Universal Truths: Jewish Roots, Week Two: Suffering

[dorchadas]

Notes from my second week of class:

• Theodicy!


• "When Bad Things Happen to Good People", which is a lot!


• Reasons
• Karma


• Resistance Training (only what people can handle)


• Character Building


• G-d works in mysterious ways


• Suffering is a passage to healing


• All assume G-d causes all suffering. No other sources?


• Omniscient, Omnipotent, Omnibenevolent. But, pick two


• "What if G-d isn't tracking us like Google? Amazon knows more about us than G-d does."


• Shit happens religion poster


• Tohu v'Vohu, chaos and formlessness before creation. Leftover chaos, since G-d rested on Shabbat. But was everything done?


• Why say it was good if it wasn't good?


• Order built on top of chaos. Chaos still underneath? Qlippoth?

  Her: "Pandora goes off sometimes without turning it on."
  Me: "Speaking of chaos."

• Where is the meaning in a nature disaster? For whom? If one survives and one dies?


• Christianity has good concept of G-d's love through suffering, that either really speaks to you or it absolutely doesn't. The Deist watchmaker setting the universe in motion and ignoring everything after is the other way around.


• If G-d is connection between people, then since people pull together in the response to a disaster, then G-d is in the disaster response


• "Acts of G-d" is term of art used for events we don't have enough data to predict statistically. The "God of the Gaps" but for statistical modeling


• People who don't feel connected seem like they need G-d more, but feel it less. Not everyone gets help from other people. If you define G-d by people helping people, it sidesteps the question


• Rabbi Abraham Joshua Herschel lost whole family in Shoah. Where was G-d, but where was man?


• If we're created בצלם אלהים b'tzelem Elohim, and we're good and bad, then isn't G-d good and bad?


• Shedim provide a good explanation for evil!


• Why "Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh"? I will be, future? Because G-d will be with people in future sorrows as well. But then what is the point of G-d's presence? Presence is not the same as witness


• Like parenting? Trusting in children to do what they can


• Jews have never read Torah literally. Seventy faces, etc. PaRDeS. Pshat, Remez, D'rash, Sod


• Noah, G-d regrets creation. Throw creation away?


• Why "chaos"? Too strong? Randomness, uncertainty? Too disruptive?


• Talk to G-d directly. Because it's hard, because it helps break through the barrier of rationality, and because everyone talks on phones now and look like they're talking to themselves nowadays

Comments

[dorchadas]

I mean:

"And the Lord God called to the man, and said to him: 'Where are you?' "
-Genesis 3:9

Why would he need to ask if he already knew? 🤔