The Rabbinic View of Suffering
The purpose of religion is to provide meaning in our lives.
This is a simple idea, suitable for the classroom; however, it doesn't define the pivotal words: religion and meaning.
I could try to define what a religion is, but for Jews, we live outside of an experience where Jewishness can be reduced to religion as a category. Meaning is easier. Meaning is the story that we can place over that sense of disorder from a chaotic world, that allows us to live our lives with hope rather than despair or numbness.
Why is meaning important? Because there is important business to be done. Rabbi Harold Kushner supplied the most popular treatment of the fundamental question that the average person asks, “Why Do Bad Things Happen To Good People?” Unstated, but equally troubling is the inverse, “Why do good things happen to bad people?” Our tradition does have answers for these questions. The Torah answers quite clearly: suffering comes from our failure to obey God’s commandments.
This idea is expressed most vividly in the sections on the Blessings and Curses in the Torah portions Behukotai (Leviticus 26:1-4,14-16) and Re’eh (Deut. 11:26-28…). We see this idea in the second paragraph of the Shema which is taken from Deut. 11: If you indeed heed my commandments with which I charge you today, to love the Lord your God and worship Him with all your heart and all your soul, I will give you rain in your land in its season…” This is a wonderful way to explain where suffering comes from, except when you are actually suffering.
Buddhism is centered on addressing suffering. The central beliefs of the Buddhist tradition are contained within the Four Noble Truths. The first is that all life is fleeting and this is painful to us. The second is the realization that we are emotionally attached to the physical world. The third is the realization that we can let go of that attachment and the fourth is that there is a path to do so.
Buddhism as a religious path is beautiful and compelling. A large part of the Western Buddhist community that has grown up has been drawn from the Jewish community. Part of the appeal of Buddhism for Jews has been that it was not a tradition which arose in opposition to Jews and their beliefs. However, it is a tradition that values and focuses on asceticism, a frame of mind that feels un-Jewish to me. (You mean you sit quietly for long periods of time, no grousing or arguing, no complaining about the food?) It is unto itself, a worthy tradition, but a separate one in its primary concerns.
Rabbinic Judaism, which rises out of the flawed character of Second Temple Judaism and the trauma of the wholesale destruction of that way of life by the Romans, developed a different idea about suffering. Biblical Judaism does not have an articulated view of the afterlife. Beyond the unelaborated ideas of “being gathered to one's kin,” or “going down to sheol,” we hear no more. The rabbis understood that beyond this world there was the world to come. Rather than the simple mathematics of punishment and reward in this life, there was a storing up of merit in this life that made one worthy of life in the next. One could use up the value of one’s merit in this life (to avoid suffering or live the good life) rather than saving it for the next, but that wasn’t something that they felt was a good thing to do.
This rabbinic idea is then as follows: Bad people do well in this world because whatever reward they deserve for merit will be exhausted in this world and they will not merit the world to come. Good people suffer in this world because they are storing up merit for the world to come, where they will live without their suffering.
On reflection, we can see that this rabbinic idea is not so different from the first two of the Noble Truths. What is different is that, despite the belief in the world to come, the rabbis don’t believe that this world is any less consequential than the world to come. What we do in this world has consequences in this world and the world to come, but what we do in the world to come has little influence (that we know of). We can strive to go through life with an equanimity that would suit Buddhist life, but as Jews we don’t strive to overcome this world, but to accept it and take joy in it, because it is God’s creation, a creation that God called “Good.”
I was reminded of all of this by a section of Talmud from Tractate Berakhot that I reviewed first in the Ein Yaakov, a compilation of the narrative section of the Talmud that I have started working my way through and then by a return to the Talmud text itself (Berakhot 5B)
This section discussed the idea of suffering that is undeserved, but brought upon the righteous as a way, a kind of test, to bring them additional merit to store up for the world to come. These are called, yissurin shel ahavah (יִסּוּרִין שֶׁל אַהֲבָה) or afflictions of love. This refinement of the rabbnic system of this world and the world to come is troubling. It is reminiscent of the sufferings of Job. Job suffers because the Satan wants to prove to God that Job only praises God because his life is good. Job’s piety is the reason why he is tested. We often look at Job’s suffering as arbitrary, but the rabbis would see meaning in them.
“And suffering due to [the death] of children is not an affliction of love? The Gemara clarifies: What are the circumstances? If you say that he had children and they died, didn’t Rabbi Yoḥanan himself say, while consoling the victim of a catastrophe: This is the bone of my tenth son? [Rabbi Yoḥanan experienced the death of ten of his children, and he kept a small bone from his tenth child as a painful memorial. He would show that bone to others in order to console them, and since he showed it to them, the deaths of his children must certainly have been affliction of love. He consoled others by displaying that there is an element of intimacy with God that exists in that suffering (Tosafot). Why, then, would Rabbi Yoḥanan have said that suffering due to children is not afflictions of love?] Rather, one must conclude that when Rabbi Yoḥanan said that those afflictions are not afflictions of love, he was speaking with regard to one who has no children, and when one had children who died, this could very well be considered afflictions of love.”
What has always troubled me in this story is that in no way accounts for the suffering of the children that died. We console the survivors over the death of their loved ones. They are not there to be consoled, but that does not mean that there was not a time when we could have consoled them for their suffering. Each life is its own life. This way of looking at things makes our children into functions of ourselves rather than their own people deserving of life with a meaning for them beyond the meaning of our lives for ourselves.
“The Gemara continues to address the issue of suffering and affliction: Rabbi Yoḥanan’s student, Rabbi Ḥiyya bar Abba, fell ill. Rabbi Yoḥanan entered to visit him, and said to him: Is your suffering dear to you? Do you desire to be ill and afflicted? Rabbi Ḥiyya said to him: I welcome neither this suffering nor its reward, as one who welcomes this suffering with love is rewarded. Rabbi Yoḥanan said to him: Give me your hand. Rabbi Ḥiyya bar Abba gave him his hand, and Rabbi Yoḥanan stood him up and restored him to health.
Similarly, Rabbi Yoḥanan fell ill. Rabbi Ḥanina entered to visit him, and said to him: Is your suffering dear to you? Rabbi Yoḥanan said to him: I welcome neither this suffering nor its reward. Rabbi Ḥanina said to him: Give me your hand. He gave him his hand, and Rabbi Ḥanina stood him up and restored him to health.
The Gemara asks: Why did Rabbi Yoḥanan wait for Rabbi Ḥanina to restore him to health? If he was able to heal his student, let Rabbi Yoḥanan stand himself up. The Gemara answers, they say: A prisoner cannot generally free himself from prison, but depends on others to release him from his shackles.”
Neither Rabbi Hiyya Bar Abba nor Rabbi Yohanan are attached to their suffering. They are willing to cast it off, but they need the assistance of a friend or a teacher to let them know that. Essentially, these rabbis, recognizing the source of their suffering in God, can make known to God that the way God is interacting with them is unwelcome. This is not completely unlike Buddhist release from attachment. However, it is refusal to be attached to the system of merit operating as an end. For them, their piety is in following the law for its own sake and not for merit.
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“The Gemara relates that Rabbi Elazar, another of Rabbi Yoḥanan’s students, fell ill. Rabbi Yoḥanan entered to visit him, and saw that he was lying in a dark room. Rabbi Yoḥanan exposed his arm, and light radiated from his flesh, filling the house. He saw that Rabbi Elazar was crying, and said to him: Why are you crying? Thinking that his crying was over the suffering that he endured throughout his life, Rabbi Yoḥanan attempted to comfort him: If you are weeping because you did not study as much Torah as you would have liked, we learned: One who brings a substantial sacrifice and one who brings a meager sacrifice have equal merit, as long as he directs his heart toward Heaven. If you are weeping because you lack sustenance and are unable to earn a livelihood, as Rabbi Elazar was, indeed, quite poor, not every person merits to eat off of two tables, one of wealth and one of Torah, so you need not bemoan the fact that you are not wealthy. If you are crying over children who have died, this is the bone of my tenth son, and suffering of that kind afflicts great people, and they are afflictions of love.
Rabbi Elazar said to Rabbi Yoḥanan: I am not crying over my misfortune, but rather, over this beauty of yours that will decompose in the earth, as Rabbi Yoḥanan’s beauty caused him to consider human mortality. Rabbi Yoḥanan said to him: Over this, it is certainly appropriate to weep. Both cried over the fleeting nature of beauty in the world and death that eventually overcomes all.
Meanwhile, Rabbi Yoḥanan said to him: Is your suffering dear to you? Rabbi Elazar said to him: I welcome neither this suffering nor its reward. Upon hearing this, Rabbi Yoḥanan said to him: Give me your hand. Rabbi Elazar gave him his hand, and Rabbi Yoḥanan stood him up and restored him to health.”
In this story we see that Rabbi Elazar is an extremely holy person. The light that radiates from his arm is like the light that radiates from his body reminds of the light that radiated from Moses when he returned from the top of Sinai and his time in God’s presence. The power of his attachment to this world is so intense that his experience of the first of the Noble Truths overwhelms him. It may itself be the cause of his illness. Rabbi Yohanan does not deny that Rabbi Elazar’s sorrow is legitimate. He opens himself to it fully. But then he offers Rabbi Elazar a way out of the intensity of that experience.
The desire for meaning in life can become its own form of attachment. There are limits. If we allow that desire to overwhelm us and the world resists, that itself can keep us from experiencing what is good in the world. At Sinai, the people were intimidated by the word of God as it came directly from God. They asked Moses to stand between them. For some people there is a desire for a direct intimacy with God. This is a consequential choice, a demand. But we can also know God through creation and acceptance of God’s mystery. Recognizing that mystery is a closeness to God that is within our powers.
And what about meaning? From Biblical and Rabbinical Judaism we see parts of our tradition that are there to define meaning. They are parts. But there is always a large part of our experience whose meaning is within the cloud of God’s mystery. At our best, we can accept this with equanimity. This does not mean that we should retreat from the world. Why should we take joy in God’s creation? Because, for whatever reason, God included us in that creation.
We have the potential and power to oppress the weak or console and raise up the weak. And when we are the weak we can allow ourselves to be raised up. When we forget to see the wonder in creation we forget God. While we wait for absolute clarity, we can let the opportunity to make some meaning in the world through our actions pass us by.
No theology is perfect. Rabbi Yohanan appears to have understood this. For many Jews it is impossible for them to find meaning that they believe in within their own tradition. For others, the search is simple and easy (and God save them when the going gets rough). Nevertheless, on one side we see people squandering their heritage, and on the other, those who hold so tight to that heritage that they risk shattering it. And the tragedy is that within the tradition there is another more subtle path, more difficult to discern, a spiritual Jiu Jitsu that uses the weaknesses in our search for meaning against themselves. It is the path of awe, not fear.
