[Avodah] Hashgacha Pratis for goyim

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 04:15:47PM +0300, Michael Makovi wrote:
: Note that Psalm 33 explicitly says "kol benei ha'adam"/"kol yoshvei
: ha'aretz" and "hishgiah". Apparently, hashgahah is given regardless of
: whether one is a Jew or gentile, righteous or not. Of course, perhaps
: His *act* of hashgahah will differ, between reward and punishment, or
: consigning one to the whims of nature...

Isn't the latter is definitionally not hashgachah? It could be itself
an onesh -- the removal of hashgachah. Also, the Rambam's notion that
not every homo sapien is equally human WRT HP would apply to this
pasuq as well.

But the Rambam's line is yedi'ah, not Jewishness, so it's not relevent.
And even he notes that HP for all homo sapiens is the normal understanding
of the mesorah.

: So perhaps G-d only feeds the righteous, whereas He even causes famine
: to the wicked, or simply consigns them to the whims of natural law.
: (This would bring us back to Rambam et. al., about G-d working within
: nature.) But in any case, He certainly pays attention to everyone,
: righteous and wicked alike; how He acts is perhaps otherwise.

The Chovos haLvavos also notes these two facets of hashgachah.


I have a real problem, though, understanding:
:                                                   Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan
: (Faces and Facets) cites a midrash to the effect that a certain poor
: man would have to have creation recreated, with his being placed in a
: different generation, in order to be saved from his poverty; Rabbi
: Kaplan concludes that the wheels of history sometimes demand a few
: people suffer undeservedly.

After all, HQBH created not only history, but the very rules by which it
plays. Nu, some things are inherently soseir, and so perhaps universal
sechar va'onesh in olam hazeh can be absolutely ruled out on the grounds
that it would make bechirah all about pain-avoidance and reward-gathering.
Not true choice between good and evil. (And if we allow even for setiros,
we can't use reason to discuss the topic and might as well close the
discussion anyway.)

But given all the degrees of freedom that implies and the Infinite Wisdom
Hashem posesses, why can't he make a puzzle in which all the pieces fit,
in which every person gets to make all his own choices and yet every
person receives exactly what is appropriate for him?

(Particularly with his Breslov connection, or any Chassidish or Desslerian
approach, this kind of philosophy is the one I would have more readily
expected from RAK.)

How I wish RAK was still around to ask...

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             I slept and dreamt that life was joy.
micha at aishdas.org        I awoke and found that life was duty.
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