When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Harold Kushner
Can you accept the idea that some things happen for no reason, that there is randomness in the universe? Some people cannot handle that idea...But why do we have to insist on everything being reasonable? Why must everything happen for a specific reason? Why can’t we let the universe have a few rough edges? (P. 46-47)
ואמר רבי חנינא הכל בידי שמים חוץ מיראת שמים שנאמר (דברים י, יב) ועתה ישראל מה ה' אלהיך שואל מעמך כי אם ליראה
R. Hannina also said : Everything is in the hand of Heaven except the fear of Heaven; as it is said, "And now, O Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee but to fear" (Deut. x. 12).
(ב) בֶּן עַזַּאי אוֹמֵר, הֱוֵי רָץ לְמִצְוָה קַלָּה כְבַחֲמוּרָה, וּבוֹרֵחַ מִן הָעֲבֵרָה. שֶׁמִּצְוָה גּוֹרֶרֶת מִצְוָה, וַעֲבֵרָה גוֹרֶרֶת עֲבֵרָה. שֶׁשְּׂכַר מִצְוָה, מִצְוָה. וּשְׂכַר עֲבֵרָה, עֲבֵרָה:
(2) Ben Azai says: Run to do an easy commandment as to a difficult one, and flee from sin; since a commandment leads to another commandment, and a sin leads to another sin; since the reward for a commandment is another commandment, and the reward for a sin is another sin.
דרש רב נחמן בר רב חסדא מאי דכתיב (בראשית ב, ז) וייצר ה' אלהים את האדם בשני יודי"ן שני יצרים ברא הקב"ה אחד יצר טוב ואחד יצר רע
Rab Nahman b. Rab Hisda expounded : What means that which is written, "Then the Lord God formed man" (Gen. ii. 7), the word wayyiser "and He formed" being spelt with two letters yod? The Holy One, blessed be He, created two impulses, one good and the other evil.
When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Harold Kushner
If it seems like the evil are succeeding, it is only because you are not looking at the big picture. If a palm tree and grass were planted on the same day, the grass would appear to be the strongest and fastest growing. However, in the long term, the grass will quickly die and the palm will last for more than a generation. (P.13)
When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Harold Kushner
In the beginning...God created the heaven and the earth, the earth was formless and chaotic, with darkness covering everything. Then God began to work...on the chaos, sorting things out, imposing order where the are been randomness before...But supposed God didn’t quite finish by closing time on the afternoon of the sixth day?...Suppose that Creation, the process of replacing chaos with order, were still going on...The world is mostly an orderly, predictable place...but pockets of chaos remain...And chaos is evil; not wrong, not malevolent, but evil nonetheless, because by causing tragedies at random, it prevents people from believing in God’s goodness. (P. 51)
(ז) רבי נחמן בר שמואל בר נחמן בשם רב שמואל בר נחמן אמר: הנה טוב מאד, זה יצר טוב. והנה טוב מאד, זה יצר רע. וכי יצר הרע טוב מאד אתמהא?! אלא שאלולי יצר הרע, לא בנה אדם בית, ולא נשא אשה, ולא הוליד, ולא נשא ונתן. וכן שלמה אומר: (קהלת ד): כי היא קנאת איש מרעהו:
(7) Rabbi Nahman said in Rabbi Samuel's name: 'Behold, it was good' refers to the Good Desire; 'And behold, it was very good' refers to the Evil Desire. (It only says 'very good' after man was created with both the good and bad inclinations, in all other cases it only says 'and God saw that it was good') Can then the Evil Desire be very good? That would be extraordinary! But without the Evil Desire, however, no man would build a house, take a wife, beget children or conduct business; and thus said Solomon: 'Again, I considered all labour and all excelling in work, that it is a man's rivalry with his neighbour.' (Ecclesiastes 4:4).
When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Harold Kushner
A system left to itself may evolve in the direction of randomness...our world may not be a system left to itself. There may be in face a creative impulse acting on it, the Spirit of God hovering over the dark waters, operating over the course of millennia to bring order out of chaos...Or it may be that God finished His work of creation eons ago, and left the rest to us...the earthquake and accident, like the murder and the robbery, are not the will of God, but represent that aspect of reality that stands independent of His will and which angers and saddens God even as it angers and saddens us. ( P. 55)