Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Uh.
[00:00:00] Speaker B: As the world around us races forward in search of tomorrow's breakthroughs, join us as we discover the insights that have shaped Jewish life for centuries.
Together, we'll study with Judaism's greatest minds, exploring timeless wisdom that continues to guide and inspire.
You're listening to Inside the Jewish Mind JLI podcast.
As we enter the three weeks leading up to Tisha B'Av, a time of mourning and reflection on the painful chapters of our people's history, some of life's hardest questions naturally surface.
Um, why do bad things happen to good people?
How can we believe in a good God in a world filled with suffering?
In this moving 2014 talk, Rabbi Benjamin Blech confronts this question head on. Drawing from Jewish wisdom and his own life experience, he shows how even in the darkest moments, there is light to be found and meaning we can hold onto. Uh, here it is.
[00:01:09] Speaker A: Uh, it is the ultimate question.
It's the bottom line question, the most important question.
If you're going to be serious about life and about God and about religion, that you have to ask yourself and, um, in some way answer.
If you can't deal with this question, you can't be religious.
You can't believe in God.
It is the ultimate question of tzadik varalo Rosha vetovlo.
The righteous and it goes bad for them.
The evil and it goes good for them. And raboner shalom. Um, God, why?
Why?
It's interesting that in this generation, there are people who believe that the greatest challenge to faith is the Holocaust. And in fact, it's been expressed that way. How can anyone believe in God after the Holocaust? I know people who were in Auschwitz.
Many of them no longer could believe.
Many of them could remain believers. Tremendous challenge.
Amazing.
However, if you stop and think about it, the question is as serious with regard to one child who suffers as it is with regard to 6 million who perished. In theological terms, what's the difference?
God, how could you do this?
Elie Wiesel is famous for having phrased it this way.
When I go to the other world, he says, I will have questions to ask God. So 6 million of them.
But it doesn't matter if it's 6 million or if you are righteous and you're suffering and you don't understand God, why'd you do this to me? Am I really such a bad person?
I looked at my father, Oliver Shalom, and he was sick at the end of his days and lying in the hospital, I said, this can't be happening to my daddy. My daddy said, tsarak. My father was a real Tsarik. Anyone who knew him would have told you that. How could that be?
So how we deal with that is an ultimate question.
I said it's a two sided question. I've always found it interesting. Which one troubles you more?
The righteous who suffer or the wicked who prosper?
Now, uh, it does trouble me that I know this guy and he is a miserable human being.
And he.
I don't even want to say it. All the bad things you can, you can mention. And he's driving around in a Bentley and he has a magnificent estate and he seems to have everything. God, why, how can we treating him so well?
But you know what?
So let it be.
Let there be injustice on that scale.
I guess I can live with some people getting more than they should.
The more serious problem is the title of this talk.
If God is good, why is the world so bad?
And if there is a God who is righteous and who makes us promises about following his law, why do good people suffer?
Right, Great question.
Some years back, a rabbi wasn't an orthodox rabbi.
I don't mean to be denominational. My talk, it's not because he comes from a different kind of approach to Judaism than an Orthodox rabbi does. He was a conservative rabbi, wrote a book on the subject that not only became a huge best seller in America, but around the world, it has sold. I looked it up, I googled it, both because I wanted to know and because of envy.
Uh, he has sold more than 11 million copies.
And the name of that book is what?
Invariably when I ask it, a lot of people shout out why Bad Things Happen to Good People. And that's not the title. What is the title?
When Bad Things Happen to Good People because he said he purposely chose not to call it why Bad Things? Because he can't really answer that question. But When Bad Things Happen to Good People, he offers an approach that he felt it necessary to come to in light of his personal life's tragedy. Now, uh, what was that?
He had a son who suffered from a horrible disease where he aged at a much faster rate. So that when he was a teenager he looked like somebody in his 60s and 70s.
Actually, I shouldn't say that because even in your 80s you could look great, right?
I mean, he looked like a really sick old man and died in his late teens. And here is this man, Rabbi, giving comfort to other people. He has a congregation, a large congregation.
He has to cope with his own sorrows, with his own difficulties.
What are you going to say?
So he came to a conclusion, which I will share with you momentarily that he felt, made him feel at peace with God and go on being not just religious, but being a rabbi.
I am, um, upset that because he is a rabbi, there are millions of people, 11 to be sure, but many more, in light of the popularity of the book and at least the premises of the book being publicized, that this is the Jewish view and the Jewish response to suffering.
It is not, and I don't want to dispute with him, other than to say, for an Orthodox rabbi, um, the conclusion that he came to is nothing less than heresy.
Right?
It was difficult for any rabbi to publicly engage in debate because you had to feel sorry for him and you had to feel his pain as well.
And it would look terrible if you attack him, because here's a man suffering and the tragedy of his life, and he got on every talk show and you didn't want to say, this man is wrong. However, I want to tell you that I have had. I just me have had dozens, if not hundreds of people saying to me, rabbi, I read that book, so I know how Judaism deals with the problem. And it turned me off. And I can no longer pray to God.
Do you know what his response was?
Do you know what his approach was?
Let me first outline the problem to you in a beautiful way. There's one thing that I appreciated that he did in the book, and that is delineate the question in a manner where we begin to understand what the difficulty really is and recognize that there are three parts to the problem. And we have to make a choice between three options.
I don't have blackboard in front of me, but I have discovered something fantastic, especially since I very often, you know, I work on the Sabbath and I can't use a blackboard. So I have created the concept of an imaginary blackboard. And I'm going to do that because it's going to be helpful.
There are three possibilities, and these three cannot coexist logically.
And we have to know which of these three we must eliminate in order to be able to have a proper approach to this question.
The first is that God is good.
Now, you don't necessarily have to believe that God is good. You must understand it is conceivable. And there are cultures and there are religions that believe that God, being all powerful, can do whatever he wants to do and doesn't have to be good. Imagine a king can do whatever he wants to do. A, uh, despot can do whatever he wants to do. Who says he has to be good.
As a matter of fact, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. It is quite conceivable that a God doesn't have to be good.
In fact, there are some religions who, because they want a good God, but recognize that there are bad things happening, say, well, there must be two gods, a good guy and a bad guy.
In Persian dualism, that's m exactly what they created. You can also just change a little bit and say there's God and there's Satan, and Satan and God fight it out.
You do not necessarily have to say that God is good.
But that's the first premise which is going to be the key to why we have a problem. Because we, and by accepting the Torah, we accept the fact that the Torah says God is good.
He says, so God is righteous in all his ways.
We say God is good. Not only that, it's amazing that we took for granted that God is good. Where Abraham, the first Jew God tells him he's going to destroy the cities of Sodom and Mara.
And uh, what does Abraham say to God? Abraham argues with God. That's what makes him the first Jew.
Abraham says to God, how about if there are 50 righteous people, are you going to destroy the city?
And then in a line that I translate a little bit differently than in the English, in the English it says, far be it from thee to destroy the righteous with the wicked. And I don't translate it that way. I say, Abraham said to God, God forbid you should do such a thing.
You understand the irony in that?
What did Abraham take for granted that God is good?
What is the English language take for granted? How do you get the English word God? Did you know that God g o d is a contraction of what good G o o D. So one O got lost.
But God is good.
Again, you don't have to believe that. You can believe that Satan controls the world, but we don't.
And most religions don't. If you get as far as saying there is a God, you say in Yiddish, agutagot, ah, uh, and you're saying that you believe that God is good in ways that are defined by goodness and in ways that are, ah, defined by what God says about himself.
Hatur, uh, to mishpat, which means righteous rock. His works are all righteous and good.
Do you see the first blackboard? God is good. Do you visualize it? Can you imagine something? Yes.
Tell me. Yes, thank you.
What does it say here?
God is good. Now we're going to get to the middle one. That's right in back of me.
God is omnipotent. Um, let's take that word and divide it into two omni.
All potent, strong.
Which means what?
Daddy, could God, if he wanted to make me fly? Yes. Could God be in two places at once? Yes. Daddy. Daddy, Daddy. Or Mommy. Mommy, Mommy. What could God do? Anything.
God is God.
He is all powerful.
Now, if God is not all powerful, then I can readily understand bad things happening in the world. Because.
Because God can't do anything about it. He's not all powerful, then terrible things are going to happen. And God would be sitting up there and saying, I don't like that.
I wish it weren't so.
Well, we would say to God, so do something about it.
And according to the view that God is not omnipotent, um, God would be saying, I'm trying, I'm doing my best, but I can't.
As you're listening to this, I can see it on your faces. You're saying, praise God. Because you come to this with a perspective that acknowledges, uh, the way in which you have come to understanding God, the way in which you believe in God. God is all powerful. That's what God means.
Let me tell you where God says that in the Torah. Because of course, I'm saying this problem becomes intensified, becomes magnified a thousand fold. If we believe in the Torah, we believe what the Torah says about God, and by God, then we're going to have a real problem.
Uh, God comes to motion, says, I want you to take the Jewish people out of Egypt.
And there's a discussion back and forth. Then first he's too modest, and he says, who am I? And finally God says, look, I'm sending you, I'm telling you, and I will be with you. And you go. And they're still back and forth.
Moshe doesn't want to, but eventually he agrees.
And then he pops up with this question.
But I have another problem, says Moshe to God.
And it will be that I will come to the Jewish people and say that God will redeem you.
And they will say, what is his name?
What shall I tell them?
Huh? Uh, tell them God, he just said, I will say, God will redeem you.
They're going to ask, what's his name? You just said God. You said it yourself and said, God. It's not a hard word.
Obviously it's something more. But let's read one more verse and then see what Moshe is really asking.
I will say, what is his name? What shall I say to them?
And God answers, what?
Tell them. Who's going to tell me? What does God respond? Tell them Ah.
Uh, perhaps the most mistranslated verse in the Bible.
Now, uh, the other night, one of the rabbis said that you got to be funny and you got to be Jackie Mason.
It's part of the talk.
So this is where I'm going to be, Jackie Mason.
Because the English translation usually is a yeah, Asher. I am that I am.
So I can just picture Jackie Mason doing this. What am I going to tell them? What's your name? I am M for I am. I am for I am.
That's absurd. That means nothing. I am what I am. It's just being repetitious or is avoiding the issue.
It means nothing. I am what I am. Tell them I am what I am.
But in Hebrew, it actually means something other than I am. Um, what I am. And who will tell me what it means?
Yes, I will be what I will be.
A name defines who you are and all about you, your essence and your power. And they will say to me, God is going to redeem us.
He's able to do that because they've been suffering for so long. They question the validity of that statement.
And therefore God says, tell them that my essence, my name is I will be whatever I choose to be.
Because, as Maimonides explains the verse, the definition of deity for us is that God can be anything he wants to be.
Now, no human being can say that.
I can't say, I will be the greatest ball player in the world because I can't play ball. I'm not athletic. I will be the greatest singer in the world. I can't carry a tune. I can try to be better than I am, but there are things that I can't do that are limitations based on the fact that I'm human and God defines himself. Let's remember that as omnipotent, I can be whatever I will, to be sure.
So could you kindly remind me of blackboard number one? God is good at. Ah. Blackboard number two, God is omnipotent.
And blackboard number three says good people suffer.
I'm simply expressing a truth of life.
Is there anyone who wants to disagree with that?
Do you know good people who suffer? Uh, of course you do.
And there are times when I suffered.
I had bad things happen to me. Of course, I said I don't deserve it.
But okay, I might not be the prime example, because so far my life is pretty good aside from here and there.
But what about the person you've got a visit and he's dying of cancer.
What about the people who have a child who is Doomed. And what about all, um, the difficulties that some people encounter?
And life is not there?
Are you going to deny this blackboard?
Are you going to deny that this is a fact of life that good people suffer?
Yes, you can tell me holocaust, but you can tell me a host of other things and you can point to good people.
I know. And I could go on endlessly. I know so and so and so and so and so and so. And they give charity and they did all these righteous things and put on film.
And they follow God's law. And God says, you follow my law, I will bless you. That they are not blessed and life stinks for them.
So what are you going to say?
The three, do you understand? Cannot coexist.
God is good, God is omnipotent, and good people suffer.
Now, there is a book in the Bible that deals with this problem, but comes to a conclusion that is not all encompassing and obviously doesn't answer the question in full or even in a way that we can understand.
Now, what is the book that deals with theodicy? That's what it's called. The Problem of good and Evil. The Book of Job.
Right. Now, never mind the ending, because that's so difficult that I don't know how many people have written books about it, both rabbis, both theologians and secular philosophers. The ending is extremely difficult. But I want to tell you what happens in the middle of the book, which is extremely fascinating.
The middle of the book.
Church Job has gone through the living hell.
He's lost his children, he's lost his money, he's lost everything. And he's sitting shiva.
And his.
I'm going to say this with the famous quote marks.
His friends come to visit him.
They come to again in quotes, comfort him.
And what do they say?
Look, Joe, this is in the book. Look, Joe, you claim you're a good guy, you say you're a good man, but you're suffering.
Clearly God wouldn't impose punishment on a person who doesn't deserve it.
So why don't you share with us what you really did wrong so we can continue to believe in a good God.
Tell us, tell us a secret of the things you did behind our back secretly that warrant the kind of punishment you're receiving. Now, we, the reader, know that they're barking up the wrong tree. Because we, the reader, know that God himself said that he is righteous above all mankind.
We know that it was a what?
A test. Difficult to understand a test. But certainly they were wrong.
Which one of the three were they trying to negate? In order to resolve the fact that all three cannot coexist as truth. God is good. Yes, they said, I'll check that off.
Next one. God is omnipotent. Yes.
Good people suffer.
That can't be.
Therefore, what was their conclusion?
Obviously, the people who suffer are not good.
Which in modern day would translate into one of the most horrifying conclusions.
And yet. Which nonetheless, although it was not offered 50 years ago, is beginning to be said by some people, and I am appalled.
The Holocaust.
Now, right after the Holocaust, people knew who perished in the Holocaust. And they were righteous.
They were wonderful people. They were giants in scholarship and in ethics and in morals.
But 50 years later, nobody remembers them. There are very few survivors.
They have died out in the main. So, lo, behold, get some books written who say, well, you know, German Jews began to assimilate and German Jews were not as good as they should have been, and therefore God punished them with the Holocaust.
You've heard that, haven't you?
Permit me to say that is the most disgusting thing that I've ever heard. Because not only were those Jews slaughtered, tortured, burnt, cremated, but. But then you're going to do the same to their reputation 50 years later and say that they deserved it. That is Hitler, volume two.
Where do I get the nerve to say that? But maybe they're right.
Because the Talmud says that no one may ever be like the friends of Job. The Talmud says that.
And no one may ever say, clearly, if you are suffering, it is because of your sins. Do you understand that?
You're not allowed to say that. I didn't tell you what you should say. I didn't tell you how to answer the question. But I will tell you this. You can't answer it that way. That is incorrect. That is wrong. More, that is evil.
Can't say that.
So if that's the case, we're stumped.
Don't worry, I'll help you out.
But at this point, we have this huge problem one more time, because I want to make sure we don't lose anybody.
And we follow the thread of, um, the difficulty very carefully.
God is good. God is good. People suffer. Do you understand? How? They can't all coexist.
Which one will you sacrifice?
So the Friends of Job wanted to do away with number three, but the Talmud condemns them. So I know it can't be. That says only two left.
Which one is weaker and may be discarded. So land came.
Harold Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People, and said, the only thing that I can say that may help me endure and continue to believe in God is that God is good, but he's not omnipotent.
God can't do any better.
That's a rabbi.
That's a book, ostensibly speaking in the name of Judaism.
And I tell you that we can't buy into that because God, Hakol Yeho is able to do everything.
And I said, yeah, uh, sure, yeah, I will be whatever I choose to be. And it's a fundamental of faith.
So where do we go from here?
Now, I'm going to give you a few approaches.
I'm not going to give all the possible answers because that's a course, but I'm going to give you some.
In every one of the situations of people suffering, there may be a multiplicity of answers, but the two that I will present to you do a great job in solving most of the problems.
And let's do number one, which is going to come as a bit of a shock after I really attacked Kushner, because I said that to claim that God is not omnipotent, um, is a heresy.
However, there is some truth to what Kushner said, if you phrase it differently.
By that I mean God could do anything and everything, but because of a principle more important than anything, God chooses to withhold his power.
And what is that principle?
Free will.
People have free will.
And that means God doesn't want you to say, he's a rabbi.
What kind of rabbi is that?
And to call me names. God doesn't want that. But you have free will, and you can do whatever you want.
And God doesn't want you to move over to somebody who you don't like and hit him, but you go ahead and do it anyway. And then, of course, somebody will say, well, God could stop him. Can he?
God could do anything and he could stop everybody, including somebody who picks up a gun and shoots another person. He could stop him. But if he were to do so anytime and every time somebody were to do a bad thing, then what would we human beings become? Become puppets on a string, marionettes?
Because we would be controlled every moment of every day by virtue of the fact that we sometimes want to do things that God doesn't want us to do. God tells us not to do, but if we choose to do them, we can do them. Let me ask you a question.
Who is greater, human beings or angels?
So now Judaism discusses this, and the Talmud discusses this, and it comes to the following conclusion.
Human beings are greater than angels.
Why? Uh, is that?
Because angels are pre programmed to do exactly what God wants them to do.
And therefore when they do something good, you don't say to the IBM machine, you know, that's very nice today. You were good. That's what you're programmed to do.
And IBM is short for, um, I am an angel. Amalakh does what it's supposed to do because God directs, controls, make sure that the angel does what it is supposed to do.
Human beings can mess up.
God allows them to mess up. And that's called what?
Free will.
Do you understand logically, if there is free will, there must be some things happening where God looks down and says, oh yeah, I wish he wouldn't have done that.
That's no contradiction to God's omnipotence because God is willing, listen carefully to this, is willing to sacrifice his omnipotence for the sake of the greater good of, uh, free will.
You follow?
Now, the first murder in history was Cain kills Abel because he was able to do so.
God, if you didn't want that to happen, why don't you stop him?
That is the deeper and deepest meaning of Cain's response. When God says, what you do, what you do to your brother.
And what was his answer as we know it on a simple level, Am I my brother's keeper? Do you know what it meant was rhetorical question?
Am, um, I my brother's keeper? You are my brother's keeper. And if you didn't want it to happen, you shouldn't have let it happen. And therefore, if it did happen, that must mean you approved.
That was talmudic thinking, but wrong.
Why was it wrong?
Because God did allow it to happen in even though he didn't want it to happen.
And then you say, but wait a second, Rabbi, that means evil triumphs.
And I say, God has the ability through his omnipotence to right a wrong. Now, if someone were to steal a million dollars from me, he can do that. Except I don't have a million dollars, so he can't do that. But imagine that I had a million dollars. He could steal that million from me. And then subsequently, God could punish that person financially in whatever way he chooses.
However, if that person, through his free will, murders, I can't say me now because you're not supposed to say something bad about yourself murders another person. How is God going to undo that? What's the answer to that? God can't undo that, but he can reward the victim in the other world, or he can bring him back as a Gilgul, as a reincarnation.
God can take care of righting a wrong in his own time, which is infinite. Yes, that's okay.
And God therefore has to allow evil at times to be committed by human beings in order to preserve free will.
Which answers to some extent the question of why bad things happen to good people.
But God is good and he's all powerful. So how would you phrase that answer so far?
Of course this answer only applies to bad things happening to good people as a result of free will choices by other human beings.
And in those cases, God permitted it to happen.
But he's keeping score. He has a ledger and he will in some way rectify the wrong. People have asked me at this point, when I allowed them to interrupt me. Yeah, but what about the Holocaust? I just want to offer one thing that I did in a previous lecture. The Ponyvija Rav said something absolutely incredible when he discussed the reality of our generation. That has never happened before in Jewish history.
There are more bale teshuva, uh, in this generation than any other time in the past. More people have returned to practice of religion.
And the question is why? And upon said, because we are the post Holocaust generation.
Six million perished, two million probably thereabouts. Children never had a chance to grow up to live their lives of Jews.
They were killed not because they deserved it.
Now what is God going to do for them?
See, he brought them back. There weren't enough Jewish religious homes, so he took their souls and scattered them around the Jewish world.
And the Balei teshuva of our generation, the returning Jews of our generation are the souls of those who perished in the Holocaust who didn't have an opportunity to live out their lives as Jews. Remarkable ideal.
All I'm saying is God can do anything, including righting an ultimate wrong. But God himself is willing to do the trade off of bad things happening in order to preserve free will. You're with me.
What it does not answer though, is all those situations that come not from the free will agency of human beings, but rather a result of something that you can only call an act of God.
Right?
So why?
Why did this happen?
And for this I want to go to a biblical story.
For this very question is addressed not only famously in, in the book of Job, but according to the Talmud, is the key to understanding a story in the book of Exodus, a story that we know whose underlying theme is really why do bad things happen to good people?
And we will now go to the scene in Exodus chapter 33 after the sin of the golden calf.
And Moshe prays and prays and finally God forgives the Jewish people.
On what day did he forgive the Jewish people?
On, um, what day? Yom Kippur. And that's why Yom um Kippur is Yom Kippur. It's a day of forgiveness.
And according to the text, Moshe then saw that God was in a good mood, whatever that means.
And he said, God, I've been meaning to ask you a question.
Now, there is the simple text, and then the commentary. Deeper understanding of the rabbis.
Here is the simple text.
Then Moses says to God, I'd like to ask a favor of you, please.
Harini no et Kvodecha, show me, please, your glory.
I would expect him to say, show me you appear to me. He didn't say that. He said, show me your glory.
People who don't learn this portion the way Jews do say that Moses now wanted to see God, which is very peculiar because he'd been speaking for a long time. And God is not human. It doesn't have a human form. That's a fundamental belief.
And what does it mean to see God? But the question intensifies when the story continues.
So God said, I'm going to put you in the cleft of a rock, and I will pass before you.
And then what?
Remind me.
And then God says, you won't be able to see me and live. That's his first statement.
And then qualifying it almost, he says, but you know what? For isa as ahoroi upon which means what?
And you will see my back and my face. You will not see.
How can anyone be happy with that translation?
That goes against most fundamental understanding of God, certainly in Judaism.
How do you read that story?
First of all, you say, you can't see me and live. And then put. All right, all right. You'll see. You'll see my back.
God doesn't have a back.
God has no physical form.
What in the world is happening here?
I could belabor the question, but I think you get it.
And so let's see how the Talmud deals with this.
This was a dialogue.
And in order to understand God's response, you must first properly grasp what Moshe's question and request was.
I go back to the beginning. And what was the request? Hareni knew at Kvodecha, says Moshe to God, show me, please, your glory. He did not say, I want to see your face. I want to see what you look like. I want to see what kind of hair you have. I want to see whether you look like me. All of that is not what he said. He said, show me, please, your glory. And in Hebrew, what was the word. Remind me.
Which is the word Kavod. Kavod. You know, honor, says the Talmud.
Moshe says to God, there's something that's been bothering me all this time. And now that I think is a good opportunity for me to ask, I'm going to ask you.
I love to worship you. I love to respect you, to revere you, to pray to you. But there's one thing that I don't get.
I can't honor you if I see little kids dying of leukemia, I can't honor you. If I see pious Jews suffering.
I can't honor you because of the problem of tzadikviralo.
Righteous, and it goes bad for them.
Can you help me deal with that? Because I want to show you, Kavod.
Show me, please, your glory.
Explain to me tzadik, uh, varalo. The question that we are dealing with.
The question that is a theme of this lecture, the question that becomes a theme in the book of Job actually made its first appearance in the book of Exodus. Do you understand?
Uh, now that I understand the question, let's see if I can gain anything from God's answer.
First of all, says God to Moshe, you cannot see me and live.
What do you think that means in response to the question? I want to understand how you deal with the world and how you permit bad things to have to good people.
What is that answer? You can't see me and live anybody.
Yes, there are certain things that are beyond, uh, human understanding. Being human you can't understand. And more. I hear you, Harry. And more.
And in the limited time perspective of your life, 70 years or bis hildensik, you think you can understand it all from the perspective of those years?
There's far more to existence in the time that you have here. And you're making a judgment, you can't really give an honest opinion.
And you think that you have seen tzadik varalo righteous and bad.
For all you know it isn't bad. And for all you know, it was supposed to be for reasons beyond you.
That was his first statement.
But then it gets better than that.
And it gets better in a way that has helped me personally in my life and can help you.
Which in Yiddish means, listen carefully, because this is going to be a tremendous source of comfort for you throughout your life.
God says, I will pass before you, and you won't see hashem, meaning you won't see a good God, because I will appear to you as someone who allows bad things to happen.
However, once I passed, you will see My back, my face you will not see, but you will see my back.
And then you will understand. Who understands that now?
You won't grasp my ways while events occur, but you will see my back when you will view your life in your. What's the English word?
Thank you so much. Backwards in retrospect, uh, a tremendous line.
The tragedy of life is that we live life forward and can only understand it backwards.
We live life forward, moves from day to day.
And, um. Boy, did I have a bad thing happen to me today.
Oh, boy, oh, boy. I remember Marshall. What a bad thing happened to him as a kid, he told me, because he broke his leg and he couldn't play ball.
And he was in the hospital for months.
True. Later on, he wasn't drafted because of that injury, and all his friends got killed.
In retrospect, he said, boy, that wasn't a bad thing.
I want to tell you some stories, and depending on how I feel, whether I get very personal or not, we'll see.
But I have found I am a young old man. That's what I am.
And, uh, in my lifetime, I've had many experiences and many occasions when I thought, how could this be happening? It's bad.
And I lived, thank God, long enough to see that this third blackboard is the solution.
Not because Tzadik Varalo know, then he's not a tzadik.
The righteous and the spared for him. Not because he's not a tzadik. That's not the way to resolve. But because it's not for Tzadik righteous and bad things happen.
No, because it isn't bad.
Because you need to understand what I'm going to share with you in one story, which has three parts to it. And it's an incredibly beautiful story, but it's just an illustration.
And I could tell you many more like it. But I think this one makes the point best.
So I have been teaching at Yeshiva University for 46 years.
As I told you the other day, it must be that I started age 12, right?
And, uh, going back many years, I'm in the middle of giving a shiur.
The school secretary comes rushing into class and says, rabbi Blech, you must leave the class immediately and go to the dormitory.
There's a young boy, a student of yours. He respects you.
He is threatening to commit suicide. We need somebody to talk to him.
You can talk to him.
I left the class, dismissed them, went to the dormitory, tried to talk to him. First, he wouldn't talk to me.
Finally, what's the matter, Rabbi, you don't understand. Of course, we never understand. It's either rapper, your daddy or mommy. We don't understand.
My girlfriend broke up with me. She's the greatest. I'll never find another one like her. The kid is older, 21 years old, right? Never find another like her. Uh, my life is over.
I stayed, talked, talked. Finally, it's night time. I call up my wife, I call up Elaine. I can't come home tonight. I gotta stay with this kid.
By morning, he was willing at least to concede that he wasn't going to commit suicide right away and that I could trust him and I could leave him.
So the story seemed to end there, but it didn't.
Fifteen years later.
Wow, uh, that's a long time.
I was teaching a class in the same room.
Somehow I never graduated the same room.
And there's a knock on the door in middle of Shia.
And young man is standing there, comes in, he says, rabbi, do you recognize me?
I look at him, I say, yes, I remember you, and you owe me a night's sleep.
So with that, he knew that I really remembered him.
I'm not that great usually in facial recognition, but, I mean, this was a very, uh, important story.
And he said I had to come back and tell you.
You remember when you spoke to me and I wanted to commit suicide?
It's many years later. I want to tell you the end of that story. The girl that I was crazy about, she turned out to be the biggest tramp. I mean, she's married, divorced, married man. Now. She is, uh. He said things I don't want to repeat.
I subsequently found the woman of my dreams.
The greatest, wonderful wife. I have, uh, beautiful children.
And the day that I thought was the worst day in my life, in retrospect, turns out to have been the greatest, best day of my life. The story is not over.
Not over.
Now.
A little while after this happened, I went to Los Angeles.
I was at the OU convention.
A lot of rabbis got together. And then for Shabbat, they took every one of us and sent us to a different synagogue in Los Angeles. And I went to Yula, and I was given the honor of giving the sermon.
And I spoke about the Seder of Vay. And it ended up that there was a part in the center that very much linked to the idea of bad things could really turn out to be good.
And I write out my sermons.
Now, it doesn't look like I write anything out, um, because I, uh, appear to be just winging it. I memorize Everything I don't want to read from a paper, but I write it out, and then I have the ability, thank God, to speak it.
And I had a sermon all prepared. You'll see. There's a reason why I'm telling you this.
This almost never happens to me. But when it does, and I suddenly have an idea while I'm speaking, and I figure it's important, I feel free enough to inject it, to incorporate it into the speech. And all of a sudden, it dawned on me that that story that I just shared with you would be a perfect, perfect example that I could use in the speech. So I put it in.
Now, the shul. That day, that Shabbat, I hadn't known about it.
They had an offer. Do you know what an offruth is? A young boy was going to be getting married the next day. And the before your marriage, you're called up to the Torah. And this khatan, the husband, was called up to the Torah.
He was going to be getting married on Sunday.
Sunday night, I'm at the dinner of the ou and a local rabbi comes over to me. He says, rabbi Blech, do you know what you did yesterday?
When a rabbi hears that, he gets frightened. You know what I do wrong? No, no, no.
What happened?
It's amazing.
He says, you remember there was a young boy who was called to the Torah because he was getting married. He was supposed to get married on Sunday. On Saturday night, he comes home and his fiance calls him up and says, I can't go through with it.
And she broke it off.
Imagine, to be married the next day.
And he was distraught and destroyed.
Then he said to himself something that we should all say.
If unusual things happen to us, there must be a reason.
I just heard the rabbi today talk of something that's comparable.
Maybe that was a message for me. And I, knowing that I had no intention of telling that story, but nonetheless, did. There must have been a reason. Wow.
He said, I'm going to go on with my life. Uh, as tragic as this is, there must be a reason.
So the local rabbi told me that the fact that he heard this speech saved him. And he said he's willing to go on.
And then two years ago, my wife and I are going to Israel.
And at jfk, we get on an LL plane. We get into our seats, and before we can buckle up, there's a young man walking by.
And all of a sudden he stops and he says, rabbi Blah, do you remember me this time I didn't, because I didn't Have a relationship with him.
Is you once spoken Eula.
And you told a story.
And I was so distraught. But then your story saved me.
I want to tell you.
I want you to come over and meet my wife.
Greatest woman in the world.
My children best.
And he is now a principal at Frisch.
He says once a year in the high school, he takes the entire class. And he says, I want to tell you people a story.
And the story is his story.
And he says to them, I want you to know that there will come moments in life when you will think as the worst thing that ever happened to you.
And if you give God a chance in retrospect, you will see that it was a blessing.
And I'm not going to tell you the moments in my life. But I promise you, there were when things happened.
And I was overwhelmed by God.
How could you let this happen to me? Why is this happening to me? I'm a good guy.
Why should this be? And I teach Torah, and I'm a rabbi.
I couldn't understand.
And it took years.
And some of the worst things that happened to me have turned out to be the best thing. So where is that stated other than in the story of Moshe asking the question and then being told, you will see my back. You will understand. In retrospect, I will say to you this last thing.
I want you to listen carefully. Or in Hebrew.
When God deals kindly with us, uh, he is called Hashem. When he deals in a tough and seemingly strict manner, he is called Elo Kim. Why does God have two names, Hashem and Elohim? Because not all the time is everything good to our eyes.
Sometimes he's Hashem, and sometimes he is Elokenu. But what do we conclude?
Hashem and Elokenu are Hashem Echod. Not just Echod are, uh, one, but Hashem Echod. They're both Hashem. Because even the tough God is Hashem. And the last, last thing.
Once meets, a student of his says to him, how are things?
And the kid says, oy, Sishlecht. Oh, things are bad.
Don't you ever say something like that. You. I'm not allowed to say it's bad.
So what should I say? My life is horrible? He says, say it's bitter.
Say it's bitter.
He said, I understand. Bitter, bad. Same thing. I told you my life is horrible, said the Rebbe. To him, A medicine may be bitter, but it's never bad.
It's bitter.
Temporary taste, but has a purpose. If God sent it to you.
And our lives at times may be bitter, but not bad. That is the best answer to the best approach. Not the only. Not, uh, the only. And I'm not saying I've solved everything, but the best answer to why bad things happen to good people, number three. We do the summary. God is good. God is omnipotent. Bad things happen to good people. How do you know what's bad?
It ain't bad. Give it a chance and it will turn to good.
Thank you. That's all for today.
[00:59:29] Speaker B: Thanks for listening to Inside the Jewish Mind, a JLI podcast. Be sure to join us every week for fresh insights and timeless Jewish ideas.
As always, stay curious, keep learning, and we'll see you next time.
