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While theodicy on an individual level typically proposes personal benefits which that one may be able to achieve through suffering, sources which relate to the nation explore this on a communal scale. Hatred for the Jews in some rabbinic sources is attributed to our having accepted the Torah at Sinai, thereby embracing the role as bearer of God’s moral and spiritual message to the world (Shabbat 89a). While history has on occasion demonstrated supported for this teaching, yesterday’s Torah reading shows that the senseless hatred may even have started before this time.
Yosef and his wider family had saved Egypt from famine and accumulated great economic and political strength for the country in the process. Yet in words which seem to foreshadow the attitude of so many of our host countries through the years they remain concerned about the Jews’ loyalty – maybe we are fifth columnists who will align with our enemies and drive us out of their land?
In his Beit Halevi essay on Shemot, Rabbi Yosef Dov Soloveitchik is initially startled by a verse from Tehillim (105:25) which includes the Egyptian hatred and oppression among the acts of kindness that God performed for the Jewish people. He then notes midrashim that connect the start of the oppression to the Jews' attempts to conceal their circumcision and Jewish identity. His great-grandson and namesake Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik appears to endorse this idea, that a history of persecution and martyrdom has the effect of hardening attitudes towards any form of assimilation which could challenge the distinct identity and values of the Jewish people.
The key to understanding both the suffering in Egypt and continued anti-Semitism through the ages, according to this, is to view it not as a punishment, but rather as God's tool to ensure that His promise to Avraham at the Berit Bein Habetarim covenant would be preserved. It is only as a result of unabated anti-Semitism, particularly severe at times of heightened assimilation, that the Jews have survived as the Chosen Nation, retaining the ability to carry out their holy and extremely challenging mission. This idea is given full expression in Radak’s commentary to a passage in Yechezkel (20:32), in which the prophet addresses God’s refusal to countenance Jewish attempts to assimilate among the nations:
“But when they disobey My commands, I will strengthen the nations against them…Israel, whom I took out from the house of slavery to be my treasured nation etc, and I to them a God, My eyes will be constantly on them for good and bad, as it states in the prophecy of Amos (3:2) “Only you have I known from all of the families of the world, therefore I will be attentive to all of your sins”. And if you wish to depart from My worship, I will not grant permission for this. Even though you will be many years in exile, you will never cease to be a nation before me…and with force I will reign over you, and I will purify you …”.
Reports that I’ve seen from across the Jewish world have confirmed that the atrocities and persecution that our nation has been experiencing recently have indeed strengthened Jewish identities. Jewish students no longer feeling welcome on campuses outside Jewish societies, non-observant soldiers seeking out tsitsit and tefillin – in my own family a mostly assimilated cousin who had married out lit a Menorah for the first time and appears to be taking more pride in his Jewish identity.
Another factor which is raised in theological analysis of national Jewish providence is the dynamic of unity and internal strife. Rabbinic sources contrast the apparent unity of Achav’s evil generation with the in-fighting at the time of King David, suggesting that this can explain Achav’s greater success on the battlefield. In our generation, the awful events of October 7 can be seen to have brought back Israeli society from an abyss and verging on civil war (a societal split that some have claimed prompted Hamas to launch their attack when the did). The way in which soldiers and civilians from different groups and levels of religious belief have drawn together to meet this crisis has been an enormous source of inspiration.
Yet, all these explanations and justifications nevertheless seem to fall short. Our minds may be able to comprehend them on some kind of detached theological and philosophical level when we study them in books. But such attempts to justify and make sense of the appalling tragedies and evil inflicted upon innocents just seem wholly insufficient when I listen to survivor accounts or sit at Shiva houses looking into the eyes of parents who have lost their children in the worst possible circumstances.
Therefore, while being broadly aware of the existence of such ideas in our prophetic and rabbinic writings, we sometimes need to fall back on other sources within our prophetic and rabbinic traditions which cry out in anguish and protest over the inexplicable suffering which our brethren have been subjected to. Rabbi Sacks in some of his writings quoted several prophetic protests of this type, from Yirmiyah to Habbakuk, with the book of Job appearing to reject a whole series of theodicies confidently presented by Job’s friends as inadequate. Ultimately the message appeared to be that we lack the knowledge and understanding required to comprehend God’s ways; our role according to Rabbi Sacks is not to accept the evil, however, but to utilise the teachings of the Torah to combat and minimise its consequences.
“Why do You ignore us eternally, forsake us for so long? Bring us back to You, Hashem, and we shall return, renew our days as of old. For even if You had utterly rejected us, You have already raged sufficiently against us.” [Eicha 5:20-22]
First posted to Facebook 7 January 2024, here.
