This year in our adult education class we are studying suffering and evil in the Jewish tradition. The problem of suffering is a fundamental challenge for Jews as we believe there is only one God who must be the source of everything: good and bad, joy and suffering. The fancy word for this problem is theodicy, from the Greek theos or god and dike justice. The problem of theodicy is that if God is all-knowing (omniscient), all powerful (omnipotent) and all good (omnibenevolent),then why is there suffering in the world and why do good people suffer particularly when evil people seem to prosper? Our tradition has grappled with this issue for millenia and provides few, if any, satisfying answers. One of them, according to our sages-of-blessed-memory comes from this week’s Torah portion, Bo, which describes the final four plagues visited on the Egyptians, the ultimate one being the death of every first born Egyptian. In Exodus 12:22 we read, “Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and apply some of the blood that is in the basin to the lintel and to the two doorposts. None of you shall go outside the door of your house until morning.” Commenting on this final phrase the Mekhilta d’Rabbi Yishmael, a midrash on the book of Exodus compiled around the third century of the Common Era in Israel, reads, “‘and you shall not go out, a man from the door of his house:’ We are hereby taught that once permission has been given to ‘the destroyer’ to destroy, he does not distinguish between the righteous and the wicked.” In other words, much of what happens to people is a result of universal phenomena: natural disasters, disease, famine, and human-created disasters like war. No one is safe from these events, whether righteous or evil. God’s sparing the Jews from the death of the first born was a miraculous exception, not the general rule. In our world suffering is part of life.
Bo, Exodus 10:1-13:16, Parshat Hashavua for Shabbat, January 28, 2023
January 27, 2023 by Dean Kertesz • Drashot
This year in our adult education class we are studying suffering and evil in the Jewish tradition. The problem of suffering is a fundamental challenge for Jews as we believe there is only one God who must be the source of everything: good and bad, joy and suffering. The fancy word for this problem is theodicy, from the Greek theos or god and dike justice. The problem of theodicy is that if God is all-knowing (omniscient), all powerful (omnipotent) and all good (omnibenevolent), then why is there suffering in the world and why do good people suffer particularly when evil people seem to prosper? Our tradition has grappled with this issue for millenia and provides few, if any, satisfying answers. One of them, according to our sages-of-blessed-memory comes from this week’s Torah portion, Bo, which describes the final four plagues visited on the Egyptians, the ultimate one being the death of every first born Egyptian. In Exodus 12:22 we read, “Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and apply some of the blood that is in the basin to the lintel and to the two doorposts. None of you shall go outside the door of your house until morning.” Commenting on this final phrase the Mekhilta d’Rabbi Yishmael, a midrash on the book of Exodus compiled around the third century of the Common Era in Israel, reads, “‘and you shall not go out, a man from the door of his house:’ We are hereby taught that once permission has been given to ‘the destroyer’ to destroy, he does not distinguish between the righteous and the wicked.” In other words, much of what happens to people is a result of universal phenomena: natural disasters, disease, famine, and human-created disasters like war. No one is safe from these events, whether righteous or evil. God’s sparing the Jews from the death of the first born was a miraculous exception, not the general rule. In our world suffering is part of life.