Stop justifying the 45 deaths on Mount Meron! To The "Divrei Chizuk" Crowd - There Is No Chizuk From This Tragedy!
There is no reason and no justification for the victims’ deaths. There is no good that came from their deaths. No lesson for the collective Jewish people.
MOURNERS AT the funeral of Abraham Ambon, one of
the victims of the Meron tragedy, where 45 people were crushed to death
and about 150 injured, during a Lag Ba’omer mass event.
My daughter called me before the Sabbath in terrible pain. Beyond trying to process the deaths of religious Jews at Mount Meron on Lag Ba’omer, she was in an argument on a chat group with a woman who said that the deaths had a reason.
It
turns out, this woman prophesied, that God sent these 45 men to their
deaths in order to teach the rest of us Jews a lesson. God hates the
current state of Jewish disunity, of divisions within the community, the
political polarization of the State of Israel. So he sent this tragedy
as a wake-up call to the rest of us Jews.
I
should mention that the woman in question – Orthodox-Jewish and
religious herself – wrote all this while the bodies had not even been
buried. My daughter told me the woman’s comments made her sick. I told
her they made me want to puke as well.
That
was only the beginning. Over the next few days I would read countless
media columnists who understood the deaths of 45 haredim in other ways.
Some said, in essence, that the haredim had it coming, as they so often
flaunt the police and the rules. Forty-five dead. That’ll show ’em.
Others said that this just proves that the haredim, who didn’t abide by
the rules of the coronavirus, have now learned that self-governance
comes with a price.
Left
unsaid through all this stomach-turning justification for the mass
deaths of 45 completely innocent people was that they were parents,
husbands and children of many people who loved them, even if those who
were justifying their deaths felt nothing but contempt for their lives.
It
is true that Mount Meron was a turning point in Israeli history. Not
because of how many people died. That was shocking and horrible beyond
words, a truly unspeakable tragedy. Rather, what made it a turning point
was that it was the first time where I actually witnessed the Jewish
community trivializing the deaths of fellow Jews with all kinds of
blabber and the most insensitive nonsense, with no price being paid on
the part of those uttering this garbage.
Imagine
if someone had written about the Holocaust, “Sure, six million is a
terrible price. But it serves them right. They should have known to be
Zionists and immigrate to Palestine. Did two thousand years of European
antisemitism teach them nothing?” Or if someone had written of the 11
martyred Israeli athletes in Munich, “Truly, a terrible tragedy. But
what did they expect returning to Germany just 25 years after the
Holocaust?”
Let’s
at least agree that any columnist writing such things would probably
have experienced the most severe censure. But telling 45 ultra-Orthodox
Jews that they should have known better than to go to a massive outdoor
religious gathering somehow became acceptable, even as the
grief-stricken families were scrambling just to bury their loved ones
before the Sabbath.
SO, IN case it’s not clear, let me be absolutely clear.
What happened in Meron was one of the worst tragedies to befall the Jewish people since the Holocaust. It is an unmitigated tragedy.
There
is no reason and no justification for the victims’ deaths. There is no
good that came from their deaths. No lesson for the collective Jewish
people. No celestial or cosmic redemption to be earned from their loss.
They should be alive.
We
mourn, along with their families and the entire House of Israel. I am
so sorry for their families. The pain must be beyond excruciating. May
none of us ever know any such tragedy, God forbid.
The
fact that there should have been greater police oversight? The fact
that the haredim need more civic rules by which their gatherings should
be governed? There will be time for all of those investigations and
ruminations. They are, of course, necessary and essential. But not now.
Not during the shiva. Let the families grieve without our insensitive
commentary.
ELEVEN
YEARS ago I visited Haiti with my daughter Mushki just days after the
earthquake that decimated the island and killed hundreds of thousands of
people. We brought food and supplies with a Christian relief
organization. I witnessed suffering beyond human imagination. The stench
of death was quite literally all around us.
When I returned, I addressed, in a public speech, the question of why a good God allows the innocent to suffer.
I
was amazed when an observant Jew approached me to say that the people
of Haiti were not innocent, immersed as they are in idol worship.
“Surely
you don’t mean to say that the morgue filled with the babies that I
witnessed, the stench so bad that I was gagging, deserved to die? Or
that the discarded bodies I saw being eaten by dogs deserved their
fate?” I asked.
His
response: The people of Haiti as a whole were being punished. A similar
sentiment had been voiced at the time by the Rev. Pat Robertson on The
700 Club.
I have
always been puzzled as to why many religious people enjoy portraying God
as executioner-in-chief and are always finding reasons to justify human
suffering.
The
Holocaust produced two camps of Jews. Many decided that the Jews had
been punished for intermarriage and wanting to be secular. But others
had a much more Jewish response. They rejected any theological
justification or self-blame and set to work even harder toward the
creation of a Jewish state, where Jews would find refuge and build an
army to prevent another genocide.
The
appropriate response to death is always life. And the Jewish response
to suffering is to demand that God put an end to it. The very name
“Israel” translates as “He who wrestles with God.” We argue with God
over the loss of every innocent human life. We never justify suffering.
So
many people search for a reason why people die. They want to redeem
tragedy by giving it meaning. Suffering ennobles the spirit, they say.
It makes you more mature. It helps you focus on what’s important in
life.
I would
argue that suffering has no purpose, no redeeming qualities, and any
attempts to infuse it with rich significance are deeply immoral.
Of
course, suffering can lead ultimately to a positive outcome. The rich
man who had contempt for the poor and suddenly goes bankrupt can become
more empathetic when he himself struggles. The arrogant executive who
treats his subordinates poorly can soften when he is told that he, God
forbid, has a challenging health issue.
But does it have to come about this way? Is suffering the only way to learn goodness?
Jewish
values maintain that there is no good that comes from suffering that
could not have come through a more blessed means. Some people win the
lottery and are so humbled that they dedicate a huge portion to charity.
A rock star like Bono becomes rich and famous and consecrates his
celebrity to the relief of African poverty.
Yes,
the Holocaust led directly to the creation of the State of Israel. But
there are plenty of nations that came into existence without being
preceded by gas chambers.
Here
is another way that Jewish values are so strongly distinguished from
other value systems. Many religions believe that suffering is
redemptive. In Christianity, the suffering servant, the crucified
Christ, brings atonement for the sins of humankind through his own
torment. The message: No suffering, no redemption. Someone has to die so
that the sins of mankind are erased.
Suffering
is therefore extolled in the New Testament. Paul even made suffering an
obligation, encouraging the fledgling Christians to “share in suffering
like a good soldier of Yoshka”
But
Judaism, in prophesying a perfect messianic future where there is no
death or pain, ultimately rejects the suffering-is-redemptive narrative.
Suffering isn’t a blessing; it’s a curse.
Jews
are obligated to alleviate all human misery. Suffering leaves you
bitter rather than blessed, scarred rather than humble. Few endure
suffering without serious and lasting trauma. Suffering leads to a
tortured spirit and a pessimistic outlook. It scars our psyches and
creates a cynical consciousness, devoid and bereft of hope.
Suffering
causes us to dig out the insincerity in the hearts of our fellows and
to be envious of other people’s happiness. If individuals do become
better people as a result of their suffering, it is despite the fact
that they suffered, not because of it. Ennoblement of character comes
through triumph over suffering rather than its endurance.
Speak
to Holocaust survivors and ask them what they gathered from their
suffering, aside from loneliness, heartbreak and outrage. To be sure,
they also learned the value of life and the sublime quality of human
companionship. But these lessons, this depth, could easily have been
learned through life-affirming experiences that do not leave all of
one’s relatives as ash.
I
believe that my parents’ divorce drove me to a deeper appreciation of
family and a greater embrace of religion. Yet I know people who have led
completely privileged lives and have far deeper philosophies of life
than I have, and are even more devoted to their religion than I am. And
they have the advantage of not being bitter, cynical or pessimistic the
way children of divorce can sometimes be because of the pain of early
childhood.
Whatever
good we as individuals or the world in general receive from suffering
can be brought about in a painless, joyful manner. And it behooves
people of faiths especially to once and for all cease justifying the
death of innocents and instead rush to comfort and aid the survivors.
The Meron 45 are sorely missed. May their memory be an unmitigated blessing.
