- On one hand the gemara in Sota 2a states that ארבעים יום קודם יצירת הולד בת קול יוצאת ואומרת בת פלוני לפלוני on the other hand the Gemara in other places states that a person can even get engaged on Tisha B'Av because we are worried that maybe someone will swoop in before him. How do these 2 go together?
- The Gemara in Rosh Hashana says that a persons income is fixed on Rosh Hashana. On the other hand there are halachos of hasagos g'vul etc. which allow you to take someone to Beis Din for taking away your income. If your income is fixed on Rosh hashana then his hasagas g'vul should not affect you and therefore why can you take him to Beis Din and collect?
- When a person dies his relatives are sad and are chayav to be noheg various dinim of availus. However, the fact is that the person who died finished his task on Earth and went to a better place. Why should we be sad? Why are there dinim of aveilus?
The truth is that these are not new questions and really boil down to one point. If Hashem runs the world and everything that happens is b'hashgacha pratis then why try, why take someone to court, run around for a shidduch, etc.? It's all useless. The answers are shockingly poor and/or non-existent. I posted about this in the past Hashgocha Pratis, what does it really mean? and this is one of the biggest reasons I have for losing faith. I can not accept that the whole world is one big fake and nothing that human beings do has any purpose or meaning.
What amazes me is that the Charedi answers are so poor. As people pointed out to the questioner tehse are very obvious questions, and yet most Charedim don't think about them and the answers given are simply not credible. To say that it's all a bluff, a fraud, that hishtadlus is a tax and it just looks like it works is simply not believable. And the truth is, the Charedi world doesn't believe it either. When R' Elyashiv needed to have heart surgery anumber of years ago, they flew in the top cardiac/blood vessel surgeon from Cleveland (a religious Catholic) to do the surgery. This completely contradicts the Charedi view. After all, Hashem is doing the healing not the surgeon and once we have done our השתדלות, going to the doctor and having the surgery, why should it matter whether the surgeon is the best in the world or simply Joe surgeon who is competent? As long as we do our השתדלות to avoid requiring a נס, the rest is a גזירה מן השמים. If the גזירה is that the surgery will be successful, then it will be successful even if done by the average surgeon, and if the גזירה is that it won't be successful then it won't help that you have the best surgeon. The same goes for politics and government money. The Charedi press and people got apoplectic when Lapid cut the budget for the Yeshivas. They blamed him personally, Yet, according to their hashkafa, it's not him, it's hashem. He has no power to do anything. The money doesn't come from him it comes from hashem, on Rosh Hashana HAshem decided how much money each Charedi family would receive so why get upset?
In fact, what does it actually mean that someone is considered the best surgeon? After all, הכל בידי שמים, our success is actually an illusion to make it look like it is our skill. In fact, our success in worldly matters is simply a גזירה מן השמים so the fact that he successfully operated is not due to his skill but due to the גזירה מן השמים. So when you really think about it, there are no experts, it is all an illusion, no doctor is better then any other doctor, Lionel Messi is not better then Joe soccer player, it's all an illusion and it's only because Hashem wills it that Messi scores a goal.
When you put it that way, it sounds absolutely ridiculous. but that really is the logical conclusion of this hashkafa.
What amazes me is that the Charedi answers are so poor. As people pointed out to the questioner tehse are very obvious questions, and yet most Charedim don't think about them and the answers given are simply not credible. To say that it's all a bluff, a fraud, that hishtadlus is a tax and it just looks like it works is simply not believable. And the truth is, the Charedi world doesn't believe it either. When R' Elyashiv needed to have heart surgery anumber of years ago, they flew in the top cardiac/blood vessel surgeon from Cleveland (a religious Catholic) to do the surgery. This completely contradicts the Charedi view. After all, Hashem is doing the healing not the surgeon and once we have done our השתדלות, going to the doctor and having the surgery, why should it matter whether the surgeon is the best in the world or simply Joe surgeon who is competent? As long as we do our השתדלות to avoid requiring a נס, the rest is a גזירה מן השמים. If the גזירה is that the surgery will be successful, then it will be successful even if done by the average surgeon, and if the גזירה is that it won't be successful then it won't help that you have the best surgeon. The same goes for politics and government money. The Charedi press and people got apoplectic when Lapid cut the budget for the Yeshivas. They blamed him personally, Yet, according to their hashkafa, it's not him, it's hashem. He has no power to do anything. The money doesn't come from him it comes from hashem, on Rosh Hashana HAshem decided how much money each Charedi family would receive so why get upset?
In fact, what does it actually mean that someone is considered the best surgeon? After all, הכל בידי שמים, our success is actually an illusion to make it look like it is our skill. In fact, our success in worldly matters is simply a גזירה מן השמים so the fact that he successfully operated is not due to his skill but due to the גזירה מן השמים. So when you really think about it, there are no experts, it is all an illusion, no doctor is better then any other doctor, Lionel Messi is not better then Joe soccer player, it's all an illusion and it's only because Hashem wills it that Messi scores a goal.
When you put it that way, it sounds absolutely ridiculous. but that really is the logical conclusion of this hashkafa.
I think I could come up with a reasonable-sounding explanation. Not credible, since I'm making this up on the spot, but reasonable sounding.
ReplyDeleteI think we could venture an explanation of histadlus along the lines of Leibnitz's synchronous clocks. Leibnitz tried to solve the problem of mind-body dualism, particularly the problem of the non-corporeal soul affecting changes in the corporeal body, by suggesting that the body and the soul were two "clocks" wound up by God and set to the same time. So when the "clock" of the soul marks the hour, the "clock" of the body chimes, and it appears that one is causing the other.
So too, all of the things you list. We need to get the best surgeon in our hishtadlus because the spiritual clock, which will mark a successful surgery, is mirrored by that surgeon's physical clock.
Which shows that Chareidim really should study philosophy that's newer than the Middle Ages.