[Avodah] undeserved punishment?

[Micha Berger]

On Sun, Dec 24, 2006 at 09:44:22PM +0000, Mordechai Torczyner wrote:
: Ralbag says this explicitly on Achan and Ai, as part of his discussion
: of the apparent collective punishment. Note that this is not the same as
: the Shabbos 55a concept of shelo michu b'yadan; that indicts the tzibbur
: as assisting the ra...

: One problem, though: In Berachos 3b or so we have a discussion of
: what a Jew should do if he is suffering and he cannot find personal
: guilt. The gemara suggests that he blame bitul torah or yisurin shel
: ahavah - but it does not mention anything about looking at the chesronos
: of the tzibbur. Or is that included in yefashfesh b'maasav?

Obviously not, since he can't do teshuvah for something the tzibur does
and he isn't capable of changing. If he were capable, than he would
be culpable for "shelo michu beyadan", and that's not the case we're
asking about.

If this were an inyan halakhah, we would simply conclude it must be a
machloqes. For some reason we don't naturally go there when it comes to
aggadita. I noticed this particularly in MmE, REED works very hard to
make two shitos different aspects/descriptions of the same thing.

In this case, I would go further and invoke RYBS's advice in Qol Dodi
Dofeiq -- any attempt to explain tragedy will be emotionally sterile or
intellectually simplistic, and quite probably both.

No one claims to really know tzadiq vera lo, rasha vetov lo. That's also
a maamar Chazal.

I posted here in the past (way back) an idea from R' Jack Love (a
rebbe in a yeshivah gedolah and a local dayan). Why are there so many
reasons given for the death of Nadav vaAvihu, or for what Moshe did
that warranted not entering EY, or for churban bayis rishon, or sheini?
Because they realized the problem is unsolvable, but against that still
needed to fight to find meaning.

In our case, that translates to: Chazal were grappling with an insolvable
problem, not providing answers. And therefore machloqesin should be rife;
and not really machloqesin.

I think asserting these maamarei Chazal as though they provided
definitive ways of understanding tragic events does come across as RYBS
describes.

Tir'u baTov!
-mi

-- 
Micha Berger             "Fortunate indeed, is the man who takes
micha at aishdas.org        exactly the right measure of himself,  and
http://www.aishdas.org   holds a just balance between what he can
Fax: (270) 514-1507      acquire and what he can use." - Peter Latham