Re: because of mixed dancing

[glenn tamir <klezska...>]

Fortunately, we in the real world have the awareness
to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the reason for
the wedding hall collapse was due to structural
failure.  Any attempt to expand the "reasoning" beyond
that is foolish and self-serving.


--- Robert Cohen <rlcm17 (at) hotmail(dot)com> wrote:
> Though I, too, winced at the foolish and rather
> obnoxious statement 
> regarding the supposed cause of the wedding hall
> disaster, I must humbly 
> respond to sister Lori's post here.  For the fact is
> that a cosmology of 
> "cause and effect"--or, as it is usually referred
> to, reward and 
> punishment--is very much a part--a basic part--of
> normative traditional 
> Judaism.  (Read the second paragraph--after the
> "V'auhavtau" 
> paragraph--following the Shema.)  Obviously each of
> us believes what (s)he 
> believes (or tries/struggles to), and this belief in
> particular is very hard 
> for many of us Baby Boomers to subscribe to.  But to
> simply dismiss it as 
> Lori does is, I think, highly inappropriate in a
> Jewish context.
> 
> That being said, I certainly share Rabbi Lau's
> belief--he seems, btw, to be 
> a rather good-hearted man--that expressing this
> speculation (that the 
> disaster resulted from mixed dancing at the wedding)
> was inappropriate and 
> wrong--and I would add, even thinking it, in a
> sense, is wrong.  Because:
> 
> 1) A secondary but important reason (for not saying
> it) is that his words 
> caused pain, and one's words should carefully be
> chosen to comfort mourners, 
> not increase their pain.  This may have been Rabbi
> Lau's rationale, though 
> obviously I don't know that.
> 
> 2) An even more profound reason, I believe, is that
> although Judaism may, 
> and indeed (however problematically for some of us)
> does believe in reward 
> and punishment, the way in which that plays out in
> this world (and/or the 
> next?) is by definition in G*d's hands, and utterly
> beyond our 
> understanding.  To assert that one knows that B
> resulted from A (aside from 
> being an instance of logically fallacious reasoning
> by converse) is the 
> utmost arrogance--just as it is arrogant to assert,
> as others have in other 
> discussions here, that one knows what G*d wants or
> how G*d works.  The rabbi 
> who made this statement was, I believe, essentially
> denying, in that 
> statement, the existence of a G*d whose workings are
> beyond our 
> comprehension--which is the only G*d Judaism knows.
> 
> In response to such a catastrophe, I believe, it's
> foolish as well as 
> arrogant to assert that one knows why it
> happens--and also foolish to 
> dismiss any such possibility as ludicrous (though I
> understand why one would 
> wince from this particular explanation, as I did). 
> The Jewish-wisdom 
> response to the question why (in a spiritual sense)
> this, or any such 
> disaster, occurs (aside from the rigorous
> investigation that is obviously 
> needed, in a society that actually sets itself up
> for this sort of buildings 
> accident) is what one of my own rebbes frequently
> said about many things we, 
> and he, don't understand:
> 
> Who knows?
> 
> --Robert Cohen
> 
> 
> >From: MaxwellSt (at) aol(dot)com
> >Reply-To: jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org
> >To: World music from a Jewish slant
> <jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org>
> >Subject: Re: because of mixed dancing
> >Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2001 10:51:38 EDT
> >
> >Then it makes you wonder what the Satmar Rabbi did
> wrong to incur the
> >punishment of losing his daughter and granddaughter
> to a fire, caused by
> >lighting yontif candles....
> >
> >There are those people who see the world in terms
> of cause and effect.  
> >They
> >wear very tight, smug little glasses.  They are not
> deeply loved except by
> >their own fanatical followers.
> 
>
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