Some posters here think that while the Torah is full of warnings that bad things will happen, and we will deserve them if they do, they think it’s horrible to apply the Torahs reasoning to Jewish suffering.
We do indeed get what we deserve. Klal yisroel deserved 40 years of wandering, churbanos, crusades, inquisitions, pogroms, and the Holocaust. Otherwise, how would Hashem have done those things? Hashem is a tzadik and we are guilty. We admit our sins and do teshuva. We don’t t, as the rambam calls it, act cruel and attribute our suffering to anything other than Hashem and divine justice.
I understand how survivors often are upset at the idea that the Holocaust was a punishment. We can’t judge people who went through that gehinnom. But what excuse to armchair philosophers online have? It’s total kefirah to say that suffering is just mikrah, pointless, random, or just because of racism or not being tolerant enough.
This is the rage of what i call the chanukah gelt god.
The chanukah gelt god, is something i share with my students. He’s a god which gives you presents. All he does is give you money and snacks. But what happens when you get a strep throat or fall off of monkey bars and end up wearing a sling for 2 weeks? Well, that’s not chanukah gelt god, that’s yom kippur god. Uou know, the god who makes all the things happen that we don’t like.
They get the idea.
Shema yisroel, Hashem elokeinu – Hashem is midas harachamin, elokim is din – Hashem echad, it’s all from Hashem, both good things and things we think are bad. Hashem knows exactly what is best for us, when we have no idea. Much like a child who thinks that chanukah gelt is good and yom kippur is bad. We’re mature enough to see how good yom kippur is, but we are not on the level to see why the Holocaust was good.