Tragedy and Free Will: A Jewish Perspective

The Holocaust, and Sara Anne Wood-- one tragedy known worldwide, the other familiar mostly to the area in which it occurred, but both bringing forth the question "Why?"-the why being the bond which draws these two together.

Sara Anne Wood, twelve, was abducted as she rode her bicycle home from the church where her father was a pastor, in a small community in central New York State. Her picture showed a smiling little girl in her Junior High cheerleader uniform. Sara Anne, bright, talented, innocent, a good person-- as many who perished more than a half-century ago in Europe likely were also good people.

When what can only be termed senseless tragedies take good people, the lives of the young, the lives of the innocent, the resonating "Why?" encompasses the emotions of anger, rage, frustration, fear, all coming together in a demand for answers, answers which can fill the human need to make sense out of that which seems senseless, answers which can explain brutality and losses that are beyond comprehension.

Every major religion has an answer to the Why, and, with it, the expectation that their followers will conform their faith to believe these explanations regardless of how plausible they may or may not be; and whether the answers are meant to provide a modicum of comfort or to simply expect believers to accept atrocities which are not acceptable to either the logical mind nor the human heart.

"God's will." "Karma." "Everything happens for a reason, and we must not question." "Divine Intervention, so that the person would not suffer further in life."

When a twelve-year-old child was murdered, none of these explanations were satisfactory-- nor were they satisfactory in considering the genocide which took place in World War II. To even consider that either had "a reason," or that God was somehow responsible, these are no answers at all. Where, then, was God's hand in these and other tragic events? If He even existed at all, what was His part in the "Why?"?

When Life is the question, Judaism is the answer.

Darkness and light is not a balance-- it s a choice between two. "I have set before thee this day: good and evil, blessing and curse, life and death..."

Each day a person is presented with choices and challenges, and, with it, two qualities which God has granted to each person, two characteristics which are a part of the foundation that makes each person fully human-- that of free will, and that of conscience. Each person who comes into this world has these two characteristics-- and whatever in one's environmental influences mold or enhance or hinder these factors, a person is bound to use both correctly. Some do not.

In instances like the Holocaust and the death of Sara Anne, innocents are caught in the crossfire-- the misuse of someone else's free will. For God to have intervened and prevented tragedies, to save the innocent, would have been possible only by God depriving those who committed such atrocities of their free will. Instead of God diminishing their human status by removing their free will, they did it themselves by their own actions.

In this day and age, the popular concept that human beings are not responsible for their own actions does more to diminish human status that such actions themselves. Everything from mental illness to passion to substance intoxication is used as a defense as to why people should not be held accountable for what they do. It is nothing more than an excuse, for regardless of what may inhibit a person's conscience, one cannot claim the right to his free will without acknowledging his conscience also. If one has Rights, one has Responsibilities.

The teaching of free will and conscience may not bring comfort during widespread catastrophe or personal losses, nor does it give one any sense of superhuman safety in a world where there is always something bad happening. But neither comfort nor safety is the point; the point is that every person has within himself what it takes to not only be fully human but to conduct himself as such-- for that is the order which God created.