Home Shalom Monday Message #33

Home Shalom promotes healthy relationships and facilitates the creation of judgement free, safe spaces in the Jewish community. Home Shalom is a program of The Advot Project.

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“Once permission has been given to the Destroyer, it does not differentiate between the righteous and the wicked.”

– Talmud Bava Kamma 60a 

The Talmud has a fascinating discussion about a fundamental spiritual question that has haunted human beings since the beginning of time. It is known by the theological term “theodicy” and, simply put, is the question that if there is a God who is benevolent and the source of goodness, compassion, justice and mercy in the world, then why do the good and righteous among us suffer? The question “Why do bad things happen to good people?” is a perpetual religious conundrum with which every generation has wrestled, especially for Jews since the Holocaust when 6 million of us, including a million and a half innocent children, were brutally slaughtered by the Nazis.

The sages of Jewish tradition wrestled with that same question throughout the centuries and in this instance used the story of the Exodus to make their point. They quote Exodus 12:22, where the Israelites are commanded, “None of you shall go outside the door of your house until morning.” They point out that even though God’s plan was to punish the Egyptians for enslaving the Israelites by killing their first born on Passover eve and sparing the Israelites (who had been commanded to put the blood of a lamb on their doorposts so the Angel of Death, here called the “Destroyer” would know to pass over their homes), if an Israelite had left home on the night of the 10^th plague or simply didn’t put the blood on the door, they too would have been killed along with the Egyptians.

In our own time, we hear story after story of young men of color who have been swept up by law enforcement and thrown in jail or given lengthy prison terms in spite of being innocent or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The reality of just how elusive “justice” has been throughout the painful history of America is the very reason that Black Lives Matter came into being. The Jewish sages of old recognized this same painful reality that both the good and the wicked were often swept up together from wars and conflicts or the plagues of their own time. For us as well, whether it is today’s pandemic, which recognizes neither borders, races, genders, or social status, or the collateral damage that ensues with every conflict, it is up to us to work to create a society that reflects the values we cherish and the balance of justice and compassion that is necessary for our society to ultimately flourish for all.

Monday Messages will be taking a break in December. We wish everyone a holiday season filled with love and joy.