At the very outset, we must limit the question that we have posed as the theme of this sermon. Our question is not why the hurricanes occur. First, we do not even know the physical causes of hurricanes, despite our weather satellite, certainly we cannot know the spiritual reasons. Secondly, "why” is a fruitless question. It sounds more like a complaint that a quest for informationץ In one of the moving psalms of King David, he cries out Eli, Eli, lamah azavtani -״my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Rabbi Samson Raphael Hersh offers a comment on this verse that is most relevant to our theme - and, in fact, pertinent to all our lives at any occasion or crisis, ne directs our attention to the fact that the world for "why," lamah is in the Masoretic Text, recorded as having the accent on the second rather than on the first syllable. It is not LAmah, but laMAH. The first form of that word, LAmah, is indeed, the word "why." It is a Plaintive demand for information and explanation. But the version laMAH means not "why" but "wherefore". It is not a demand that God explain his reasons for visiting suffering upon us, but rather a prayer to God to teach us what to do with our suffering, what lessons to learn from it, what good to derive from these experiences. So, each of us, when faced with crisis, trouble, difficulties, or problems - must ask ourselves "wherefore?" rather than turning plaintively to God and demanding of Him, "why?"

Suffering has no answer, only questions. Everything depends – as the neo-Kantians said – on the way you phrase the question. The challenge to God of suffering must be properly wielded. It is an old Jewish tradition that the question must be turned back on ourselves: guilt that is not pathological but induces moral regeneration. But – so much? The Holocaust too? The attitude can be overdone.There is a reverse attitude: the challenge is flung at God, as it were: Abraham, Rabbis on Job say: An insult, a scandal and blasphemy — that was all right for a Moses, or an Abraham or a Berditchever -- or the victims of the Holocaust themselves. But the problem is that all the bystanders, and those who were born after the Holocaust, also ask such questions. There is an element of self-righteousness about the person who, living in an economy of affluence, and never pious, asks, how can I believe in God after Auschwitz?There is something simply phony about the attitude. I remain unimpressed by the obese, cigar-chomping philosopher who excuses all his failings by blaming God for suffering of the Holocaust. Too much of what is written in our contemporary literature, and that passes on the lecture podium is no more than preposterous posturing.What then? They must be both simultaneously. Midrash says: So, one question without the other is invalid• To challenge and blame only man and the victim is insensitive; only God is — arrogant and silly. When we combine both questions, as Moses did, then we are asking the great question from the point of proper balance.

My thesis that Hester Panim (on the national level) removes or at least dulls the one-to-one correspondence of Reward and Punishment, has been criticized on the grounds that it goes against various texts which speak clearly of such a correspondence in the realm of distributive justice. Certain things must be made clear. For one, the difference I alluded to between individual and national Reward and Punishment. Second, even on the individual level, while it is true that ish be’heto yumat, nevertheless this is a general principle of theodicy, justifying G-d's decree, but not quite allowing man to pin-point the sin and thus blame the victim. If it were so, how could we ever eulogize the dead, including the greatest Zaddik, whereas according to this thesis we should berate him and try to figure out which sin it is that he is being punished for. This is a little more than reminiscent of the friends of Job and their point of view, which was rejected by the Almighty.Third, and most important: A study of Avot reveals many passages which speak of a clear relationship between sin and punishment. Nevertheless, there is a contrary statement, the famous one by R. Yannai, that ein be'yadenu lo mi'shalvat ha- resha'im ve'lo mi-yesurei ha1tzaddikim. According to this latter opinion, every attempt to sketch with any clarity the relationship between Sin and Punishment is doomed to failure.Finally, the efforts by the Sages to identify such a relationship between sin and punishment must not be seen as an endeavor to uncover the secrets of the Most High, but rather to accept the mystery as impenetrable and nevertheless seek to convert suffering—both the suffering of the righteous and the anguish of religious man trying to understand the eternal enigma of suffering—into something constructive, something creative. (Compare S. R. Hirsch’s comment on lamah azavtani.) In other words, the effort by the Sages is one of leading from yisurim to teshuvah, by encouraging the sufferer to enhance h…