Friday, January 31, 2014

Perek 3-- Maybe all the suffering will eventually make sense



After going our Chavruta sheets, this week we went over the first part of perek gimmel. In perek gimmel, the Gever, a random man was introduced. According to Ibn Ezra, the approach we learned in class, the Gever represents universal man. The Gever is a general reflection and response to man's suffering. In this section we see the Gever's response to suffering.
     In 1-11 the Gever is so caught up in how the world is so chaotic and random that he cannot even grasp the bigger picture. In this section he is self absorbed just focusing on HIS pain.
     In passukim 12-18 he recognizes that the pain is targeted which causes him to lose all hope in G-d.
     In passukim 19-20 he focuses on pain and horror. He is upset knowing that it all comes from G-d. This is the start of his transformation. Realizing that G-d causes the pain is key to the transformation.
     In passukim 21-26 he realizes that if G-d does all the bad then he also has to do the good because there are some beautiful things. He looks to this thought to give him hope that he can fix his relationship with Hashem.
     In 23-30 he finally realizes that maybe there is a reason when people suffer. Maybe they did something and deserve it.
     In the last section, 31-39 the Gever sees that good and bad both come from G-d. He does have a good side and does not just bring pain across people for no reason.

I had a big question after this. People suffer constantly even if they do not deserve it so how does it make sense that people are only punished and suffer when they do not deserve it?
       Soon after we learned in Devarim that G-d said if people do not follow him and if it gets bad enough he will do all of these things that he ended up doing to Yerushalayim. He said that people would collectively suffer and he would not judge the people individually.
 This gives me a little bit of justice explaining why the children and innocent ones were punished, but what about today? People continually suffer even if they do not deserve it but there is no reason. I seem to suffer with this question constantly and cannot find an answer.
 This made me remember something that I learned a while back ago. I learned that everything that G-d has done to us was shown somewhere back in the torah but we did not realize what it meant until we somehow connected it to the certain event. In the perek in Devarim we see that everything it said happened to Yerushalayim, Like most of my blogs, I know it does not connect perfectly because in Devarim it was a warning and in Perek Gimmel of Eicha it was a result, but I thought it was pretty similar. I also am applying the whole " Everything G-d does is hinted in the Torah" thing to people's suffering in general. Maybe one day we will realize that G-d hinted the suffering in the Torah and we did not realize or maybe we will learn that suffering in general is like a "reward." It does not make any sense now because we do not understand our suffering but maybe one day we will see it was hinted in the Torah and everything will make sense. I do not know, just a thought. Good shabbos to all!

No comments:

Post a Comment