Theo-dicey

Are unexpected disasters just a matter of chance?

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Many have wondered where I was for the past few months. Let me explain. Our blog was originally intended as a response and parody of Rationalist Judaism, and as long as that blog was publishing articles about rationalism, we had plenty of material to address, distortions to unravel, and misconceptions to correct. However, ever since the beginning of the war in Eretz Yisrael, that blog has pivoted away from anything rationalist and has leaned full-tilt into the author’s personal psychotic obsession, with literally daily unhinged rants about his enemies. Although initially, we had many articles responding to his misrepresentations and misconceptions, I realized it was unsustainable, like attempting debate the inmates in an lunatic asylum. You might throw in a good point here or there, but ultimately, debating a lunatic is not a debate. Additionally, I am not an Israeli chareidi, and am not necessarily invested in defending that society, certainly not every single one of their practices. Let them defend themselves if they care to do so (but why should they care about what some loony English-language blogger is spending all his time on?) Therefore I decided to take a break for a while, at least until things calm down and we can get back to the topics we are really interested in.

However, in an email discussion with one of our guest contributors, he alerted me that there is a new post on that blog about theodicy, one of the most important subjects in the topic of Emunah. I felt that this subject is certainly well within our blog’s purview, and an opportunity to re-engage with our core mission.

The background is that Rav Aharon Feldman explained that the attack in Eretz Yisrael on October 7th was quite possibly retribution for the secular nature of the “Jewish” state of Israel, and this secularist blogger unsurprisingly took issue with explanation, unleashing the first of what will probably be a series of at least 20 outraged articles. Boy oh boy, whatever shall we do?

Now, I wouldn’t ordinarily see fit to attempt to defend a statement of any rabbi, as great as he may be. But Rav Aharon’s statement was standard, traditional Torah philosophy, as observed everywhere in the Torah, Neviim, and Chazal. It doesn’t even fall into the category of theodicy, which typically attempts to explain why the righteous suffer, such as the Holocaust or the travails of Iyov. Thus the very description of Rav Feldman’s message as about “theodicy” is misleading. Nevertheless, I would like to address some of the objections to the standard Torah philosophy that this blogger and his clueless commenters have put forth.

1. You need a prophet to know the specific reason for Divine wrath.

   There is so much wrong with this statement that I don’t even know where to begin. First of all, Rav Aharon Feldman did not propose a singular specific reason, but explained that it was a result of a secular nation, with all the attentive evils that this engenders. The prophets too did not typically inform us of a single clear, specific reasons for Divine wrath. One can peruse the Neviim Acharonim and see them rebuking the nation for many different sins, and warning them of the impending Churban Bayis Rishon as a result. The transgressions that the prophets discuss mesh well with a largely secularist society that pays the Torah little heed, very similar to modern secular Jewish society. We do not have one specific explanation, nor do we need one. Secondly, the prophets are there to teach us something, what it is that led to the Destruction, and that we should avoid those sins, and return to the path God and His Torah. Not that we should stick our heads in the sand and blame our feigned ignorance of what we are doing wrong on a lack of prophets.

2. Maybe it’s the sins of the chareidi community for holding of the chareidi positions.

   As I said before, I am not really that invested in defending the Israeli chareidi community. Maybe the Dati community is more righteous than the chareidim (at least the ones with proper Torah hashkafos). I wouldn’t find this extraordinarily unbelievable. However, the chareidi community is clearly infinitely better than those who are making no or very little attempt to follow the Torah in the first place, which describes the majority of Israeli society, and definitely the secular elites. There is nothing to even talk about. This objection is a joke.

3. After all, when discussing the Destruction of the Temple, the prophets talked about about the corruption of religious figures and the oppression of the weak and the meaninglessness of religious ritual in the face of such things, not chillul Shabbos, bittul Torah, or lashon hara.

   This is just boorish ignorance from somebody who has obviously never studied the Prophets in the first place. The author is an ignoramus, a boor, and quite possibly knows whatever little he does about the Prophets through the filter of Christian writers. I’m sorry….there is no more polite way to describe it. See my article discussing that misconception here.

4. The fact that the majority of fatalities on October were of secular Jews is meaningless, since secular Jews happened to be the majority of people living next to Gaza.

   This is simply a denial of Divine providence, and a claim that everything is happenstance, meaningless- exactly what we would expect from a self-professed rationalist apostate. As if God wouldn’t be able to orchestrate other disasters that would affect populations other than those living next to Gaza.

5. Meanwhile, the one very very clear message that everyone (except charedim) has learned since October 7th is that the IDF made a mistake to rely on technology in place of boots on the ground, and to assume that weapons amassed against us will not be used. The very very clear message is that vastly more people need to be drafted in order to protect the people of Israel against threats from Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Palestinians in the West Bank - which is precisely why there is an unprecedented demand to draft charedi yeshiva students. And the other very very clear message is that Israel also needs a lot more money to fund its defense, which means that the state cannot afford to be subsidizing a community of over one million people that is deliberately underemployed.

   The author completely misunderstands the meaning of the word “message” in the context used by the Neviim and Rav Feldman. The word “message”, as they are using it, means a rebuke and a punishment for wrongdoing. After all, this message involved the deaths of over a thousands people, the displacement of tens of thousands, and immense property destruction. It wouldn’t make much sense for God to punish people for something that they couldn’t imagine- that all their sophisticated technology which had served them so well in the past would suddenly fail them. The author also seems to think that it was the scarcity of chareidim in the army that was responsible for the lack of “boots on the ground” in Gaza, which is of course not the case. He also seems to think that if only Chareidim would get start getting a better education and joining the army, then Israel could afford to be in a perpetual state of total war against all its neighbors, all the time- obviously an absurd conclusion, and definitely nothing to do with the message of the October 7th attack. But even worse, as in #4, he thinks that if only we had more boots on the ground, God couldn’t have found a way to deliver His message. Should I be surprised?

6. Any explanation of a calamity that points fingers at others and doesn't place any responsibility on the head of the explainer is meaningless.

   Again, ignorance of the Neviim and Chazal, who took it upon themselves to rebuke their countrymen. In addition, it is important to look at Rav Feldman’s statement not in isolation, but in the context of his job as a Rosh Yeshivah and community leader, including his many other statements blaming his own community’s suffering for their own wrongdoing. He is certainly a proponent of בְשֶׁלִּ֔י הַסַּ֧עַר הַגָּדֹ֛ול הַזֶּ֖ה עֲלֵיכֶֽם (“I am the cause of this great tempest”) and this recent statement was simply addressing the most obvious, proximate causes of the disaster, according to the philosophy of our Holy Torah.

Ultimately however, the underlying outrage at Rav Feldman’s words is not this or that technical objection, but stems from a rejection of Divine providence and the significance of the Torah in the first place. It is impossible for the secularists to imagine an all-powerful, all-knowing God who controls the universe, and rewards or punishes according to His will. It is an offense to their modern, secular, rational sensibilities. But even more than that, it is impossible for them to imagine that God cares about people keeping His Torah, that it could be so important, such a vital part of our lives and society, that its abandonment can precipitate Divine wrath- although this is just traditional Torah philosophy. To secularists, the Torah is at best a nice part of our historical heritage, and whether we keep it or not is simply our own lifestyle decision, based on which community we want to be a part of. It definitely cannot be a matter of life or death, as extremist Ultra-Orthodox believe. Ironically, this very attitude is what Rav Feldman was coming to reprimand.

As Torah Jews, we should not be confused by the convoluted distortions of those who deny Divine Providence in the first place, who believe that everything is happenstance, and are offended by any suggestion of a true message from God. A Torah Jew is trained to see God in every facet of the universe, and all the more so in a disaster of national significance. And ultimately, as the Chafetz Chaim observed, the message is not for the secularists, who are as of yet too far from God to appreciate any Divine message (like we can see in the post that this is in response to), but for us.