[Avodah] Gid ha'nasheh

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Dec 06, 2017 at 06:10:18PM -0500, Akiva Miller via Avodah wrote:
: We DO accept the reality of a "necessary evil", or a "greater good".
: It's not all black and white. "Well, isn't that the halakhah?" Indeed,
: the halacha prescribes The Way To Go, but that is no guarantee that
: there won't be unpleasant side effects...

A number of rishonim (eg Ramban, Seforno) deal with the problem of
miracles. Since HQBH is Perfect and is capable of a perfect creation,
why would He make a world in which He occasionally would have to step
in and override teva? This is where the Ramban comes in with the idea
that not only the miraculous items listed in Pirqei Avos created during
Maaseh Bereishis, every "exception" to the laws of nature are actually
special cases written into the law.

I'll pause here to remind of what I said last email about "at the
time of creation" and "in response to the situation" both being
oversimplifications caused by us temporal beings trying to think about
Hashem's "Action" which is lemaalah min hazeman and has no "when".

Similarly, one can ask about His Authorship of halakhah. Since Hashem
is capable of writing a system of laws to fit the universe in a way
where obeying the law never has "unpleasant side effects", why wouldn't
He?

One backstep... I just realized you mean something broader by "side
effects" than I was talking about. As you later write:
: upon a Mes Mitzvah on Yom Kippur morning, the halacha is clear that he
: must get involved, even if that means that the day's avodah won't go
: as planned...

Similarly, if piquach nefesh is docheh Shabbos, rather than Shabbos
being huterah, one may have the misfortune of having to violate Shabbos.

But that's not sekhar va'onesh, and my question "but what about Divine
Justice?" doesn't apply. Not unless the "unpleasant side effect" is --
as in the case of Yaaqov's widowerhood or his hip -- painful (physically
and/or emotionally).

There is also another issue... Sekhar mitzvos behai alma leiqa. Not
everything in this world is sekhar va'onesh. Li nir'eh, everything in
this world is to draw us to a state of being able to receive more of
Hashem's tov. Onesh, only when we have a chance of it getting us to choose
more constructively. Which is why the mishnah talks about tzadiqim getting
onesh in olam hazah to spare them in olam haba. Not because pain in olam
hazeh pays off the accoun t early, but because a tzadiq will use the
pain to draw closer to HQBH / to his ideal self. And similarly, resha'im
who wouldn't respond constructively to the challenge... Well, HQBH would
share with them his Tov in the here-and-now rather than not at all.

This takes us away from insisting that the universe must be set up so
that every sin contains its own onesh as a consequence. (If we're using
the consequence model to look at things.)

Instead, we can look at the universe as tending toward tov. And therefore
every step away from tov will as a consequence cause a pull back toward
it. (Which could well be onesh, but in olam hazeh, it could be getting us
connected back to the Meitiv in some other way.)

And applying this back to Yaaqov's marrying two wives... Perhaps it's
not an onesh, but the consequent path closer to the Meitiv in a world
where the aretz was made tamei.

And it's even possible that the challenges of this harder path lead to
a closer place than without. So that overall, the net is maximize sekhar.
Lefum tza'ara.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             We look forward to the time
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