The Spirituality of Pain?

A couple of months ago I posted about the Book of Job class I attended at my temple. Since then I've begun reading (and am close to finishing) The Journey Home: Discovering the Deep Spiritual Wisdom of the Jewish Tradition by Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman. There are a number of passages that speak directly to the issues that the Book of Job class brought up and I'm going to chat a little bit about them now.

Rabbi Hoffman states that "in Deuteronomic theology... we always get what we deserve" and goes on to detail the 2 instances where this theology is challenged–Ecclesiastes and Job. Throughout Ecclesiastes the author "recognizes the futility of imagining that if we are only good, we will prosper," but in the end "the great skepticism...is denied in a simple one-line conclusion that reasserts Deuteronomy's promise of justice: 'The sum of the matter, when all is said and done: revere God and observe his commandments, for this applies to all man-kind, that God will call every creature to account for everything unknown be it good or bad' (12: 12-13)." [all quotes p. 165]. I don't agree with Hoffman that the last line necessarily negates the rest of Ecclesiastes (though I am speaking here based on just what he has written and not with first-hand knowledge of the book, which I've never read completely). Does the last statement really deny the idea that prosperity comes from doing good and downfall comes from doing bad? Could it be that yes, what you do or don't do may not cause your suffering or your blessing, but you WILL eventually have to answer to God, whether that be on Yom Kippur or when you die, or whenever. We don't know how God will call us to account, but we can certainly imagine, and isn't it just like children to imagine the worst from their parent? If we go with the idea of God as Father or as King (melekh), do we not fear the worst when going against what they have asked?

Hoffman turns to the Book of Job, taking time to go through the arguments set forth by Job and by his friends, pointing out that the "ostensible point of the book is Job's unswerving faith in God despite his sufferings. But though he refuses throughout to curse God, he refuses equally to blame himself his afflictions" (166). In the end Job never admits he is the cause of his own suffering, nor does he curse God, instead just admitting that God is mighty and that he (Job) does not understand His ways. In response to the ending of Job, Hoffman states that "God admits, then, how wrong it is to hold that only the guilty experience tragedy and how equally mistaken to argue that God offers suffering as a loving corrective to human beings" (167).

As we saw previously in our discussion of Gnositicism, the Rabbis thoroughgoing monotheism made them concede that somehow, even the evil in the universe must come ultimately from God. But their balanced estimate of human character prevented their painting everyone as a complete sinner, and they seem to have recognized that suffering cannot be explained solely as punishment that is never undeserved or even that it is a blessing in disguise, a mild rebuke that is ultimately for our own benefit. - p. 168

So, where does that take us? What does it mean to suffer? Can we find anything spiritually fulfilling in it? Honestly, it depends on how you look at it and how you deal with it; if you believe that you have sinned and therefore caused your own suffering, is that going to help you get better? Will you, in fact, cause your situation to worsen because of this attitude and belief? Conversely, if you say "what will happen will happen" will you treat all situations as being left up to fate, to random chance? Should there not be a middle ground, where we can grant that suffering and illness are not caused by sins we commit, but are caused by something? If you get lung cancer after you have smoked 3 packs a day for 50 years are you being punished for sins, or are the physical repercussions of your actions just finally catching up to you? It would be a comforting thought to know that if we did good we would be happy, and when it does work out that way we feel vindicated in our beliefs. But, when we base our beliefs on a system that can, in the end, disappoint us, where does that leave our beliefs?

Rabbi Hoffman states that "suffering may have meaning. People want to believe that it does. But the dominant meaning-making schemes that surround it are morally unsavory. Sickness is not sent by God; it is not God's way of punishing us; we are not responsible for it ourselves; it does not express our inner character; and pain is not good for anyone" (173). He isn't saying that we aren't responsible for ourselves at all, because we can just as easily fall into the pattern of not taking any responsibility, but if you just think about it logically, who can honestly say that pain is good? That suffering is good?

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.”