[Avodah] Why bad things happen to good people

[Michael Makovi]

(No, I am not using the title of Kushner's book; that was *When* Bad
Things Happen to Good People)

Anyway, I recently read Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan's article "Questions We Ask
God" in Faces and Facets (Moznaim, 1993). There, Rabbi Kaplan reviews
the standard arguments for why evil things occur. He says

1) We can only see Olam haZe, but not Olam haBa. When someone dies,
perhaps he was needed more there than here, or perhaps he completed
his mission on earth. Cf. the fifth answer below

2) Man is part of a society, and part of the historical process. I
will elaborate further on (this second point is what I really want to
focus on in this email).

3) Perhaps a certain innocent person isn't really innocent. Perhaps
the mitzvah we crush under our heel is the most important of all. (I'd
personally add that we say that the good suffer here and are rewarded
later, and for the evil, it is vice versa.)

4) Often, we bring the evil upon ourselves, and have only ourselves to blame.

5) We cannot really know what is good and what is bad. He brings the
story of Rabbi Akiva in the field (the inn had no room) where his
donkey and rooster are eaten and his lamp goes out, and it turns out
that because of this, the bandits didn't find him. Our perspective is
lacking, and we cannot know the full story. Cf. the first answer
above.

What I found particularly novel was the second answer. I have seen
before that often, G-d cannot punish the wicked and reward the good
openly, because this would infringe on free will. G-d has to let
natural processes operate as they will, and sometimes He can only
slowly and stealthily intervene over the course of many years. But
Rabbi Kaplan adds some novel details to this argument, that I have
never seen before. I will quote his words in full, pages 25 bottom to
26 middle in Faces and Facets:

-----

The second answer given in many of our ancient teachings, is that man
does not exist as an individual, buut rather as a part of his
surrounding society. God controls the historical process in order to
bring mankind to its final good. In this process, individuals may be
caught beneath the wheels of history, and even crushed by them. The
Talmud, in the tractate of Taanit (25a), gives an example of this.
Rabbi Eliezer ben Padat was very poor and sick, and one day he
complained bitterly to God. A heavenly messenger came to him and said,
in the name of God, "Would you have Me recreate the entire world, so
that maybe you would be born into a time of plenty?"

And even the death of the six million - and the untold suffering which
that generation experienced - was it not all in preparation for the
redemption of Israel, and ultimately for the redemption of all
mankind? We are taught that one third of all the suffering ever to be
experienced by the human race will take place in the generation
preceding the redemption. The suffering of the six million surely
brought about the beginnings of the redemption, the return to the land
and to the city of Jerusalem.

-----

This seems to tie into the fifth answer, that we can't really know
what is truly good and what isn't. How could those in the Holocaust
know that the state of Israel would be born from it? (Taking it for
granted that this is a satisfactory answer to the Holocaust.)

So Rabbi Kaplan seems to argue that for the sake of the communal good,
or for the sake of historical continuity, G-d must let things go as
they will.

Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits, in his essay on Job, in Essential Essays,
reprinted from one of his other books (I forget which), concludes that
Sefer Iyov is teaching that sometimes, for the sake of God's
"mishpat", which Rabbi Berkovits says is almost synonymous with
"derech", He must do something that isn't strict justice (i.e. Job
didn't deserve his suffering) for the sake of some overriding need of
the world (G-d's derech, = mishpat).

Mikha'el Makovi