Responding to Disaster With Reasons

Rabbi Etan Moshe Berman

Whenever disaster strikes, humans instinctively search for moral justification. The phrase, “What
did I do to deserve this,” or “why me” was not originated by Nancy Kerrigan. The assumption that there
must be a moral justification for everything that occurs, reflects a latent awareness of the detailed
interaction between God and His individual creations, as well as their larger classes. This is a general
human assumption, one that is validated in Jewish tradition, and certainly in terms of God’s relationship
with the Jewish People as a whole, is explicit in many places in the Torah1.
A precise answer to a specific moral dilemma today however, is elusive. When prophets are
available and accessible to respond to our queries, we can resolve an issue with clarity. When the word of
God is withheld however, we grope to explain difficult, and even seemingly simple phenomenon. In such a
context, we are forced to deduce general principles of interaction guided by the rule that God relates to
man “measure for measure2.”
Maimonides understands this approach to calamity as the underlying theme of one of the six
hundred and thirteen commandments. The Torah states:
When you will go to war in your land against the enemy that is oppressing you, you shall
blow the trumpets and you will be remembered before Hashem, your Lord and be saved
from your enemies (Numbers 10:9).
What exactly is the role of the trumpet blasts in the above verse? How do they save the Jewish
people from the hands of the enemy and from the dangers of war?
Maimonides addresses this at length in his Mishnah Torah (Laws of Fast Days chapter 1):
It is a positive commandment from the Torah to cry out and blow the trumpets on every
tragedy that befalls the community, as it says, “On the enemy that oppresses you, you
shall blow the trumpets.” In other words, upon anything that oppresses you, like famine,
disease, locusts and the like, you shall cry out to Hashem and blow the trumpets.
This is one of the paths of repentance; namely, that when a tragedy arrives, and they cry
out in response to it and they blow the trumpets, everyone will realize that the evil is due
to their corrupt ways, as it says (Jeremiah 5), “Your sins have overturned etc.” and it is
this [response] that will cause the misfortune to be removed from them.
However, if they do not cry out and do not blow the trumpets, but instead say that this
occurrence is natural and that this misfortune is coincidence, this is an insensitive
approach and causes them to cling to their corrupt ways, and the misfortune will produce
other calamities. This is what it says in the Torah (Lev. 26), “And if you will respond to
me with casualness, then I will respond to you with a fury of casualness,” in other words,
when I bring misfortune upon you in order that you repent - if you say that it is
1. One need not go farther than the second paragraph of the Shema to see that when the Jews are performing mitzvos properly there will be
rain in its proper time, but when the Jews are failing in their responsibilities, the opposite will occur.
2. Sanhedrin 90a.
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 Responding to Disaster With Reasons
Rabbi Etan Moshe Berman

coincidence, I will add on to the same coincidence for you with fury.
Rabbinically, we are instructed to fast upon every misfortune that befalls the community,
until they have mercy on them from Heaven.
The words of Maimonides require no clarification. He understands the above mentioned verse to
be instructive regarding each and every calamity that befalls even a portion of the Jewish People. The
Torah is clear that disaster is wrought by God as a message for the Jewish People to repent and return to
the path of the Torah. If the Jewish People do not respond by changing their ways, the messages become
harder to ignore, to the point that they express fury. It is therefore wise and incumbent upon the Jewish
People to fix the problem for which God has seen fit to “wake up” the populous.
What is, perhaps, most remarkable about the words of Maimonides, is his failure to address a day
and age that lacks prophecy. His silence regarding any distinction indicates that there is a positive
commandment to respond in the identical fashion, even when prophecy is absent3. The immediate issue
consequently is how to go about this. Bereft of the clarity of Divine revelation, how can we possibly cry
out? For what shall we repent?
The answer would seem to be, necessarily, that we are required to cry out and repent for anything
and everything that could possibly have caused such a disaster. Not every transgression of Rabbinic
instruction, nor Divine command carries with it dire consequences. The mere suggestion that a holocaust
would result from the lack of Jews reciting tikkun chatzos - arising at midnight to cry over the destruction
of the Temple, seems absurd. Chillul Shabbos - the desecration of the Sabbath - which provides
testimony to the fact that there is a Creator, however, might possibly account for a natural disaster.
The one act of creative activity, melachah, that is explicit in the Torah is the prohibition to ignite a
fire (Exodus 35:3). Our testimony to the fact that God created the world in six days and ceased His
creative activity on the seventh, is the mirroring of this behavior. Just as God ceased His Divine creative
activity on the seventh day, so too we cease all of our human creative activities on the Sabbath. An
example of this, and the one explicit in the Torah, is the prohibition to create fire. If we would fail to
mirror this cessation of creativity and thereby neglect our testimony, it is understandable how consequently
God might send us a message to repent through the selfsame vehicle of fire, as a function of His
relationship with us “measure for measure.”4 While we will never know for certain if this was the actual
cause of a specific fire, it certainly is a logical possibility. Therefore an appropriate response to a
disastrous fire could be to strengthen our commitment to the testimony of Shabbos. While we could never
be certain that we have pinned down the actual cause of the disaster, this approach is nonetheless
appropriate, and a valuable perspective fostering growth, and in accordance with the positive
commandment to “blow the trumpets” as presented by Maimonides.

3. I learned this deduction as well as the following conclusion from my Rebbi and teacher Rabbi Aharon Kahn.
4. See Talmud Bavli Tractate Shabbos 119b, “A fire is only found in a place where there is desecration of Shabbos.” See also the
comments of the Maharsha in his Chidushei Aggados there.
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