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Unlock This CourseIn The Problem of Evil and Suffering you met natural evil, moral evil and the problem of evil: if God is omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing) and benevolent (all-good), why is there suffering? Jews ask this question too. The Jewish Bible is full of people who ask God why. Many Jews believe that questioning, even arguing with the Almighty, shows that you take God seriously.
Jews also share a long and painful history as a community. Jews were often treated unfairly just for being Jewish. They were expelled from England in 1290 and from Spain in 1492, and in parts of Europe communities were attacked in violent outbreaks.
Key terms:
The worst persecution in Jewish history was the Holocaust. Between 1933 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its allies persecuted Jews and then murdered about six million of them, along with many other people. Whole Jewish communities across Europe were destroyed, and many Jewish families today had relatives who were killed.
The Shoah raises sharp questions for people who believe in God. Jewish teaching says God is just and merciful, and that God has a special bond (a covenant) with the Jewish people. If God is all-powerful, why did God not stop it? If God is all-knowing, God knew about it. If God is all-good, why did it happen? It also raises a question about the purpose of life: if life has a purpose under God, how can suffering on this scale fit into it?
Some people have wrongly said that the Jews who died were being punished by God. Most Jewish thinkers firmly reject this. They say no sin could ever explain the Shoah, and that the blame belongs to the people who carried it out.
There is no single Jewish answer. Here are the main ones.
God gave humans the freedom to choose (see Free Will and Its Limits in Judaism). If God stopped every evil act, people would not be free. So cruelty is the fault of the people who choose it, not of God. This puts a duty on every person to choose good.
The Book of Job tells of a good man who loses almost everything. His friends say he must have sinned, but Job insists he has not and demands an answer. God speaks to him but does not explain. At the end, Job's friends are told they were wrong. Many Jews read it as teaching that suffering is not always a punishment and that humans cannot fully understand God's ways. Some rabbis taught that suffering may be a test of faith. Others taught, in Pirkei Avot, that we cannot explain why good people suffer.
In Deuteronomy 31:17-18, God hides his face because the people have turned away. After the Shoah, some Jewish thinkers used the phrase hester panim in a new way. They did not say the victims had sinned. They said that in the Shoah God seemed hidden, and the world was left to human choices.
Rabbi Harold Kushner suggests God is good but not all-powerful, so God does not cause suffering. Others disagree, because they feel it limits God's power.
Jews reacted to the Shoah in very different ways. Some lost their faith or stopped practising. The thinker Richard Rubenstein, who stayed involved in Jewish life, argued that after Auschwitz he could no longer believe in a God who acts in history. Others kept their belief but struggled with anger and doubt.
For other Jews, faith grew stronger. Many survivors rebuilt Jewish life and brought up their children in the faith. The thinker Emil Fackenheim taught that Jews must not give Hitler a victory after his death by letting Judaism die. He called this a 614th commandment, added to the 613 mitzvot of the Torah. Orthodox and Progressive (Reform and Liberal) Jews are found on all sides of this debate.
More key terms:
Saying that Jews believe the Holocaust was God's punishment (most reject this). Saying all Jews lost faith, or that all kept it. Writing about Job without saying what the story teaches.
(a) Identify three ways Jews try to relieve suffering. [3 marks]
(b) Choose one religion. Outline two responses to the question of why God allows suffering in this religion. [4 marks]
(c) Choose one religion. Explain why there are different attitudes to the Holocaust in this religion. [6 marks]
(d) 'The Holocaust makes belief in God impossible.' Evaluate this statement, showing you have considered different points of view. In your answer you should refer to at least one religion. [12 marks]
(a) 1 Visiting the sick, or bikur cholim (1). 2 Giving tzedakah (1). 3 Feeding the hungry or helping refugees (1).
(b) In Judaism, one response is that God gave humans free will, so suffering caused by cruelty is the fault of people (1), which means they have a duty to choose good (1). Another is the Book of Job, where Job suffers although he has done nothing wrong (1), which shows that humans cannot fully understand God's ways (1).
(c) Jews have different attitudes because they hold different beliefs about God. Some lost faith, and Richard Rubenstein could no longer believe in a God who acts in history, because a just and merciful God would not have allowed the Shoah. Others used the idea of hester panim, that God seemed hidden, and kept their faith while accepting that they cannot fully understand. Some stress free will: the blame lies with the people who did it, so it does not harm belief in God. Others, like Emil Fackenheim, said Jews must keep Judaism alive so that Hitler does not win. Attitudes also differ because people's own experiences differ, for example whether a family lost relatives. (6 marks)
(d) Plan. For: a just, merciful, all-powerful God would have stopped it; Rubenstein could no longer believe in a God who acts in history. Against: free will puts the blame on humans; hester panim and Job say we cannot understand God; many survivors' faith deepened; Fackenheim's duty to keep Judaism alive. Contrast: a humanist view might say suffering needs no God to explain it. Conclusion: the Holocaust makes belief very hard, but not impossible, because many Jews have found ways, such as free will and hester panim, to keep faith while accepting they cannot fully understand.
In the 12-mark answer, say clearly that Jews do not agree with each other. Name two different Jewish views, judge each, and then give your own reasoned conclusion.