Holocaust
 
Moshe Ben-Chaim
 
Question:
What do you answer a person who asks where G-d was during the holocaust and how He could have let such a thing happen to His children?

Response:
We do not have all the answers as to how G-d works.
G-d said that if He didn't reveal to Abraham what He was about to do to Sodom and Gemorrah, it would be hidden from Abraham. This means that there are areas of G-d's justice which one cannot penetrate without G-d's intervention.
We do know however that there was much assimilation going on in Europe at that time.
 
The talmud states that a righteous person who has evil befalling him is a righteous person - but he is not 100% righteous. A righteous person who has good, is a righteous person who is 100% righteous. This gemara teaches that there is no punishment without some sin. This makes sense, as punishment is the act of G-d correcting some flaw. If there is no flaw, no punishment is needed. Additionally, King David said that many evils happen to a righteous person, but he is saved from all of them.
 
We are not in a position to determine every aspect of a person's life, so we do not know how righteous a person actually was. We might see someone who we believe to be 100% righteous, but evil happens to him. Only G-d knows if he is truly 100% righteous. I would also remind this person about G-d's destruction of the Egyptians, the delivering of Manna in the desert for 40 years, and mostly, G-d's creation of man to bestow good upon him. Yes, we should try to understand the tragedies, but not at the cost of forgetting all of the good. Keep the scales balanced.
 
Additionally, G-d may operate to execute a plan which the good is not seen for many years, or decades, or centuries. He also works with the method of trials, that being a painful endurance placed on man, not due to any sin, but to actualize a higher state in the person tried. I do not suggest this is the case with the Holocaust, but I state this so as to show how there are many methods of how G-d administers His justice. Many of which we are ignorant.
 
What we can do is learn about how G-d related to the forefathers, to Moses and to all the righteous, and learn from there to the best of our abilities what G-d's justice is.
See also Tehillim (Psalms) 91, and 34.
 
One who sincerely desires to understand G-d's justice will investigate and exhaust all areas.
This area requires much further elucidation.
 


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