Whoever can prevent his household [from
committing a sin] but does not, is punished for [the sins of] his household;
[if he can prevent] his fellow citizens, he is seized for [the sins of] his
fellow citizens; if the whole world, he is seized for [the sins of] the whole
world.
There follows a moving example of one:
Rab Judah was sitting before Samuel
[when] a woman came and cried before him, but he ignored her. Said he to him,
Does not the Master agree [that] ‘whoso stoppeth his ears to the cry of the
poor, he also shall cry himself, but shall not be heard’? (Prov. 21:13)
All the powerful social justice texts we love to quote. But
Samuel rejects Rab Judah’s rebuke, noting that there was a higher court than
his – and it would be they who would be punished, not him!
What follows is a discussion of the premise articulated by
R. Ammi:
There is no death without sin, and
there is no suffering without iniquity.
In other words, suffering and death are always, in this
theory, the result of one’s own sins.
This rather troubling concept – what we would today call “blame
the victim” is batted about among the rabbis. From Adam (“I gave him an easy
command, yet he violated it.”) to Moses and Aaron (“Because you did not trust
Me [enough to affirm My sanctity in the sight of the Israelite people].”) And
yet, the counter argument is made: the punishment for Moses and Aaron was that
they did not get enter the Promised Land. So their deaths were not
punishment for sin – otherwise they would have been punished twice!
This counter argument continues, lengthily, through many
Biblical characters who were thought to have sinned, but are actually - through interpretation - redeemed.
Ok, some of these refutations are a bit tortured (Reuben did not actually sleep
with his father’s concubine, he just switched her bed for his mother’s). But
the ongoing attempt is to refute the assumption that pain and suffering are
always the result of someone’s own sins – perhaps hidden sins.
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