above.
A – What does history have to do with it? The whole historical process is part of the causal chain that unfolds by means of the laws of nature. So there are fluctuations up and down, and the whole system across the entire time axis is a product of the laws of nature. You assume that one can create a static world that will remain all the time like the historical golden age (when was there even such a golden age?). But the laws of nature also determine the fluctuations and the whole process. You cannot just remove part of it, because then you have changed all the laws. When the laws of nature say that I will die, does that mean I will die the moment I am born? No, they determine that I will die after such-and-such a number of years, meaning the entire process. Moreover, creating a world in a fixed state is itself a change in the laws of nature, and of course also renders creation pointless (since it is meant to achieve something, not to stand in place like a lump).
B – As I explained to you in our oral conversation, it is impossible to isolate the component of suffering because it is not a distinct component. The same system of laws determines the whole package. Remove one detail from the result and you have changed the laws in such a way that many other things will change besides the suffering. For example, eliminate some bacterium that causes disease. But it also helps ensure that there are grasses and that cows can graze on them and live. And if there are no cows then there will be no meat, and there will be major consequences in all sorts of contexts that you do not even imagine (like the butterfly effect).
Think about Newton’s laws of motion, which under certain circumstances determine the circular motion of some body. Do you really think one can simply remove a quarter of the circle and let the body move along the remaining three quarters? Those are entirely different laws of motion, and they would change many other things besides the quarter-circle you removed.
This is the same misunderstanding as in A.

Okay. So it is understood that one cannot change the laws of nature, while the Holy One, blessed be He wants nature as it is. The question is why did the Holy One, blessed be He create specifically this nature? Is it impossible to create an alternative nature, with other and different laws that do not dictate suffering? (Again, to create a new nature, not to change the existing nature, which is like squaring a triangle.)

All right, I’ll repeat for the tenth and last time: the Holy One, blessed be He has goals in creation (which I do not know), and these laws of nature apparently achieve them in an optimal way. Other laws will not achieve them. Therefore changing the laws might perhaps prevent suffering (if there even are laws with less suffering), but they would not achieve the goal.
The burden of proof that there is a system of laws that achieves the goals without suffering is on the questioner. And of course he must be equipped with knowledge about those goals. Good luck.