The Book of Job–Reward and Punishment

Studying the Book of Job is challenging my thinking on a number of different levels, but I’m enjoying it immensely. Last night’s class was a reminder of why I loved college so much, and why I love to study Jewish texts. There is just a palpable excitement of learning something, in peeling back the layers and finding the meat of it all.

The basic question we are addressing is why do bad things happen to good people? The beginning of the Book of Job is very clear in stating that Job was “blameless and upright,” so why was he punished? The professor pointed out that the traditional answer to that question, based in the system of halakhah that the early rabbis built around their understanding of God and their attempts to reconcile that understanding with the God of the Bible, is that bad things happen to people because they sin and these bad things are punishments for those sins. But, how do they reconcile that idea with the fact that the Bible says Job was blameless? They do so by taking apart everything he says to prove that he did, in fact, sin. However, all of their arguments are about what he says AFTER he was punished, so what about the sins he committed BEFORE he was punished. One of the rabbinic commentators (it may have been Raba, but I don’t have my paper in front of me) points out that one does not slip easily or quickly into blasphemy, thus Job was obviously capable, and probably had, blasphemed God before, if not outright, then in his heart.

Now we get the the argument that was most compelling to me from last night. Maimonides puts forth the idea that Job was punished for being too attached to temporary things–his house, his possessions, his wealth, his family, his own health. When it was all taken away from him he sat and he mourned, especially when his own comfort was taken. What I got from this is that Maimonides is basically saying that it’s not that we are rewarded or punished for our actions, but rather we create our own rewards or punishments based on how we react to the situation. Job sat and mourned and removed himself from the world. He could have chosen to mourn for a short, proscribed period of time (which is why we have Shiva other marked periods of mourning that are required to end) but to eventually move on and do good and contribute to society–this would have been a reward. Instead he moped and sat in the dirt, so it was a punishment.

So, bad things can happen to you, for no apparent reason, and they will continue to be bad if you react poorly or negatively. But, as each situation is inherently neutral you are the one who, in the end, decides if the outcome is positive or negative, reward or punishment.

Now, the subject was brought up about whether the Holocaust was a punishment for the sins of the collective Jewish world. The professor pointed out last week that if you view the Holocaust through the lens of reward and punishment based on actions, then it would be a punishment for something (and there are plenty of people, Jews and non-Jews, who do make this argument). But, how would we see the Holocaust in light of Maimonides ideas? Was the event of the Holocaust essentially neutral? Perhaps philosophically, but in reality the atrocities were pure evil, carried out by evil men and a morally corrupt society. Was it then a punishment? I don’t know. Perhaps it was a challenge, our Satan taking away the our families and possessions and lives because we were blameless, we were upright. And how did we react? In a way that ensured our reward– we moved on, we created Israel, we created laws to protect ourselves and others, we fought for civil rights. Basically we took this atrocity into a way to say “this was horrible and it can never happen again.”