httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqINfO3EzqU
Filmed at Moishe House in Costa Mesa, CA. The G-d Project is the world’s first social media platform dedicated to Jewish spirituality. We bring God back to the conversation. www.theg-dproject.org.
Gil Wolman: Why Is This Happening?
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL7TLt1MSy4
Gil’s struggle with G-d. The G-d Project is the world’s first social media platform dedicated to Jewish spirituality. We bring God back to the conversation. www.theg-dproject.org.
Rabbi Drew Kaplan: What Is Jewish Theodicy?
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26ZAkG2m8rY
Why do bad things happen to good people? This is the question of Jewish Theodicy. The G-d Project is the world’s first social media platform dedicated to Jewish spirituality. We bring God back to the conversation.
www.theg-dproject.org.
Too Much, or Not Enough
Tragically, a family in my neighborhood lost their house this weekend to fire. Everyone escaped without injury (thank God), but the house and its contents are likely a total loss. The fire probably started because something was left turned-on over Shabbat and caught fire, which spread to the rest of the house.
The fire started at 2:00am Saturday morning. The family, exhausted in every conceivable way, dragged themselves to synagogue not for pity or charity, but to “Bentsch Gomeil” – to bless God for the intervention which spared their lives.
As it turns out, my family had been invited to eat lunch that day 2 doors down from site of the fire – sharing our meal with several other people in the community. One woman at the table asked: “How are we supposed to make sense of something like this? Why would God cause/allow something like this to happen?”
My first reaction (which, to my wife’s immense relieve, I kept to myself) was to inwardly groan at the the boring, cliched, over-done discussion. Why do bad things happen to good people? Why doesn’t God DO something? (and of course the unavoidable piece de resistance) Why did God let the Holocaust happen?
I smiled and chewed my salad thoughtfully and said nothing. Because it wasn’t my place to respond and because I had nothing remotely interesting (let alone charitable) to say.
But silently, I answered her question with a question: Why do we keep asking that? Aren’t we ever going to get bored with it?
Later on, however, I realized mine was the exactly wrong response. I realized the real question ought to be:
Why aren’t we asking it MORE?
I woke up this morning. How could God allow such a thing to happen? Knowing what a completely jerk I can be sometimes? Knowing (as only God can) the things I’ve done? I have 4 healthy wonderful normal children. Why does that happen? What did my wife and I do to deserve that? For 3 years I drove almost an hour to work in crazy traffic, and made it to work safe each day. What kind of God allows that to happen? Week after week I, too, leave a burner on, along with candles and a hot water urn. Nothing has (yet, thank God and may we continue to be blessed) burst into flame. Why? Why, God, why? For what reason do my appliances continue to work so reliably?
If you are reading this, you might think you detect a note of sarcasm. Don’t make that inference. Read my words with a tone of sincerity, because that’s how I mean them.
Maybe – just maybe – we shouldn’t dust off our inquisitive nature only when tragedy strikes.
Perhaps we should be asking ourselves that woman’s lunchtime question each and every minute, trying with every fiber of our being to find the hidden reasons to God’s unguessable plan.
originally posted on The Edible Torah
Norway, Amy Winehouse and My Guinea Pig: Why G-d Really Sucks Sometimes
Is the world going straight to hell? Is God completely out of the picture? Three things happened this Shabbat that made me doubt my faith.
First, it was the pre-Shabbat death of my guinea pig, Mr. Bacon Sandwich. That morning, his eyes were weak and covered in goop. I asked my wife if we should take him to the vet. She replied, “his time is near.” I gave him some fresh romaine, wiped his eyes and he made his cute “qui!” noise. That was that. I checked back on him an hour later and he had crawled over to his water bottle, buried his head under the pine shavings, and passed on. I wrapped him in a white towel and buried him in my in-laws back yard. The shattered pieces of his ceramic food bowl is his grave marker.
Later, my wife informs me of a shooting in Norway. Turned out to be a terrorist attack on a youth camp and government buildings by a neo-Nazi. I shuttered to imagine the horror that the families in Oslo must be going through. To hear as well that the man who committed the act under the belief that it was the Christian thing to do made me cringe. I can understand God challenging me to accept the death of a pet, but to allow someone to commit violence in his name? G-d forbid.
And as Shabbat wound down, and I got back on my computer, another tragedy: the death of celebrated R&B singer Amy Winehouse from a seizure, most likely the result of years of drug abuse.
I’ve had some terrible bosses in my day. Really terrible. But God, by far, is the worst boss I have ever had.
When a Jew hears bad news, it’s custom to say, “blessed are you, Lord our God, king of the Universe, who is the true judge.” Tonight, I can’t proclaim God’s greatness. But God willing, I will find the power to forgive God for his own shortcomings.