For a religious Jew, every act and event is by the Hand of God
Reader comment on item: Did Divine Intervention Fell Ariel Sharon?

Submitted by Ken Besig (Israel), Dec 31, 2007 at 05:50

To understand these poll results, one has to understand the mentality of a religious Jew; I consider myself to be one, so I'll try to explain what our thinking is. The poll question really consists of two parts however, one going as to cause and one trying to explain motive, unfortunately only one answer could be given and that clouds the issue, but there really are two questions and thus two answers involved.

The first question asks if God is responsible for human tragedy. For a religious Jew, every event and every act is of divine origin, that is, guided or caused by the Hand of God. That is, if a tsunami hits Southeast Asia and kills three hundred thousand innocent people, it is an act of God. likewise, if two Israeli soldiers on a walk are shot to death by Palestinian terrorists, this too is an act of God. Similarly, if I were to win the Lottery to fully recover from a potentially lethal illness, I would consider these acts to also to be acts of God. Thus, for a religious Jew to believe that Ariel Sharon's first and second strokes were an act of God is perfectly reasonable.

Okay, that said, we come to the second part of the poll question, why did God choose to strike Ariel Sharon down? Of course, there is no, and can be no serious, answer to that question, since no human being, religious or secular, Jewish or not, can fathom the ways and the reasoning of the Almighty. Indeed, since as religious Jews we are commanded to simply accept the Divine Fiat for what it is, we must also acccept that all that which God does or causes to happen is for the best.

This includes by the way, the tsunami victims, the murdered Israeli soldiers, or perhaps a bus full of religious Jewish schoolgirls struck and killed by a train at an unmarked rail crossing several years ago. Even including the stroke which incapactitated Ariel Sharon and since God did not stop the disengagement, or cause it to be stopped, this must have been for the best also.

Thus, while Ariel Sharon was struck down by the Hand of God, we have no idea why God caused this to happen, and anyone who claims it happened for this or that reason has no idea what he is talking about. That person, whether Pat Robertson or the spiritual leader of the Shas Party Ovadia Yosef, is either simply speculating or has given free rein to his own bigotry and prejudices.

The fact is that Ariel Sharon was morbidly obese and living an incredibly stressful lifestyle which literally begged for him to be hit by heart disease or a stroke, and the real wonder was that it hadn't happened sooner. Was Divine Intervention involved, well of course it was; and did God strike Sharon down because of his politics and the disengagement? No one knows or can know, but I personally doubt it. I doubt it because if God were really striking down evil doers or bad politicians on a routine basis and as a direct result of their evil acts or bad policies, there probably wouldn't be enough people left alive and healthy to bury the dead or care for the sick and wounded.

All the best

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