It is difficult, after having read Rob Eshman’s heartbreaking article And Who Shall Die? via Rick Richman of JPundit, to not think about Marcy Asher and HaShem and life and its mysteries and cruelties.
In one of my favorite books, 9 Questions People Ask About Judaism, I can try to extrapolate and apply a similar theorem that just because bad things happen does not prove that God does not exist, and just because good things happen does not prove that God does exist.
So how do we review Marcy’s life? How do we regard HaShem in light of Marcy’s tragic life? Why was this innocent woman burdened with so many tragedies and failures?
I really am haunted by the terror that one day I will also think atheistically about HaShem and Judaism as Marcy’s mother did. A little part of me doesn’t blame Marcy’s mother for thinking that way. I suppose that what I could do in order to successfully digest Marcy’s tragic life, is to remember that there were six million others who also suffered great tragedies, and yet, from out of those catastrophic horrors, also came the testimony of great survival and blessings and births and laughter and generations of babies and inventions and healing and miracles. But doesn’t my own putrid rationalization of the tragedy of the Holocaust, also reduce each of the six million people’s souls and personal agonies into insignificant bits of dust and particles, cogs perhaps, in a cold clinical mysterious mechanism, whose purpose is still a great unknown to all of us?
How can I make sure my life doesn’t end up like Marcy’s? How will I die? Will I also breath my last breath, crying out in blazing agony, where no one will hear me, alone, abandoned, and insane?
Poor Marcy, may she rest in peace, and may her soul at last know HaShem’s Loving-Kindness, Mercy, Affirmation and Perfection.
Thank you, Rick, for a great post.