Monthly Archives: February 2015

We got so caught up on Theodicy that I believe we lost track of things, so I’m soon going to offer the whole petach again while incorporating Theodicy in a shorter form.

The Zohar explains that the righteous sometimes die before their time (and suffer seemingly unfairly that way) because they’re negatively affected by the sins and sinners of their generation, or so as to not sin themselves one way or another at a later point. And the wrongful sometimes succeed either because God knows that they’ll eventually repent and become righteous, because they’ll eventually have righteous descendants, or because they’ll do (or will have done) a momentous mitzvah that deserved so great a reward (Zohar 2, p. 10b).

And Ari explains it in terms of one’s actions in this life as opposed to those in past ones. If one is indeed righteous here and now and yet suffers it’s because he hadn’t yet rectified the sins he’d committed in his past lives (Sha’ar HaGilgulim 36).

(c) 2014 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org

———————————————————-

AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman’s translation of Maimonides’ “Eight Chapters” is available here at a discount.

You can still purchase a copy of Rabbi Feldman’s translation of “The Gates of Repentance” here at a discount as well.

Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has also translated and commented upon “The Path of the Just” and “The Duties of the Heart” (Jason Aronson Publishers).

Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled “Spiritual Excellence” and “Ramchal”.

(We’d ordinarily offer citations from the Zohar and Ari about the subject at this point, put since we’re still researching that, we’ll now cite Ramchal’s own remarks about Theodicy in other works as well as in Klach.)

Ramchal agrees that the righteous suffer for the few sins they’d have committed and that they’ll be rewarded in the Afterlife, he nonetheless doesn’t take the suffering as instances of Divine retribution but rather as “remedies” for the harm they’d done to themselves (Derech Hashem 2:2:5). In fact, Ramchal very often avoids the whole notion of wrath or retribution, but that’s a subject unto itself.

He also offers that the righteous sometimes suffer for the sake of others of their generation and so as to bring about the ultimate Tikkun in the future, for which they are to be rewarded in the Afterlife (Ibid. 2:3:8, also see Da’at Tevunot 166 for reference to the seeming unfairness that will be proven not to be so after the great Tikkun).

(c) 2014 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman
Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org

———————————————————-

AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman’s translation of Maimonides’ “Eight Chapters” is available here at a discount.

You can still purchase a copy of Rabbi Feldman’s translation of “The Gates of Repentance” here at a discount as well.

Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has also translated and commented upon “The Path of the Just” and “The Duties of the Heart” (Jason Aronson Publishers).

Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled “Spiritual Excellence” and “Ramchal”.