Why
Me?
Yom
Kippur Yizkor 2014
Somewhere,
in some obscure article or journal, which I can no longer find, I recall
someone doing a survey of people's sensitivity to pain. Groups were assessed by
ethnic origins and I assumed were asked to measure some value for pain or the
absence of pain. How much, perhaps, would they pay to avoid pain.
As I can
best recall, Jews were the most sensitive to pain. Be it physical pain, or
imaginary pain, pain is pain, and Jews hurt. We Jews aren't stoical about it.
In fact, not only are we commanded to heal illness, we are also commanded to
minimize pain.
This is
a very curious religion, since, we would assume, from the way religion is
commonly taught, that we shouldn't worry. Our pain, our hurt, is only
temporary, it is only an illusion of our attachment to our selves, it is but
the price we pay for heaven, and so forth. Yet no Jew is commanded to be in
pain. He is commanded to be out of pain and to heal the pain of others.
This is Yom Kippur, and we
have gathered for Yizkor, we feel very much the hurt and pain, this one,
emotional, of the loss of someone we have loved. We seek, in our religion, the
balm to heal, the medicine to soothe our hurts.
Undoubtedly, the hardest
task for a Rabbi is to deal with good people who have suffered, be it an
illness themselves, or the pain or death of
a loved one. The question so often asked, is
"Why me?" Why her?", "Why
us?"
It is a
perennial question.
There
is a sage in the Mishnah who is commonly known as Acher-which means "another".
What happened to this sage ,that he came to be known by such a disparaging
title? It is said that Elisha ben Abuyah, his correct name, was a great scholar, of the time of Rabbi Akiba, and the teacher of
the great Rabbi Meir.
One day, he observed a young man climb a tree,
take both the mother bird and the chicks, and come down unscathed.
To
take the mother as well as the chicks was forbidden by the Torah, and it irked
the scholar that this scofflaw should have escaped unscathed. Then another young
man climbed a tree, and this young man too found a bird's nest. He chased away
the mother bird, as the Torah demanded, and took only the chicks. The mother
bird was spared in order to produce a new generation of birds. The Torah promised long life for sparing the
mother bird. Upon return to the ground, he was bitten by a poisonous snake, and immediately died. The great Rabbi
was outraged. The one who broke the law went scot free yet the one who was
meticulous in observance died of snake
bite , a death reserved for sinner, not saint. He declared Zo Torah --Zo
Scharah?? This is the Torah-- This is its reward??
At
that moment, it is said, he turned from
Judaism completely, and became Acher, another.
How
many times have we seen just that which affected Elisha Ben Abuya so greatly.
Good people suffer while wicked people thrive. Why should God allow it? Can God
allow it?
Where
is God in this equation?
This
question has served as the meal ticket for a great many philosopher, especially
in the monotheist religions, which all presume an omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent
God. The philosopher's answers were often great masterpieces of sophistry.
Thus, they would posit that evil is an illusion of perspective, that evil is
merely the absence of good, just as darkness is the absence of light. There is the perspective
that evil is necessary for the good to stand out and be truly
appreciated, just as ugliness gives contrast to beauty or darkness gives
contrast to light. But such
answers are, in Rabbinic parlance, a refutation with a straw, easily broken.
Some Jewish sources sought to find the cause of suffering
in our own actions.
Since God is just, what happens, illness, war, accident, is our fault. We Jews
are particularly
prone to this, and this thought is in our own prayer books-- "Mipney
Hataeynu galinu"--for our sins we were exiled. There is in this thought, the sense that a
universe with an overly strict God is preferable to a universe with no God.
There are variations on the theme,
in which the suffering we have now is compensated in the next life, while the
triumphant wicked will get their due in the next world. There is the view, in
Jewish thought, just as in Hinduism or Buddhism, that if we suffer, it is because we committed
wrong in a previous life, and are now paying for it, but will thereby be elevated
to a higher level in the next as compensation.
I,
for one, could never say to any person
,"If you are ill, it is for some sin, unknown to you ." I will never
say it, and I find, that on the contrary, my greatest task is to assure the one
who is suffering: You are not guilty (Unless, of course, we are talking to
someone who has committed some gross crime, a mass murderer or a terrorist).
Sin
may be the cause of the troubles of the human condition—after all, we are all
flawed beings in some way or another, yet no one dare point a finger at anyone
and say, “ Your misery comes from some sin unknown to you!”
No,
sin as the cause of suffering is not an
acceptable answer either.
Fortunately, our tradition is not
monolithic. We are not tied to the answers of one Rabbi, sage, philosopher, or
prophet over and above all the others. On the contrary, in our tradition, from
the very pages of the Bible and Rabbinic lore, there is open dialogue and a
serious search for the salve and balm for our deepest wounds.
Our sages rephrased
the issue in the tale of Job. Job is each and every one of us who has suffered
for no good reason.
Job's three friends try to assure him,
"Job, Confess, You have some great secret sin". .Job refuses to admit
any guilt, yet also refuses to turn against
God.
No answer gives him satisfaction, until God, in full awe and wonder, appears in
personal revelation, denounces the three so-called friends, and vindicates
Job This personal vision, the assurance
that there is a God in full command of the universe,
rather than a universe in chaos, is sufficient answer for Job
.
Later
sages took a new page out of Job's experience
Job did not suffer because he had
done wrong--the suffering was an indication of
his very special saintliness. Thus, Rabbi
Jose ben Judah, could say, "Precious are afflictions, for
they are accompanied by God's glory" Or, as in the words of a Rabbi in the Talmud, "Whom God
favors, he tries with afflictions. In such an attitude, many indeed found comfort.
I am
good, but I suffer; then I must be a special object of God's concern, that it is intended to raise me to even higher levels. We Jews
suffer because
we are God's chosen people, not God's rejected people. In this thought, indeed,
many Jews, over the centuries
found great comfort .
Yet not every sage-was
thrilled with that assurance. One
Rabbi, Rabbi Yochanan in particular, had
dedicated his life to comforting others. It is said that his colleague, Rabbi
Eliezer was deathly ill, and he came to visit him.
He turned to his friend, and asked "Do you accept
your suffering? Said Rabbi Eliezer, "I want neither suffering, nor any
rewards from heaven for my suffering." Then, said Rabbi Yohanan, give me
your hand," and raised his friend up in health.
Note
in this story, that the great sage does not try to justify God to his friend.
He does not lay a guilt trip on him, to say "You have. sinned, and God has
punished you ."He does not try to bolster him by saying “It is God's will".
He is a faith healer in reverse. The
healing does not come because Rabbi
Eliezer has faith. It comes because he refuses to accept the suffering.
Even
beyond this, we see, in our heritage, a
call and a challenge, a dare to God Himself. Justice and right are paramount
overall, and God is called to task. In the Bible, Abraham, God's personal
friend, dares question God's justice at the planned destruction of Sodom and
Gomorrah, and God accedes to Abraham's position.
This
attitude is reflected millennia later, in a Hasidic tale.
There is a wide-spread
tale of a poor, simple tailor who ,on this Day of Yom Kippur, began to bargain
with God,"Ashamnu, bagadnu. "All right, God, so I did cheat this
year. I over charged one man, another, I took too much cloth, the other, I made
a sloppy stitch. Sure, those are my sins.
But look, God, look at your sins--famine, war, widows &orphans. I'll tell
you what. Let's make a deal. I'll forgive you your sins, if you forgive me
mine."
At this point, it is said, the Baal
Shem went over to him in great agitation.
"Why did you stop? You had God pinned down.
A little more, and he would have been
forced to send the Messiah.!"
We must, at this point, recognize,
that in our day ,in our frame of mind, we can not accept an image of God as one
pushing myriads of buttons, this button for health, and this button for
illness, this one for life, and this one for death. As Jews, we have accepted
the truth of a universe of law and system, in which material events have
material cause and effect. Disease is from germs and earthquakes are from the
motion of geological structures, and we no longer seek God as the blame for
these events, even if our insurance forms describe them as "Acts of
God." This is especially true for
us as Jews, still living in the shadows of the Holocaust, in which clearly, the
human choice of evil, and not God's wrath, is to be blamed.
Jews
long ago realized that God, for all the philosophical terms of omnipotence,
could not control everything. Among Jewish mystics, there was a realization,
that for the universe to be created, God had to be absent from it. This
inevitably led to a catastrophe in the universe and the existence of evil which God alone could not conquer. The human
being, the Jew ,in particular ,was the special vehicle whereby the universe
would be restored to purity and wholeness and whereby evil would be conquered.
We are then, not God's victim, but rather, God's partner in the restoration of
the universe, God's partner in both a physical and metaphysical sense.
What then of
ourselves. If God is not there to bail us out of our troubles, if he no longer
splits Red Seas or makes Manna fall on our wildernesses, what then does God do
for us. If "Why Me?" is to be answered, “It’s not your
fault", then we are still left with the pain and hurt. Where is God in
this equation?
The great Hasidic
master, Rebbe Nachman of Bratslav, suffered in his final years from a
debilitating illness. He was torn by doubt and conflict, since he was part of
that ancient world which saw illness as coming from God in punishment of sin.
Here was a Holy Man, a Tsadik, surrounded by
a community of Holy Men--why did he not find healing? He fell into great
despair.
Then,
as his strength ebbed, he began to recover his bearings. At a gathering of his
followers, he suddenly shouted out,"Gevalt- “Zich nit meya-esh zein!” Do
not despair! There is no such thing as despair at all ! "He drew forth
these words slowly and deliberately,
with strength and depth that he taught his disciples for all generations, that
we would never despair, no matter what we endure.
At the entrance to
the Bratslaver Synagogue, in the time of the Warsaw ghetto, there was a large
sign, "Jews, Never Despair!" It is
said that even in the times of the horrible ghetto, his
followers danced with great strength and fervor.
“Jews, Never
Despair.!" This is the great message of Judaism. God is to found in the
depths of our pain, as the source of hope,
strength, endurance.
Just this is what we add in our daily service for
an entire month preceding the High Holy Days, the 27th Psalm. The poet depicts
his enemies, ready to pounce on him, and
he asks for one thing: "It is your face
that I seek, says my heart;
It is your presence that I crave, 0Lord. Hope in the Lord and be strong, hope in the
Lord and take courage."
God
is found and is present in our hearts as we leap over the hurdles in our life, or
even just live through them.
We find God in our ability to reach
out beyond our pain, beyond our problems, and look to our fellow human being,
whom we are taught, is " betzelem Elohim “, in the image of the divine.
We will never answer
the question, "Why Me?” Or " Why Us?" but we can give meaning to
our lives , to our pain, when we can rise above
it, and act, in God like manner with
hope in God within us to conquer and overcome evil, pain, and suffering. To
this goal we labor, and declare, "Jews, Never Despair!, We never lose hope
in the face of whatever life deals us."
No comments:
Post a Comment