Where was God when hurricane Sandy struck?

No more can we excuse tragedy for redemption, the suffering must end.

By SHMULEY BOTEACH
Homes destroyed by Sandy on New Jersey shore 370 (R) (photo credit: REUTERS/Handout)
Homes destroyed by Sandy on New Jersey shore 370 (R)
(photo credit: REUTERS/Handout)
What was God thinking when he sent Hurricane Sandy ravaging up the Northeast of the United States and what could have been its purpose?
In truth, I don’t much care, because our role as humans is not to understand God’s plan in the face of horror and tragedy, but to challenge God and demand that human life always be protected and preserved.
Did I say demand? Yes, humanity has rights before God. We are His children. He commanded us to preserve and promote life always. “Choose life,” Moses orders the Israelite nation in God’s name, on the last day of His life. And the Creator must abide by the same dictates He expects His creatures to.
Reading The New York Times story today about the approximately 39 people who died in the storm, I was sick to my stomach. I read it out loud to my kids over our candlelit dinner in a home with no electricity or heat. They could not listen any more. There was the Manhattan woman whose only sin was to walk her dog and was killed by a falling tree. There was the woman whose iniquity it was to take a picture of a downed power line. She did not see the puddle in front of her. Her body, the Times reported, was on fire for half an hour before rescue workers could salvage what was left of her. A young Jewish couple became victims of the storm when walking their dog in Brooklyn. Two boys in New York State were killed when they walked just outside their house to peer at the storm briefly.
Did any of these people deserve to die?
In the face of these natural disasters there are always those who try to divine the mind of God when really their role as humans is to argue with God. That’s exactly what the name Israel means, He who wrestles with God.  In this week's Torah reading, Abraham does just this. In the face of God’s announcement that He is destroying all the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham raises his fist to the heavens and proclaims, “Will the judge of the entire earth not Himself practice justice?” Would God really allow the righteous to die along with the wicked?This is also what Moses says to God after he is told that the Jews will be annihilated for the sin of the Golden calf. If you do so, says the great prophet, “then I beseech you, erase my name from the Torah You have written.”
Moses again questions the actions of God. In being sent to free the Jews from Egypt he is faced with increased suffering and servitude from Pharaoh. Moses, defiant, says to God, “Why have you behaved wickedly to this people, and why have you sent me… You have thus far not saved Your people.” The role of human beings in the face of seeming divine miscarriages of justice is to hold God accountable and demand clemency for humanity. God is all powerful. He does not need a defense attorney. But humans are fragile and vulnerable and they need all the protection they can get.
Touring the devastation of my district, I saw cities deluged in flood waters and homes with trees crashed down on their roofs. Long lines of cars trying to buy gas filled the streets, including tens of people absent of vehicles, only with gas canisters waiting in line for hours. Continuing on with my work, my staff and I have been reduced to sitting in the Garden State Mall plugged into a single outlet on the floor trying to charge our laptops and phones. All this is an inconvenience and, God willing, we’ll dig out. But the people who buried children, the residents who will never again see a spouse, the citizens who mourn parents, my God, my God, what are they to do?
I have grown weary of those who say that suffering is somehow redemptive, that it carries with it a positive outcome. I do not deny that this is at times so. Those who suffer can sometimes emerge humbler, wiser and gentler. But let’s get real; there is nothing beneficial that comes from suffering that could have not been achieved far more effectively through a positive means. To the contrary, suffering leaves us broken and cynical, disbelieving and forlorn, miserable and depressed.
It is time we human beings agreed to wage an all out war on suffering so that it is never excused as something blessed again.
Never again should we say that earthquakes in Haiti are caused by a compact the Haitians had earlier made with the devil. Never again should we say that Israeli soldiers die because Kibbutznikim eat rabbit and other non-kosher meat. Never again should we say that innocent Palestinians, who are used as human shields by the terrorist monsters of Hamas and Hezbollah, die because of the wrath of Allah. And never again must we say that the Jews of the holocaust died because they wanted to cease being Jewish, choosing to be German instead.
The Bible in Deuteronomy is clear. “The hidden things are for God to understand, but the revealed things are for us and our children.” Why God allows good people to suffer is a secret known to him, but we human beings ought to have no interest in knowing the secret. What we want, what we demand, is that the suffering stop completely so that God and humanity can finally be reconciled, after a long history of human travail and agony, in a bright and blessed future, bereft of suffering, absent of tragedy, and filled with blessing.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is the Republican Candidate for Congress in New Jersey's Ninth Congressional District. The international best-selling author of 28 books, his newest work is "Kosher Jesus". Next month he will publish "The Fed-Up Man of Faith: Challenging God in the Face of Tragedy and Suffering." Follow him on Twitter @Rabbishmuley. His website is www.shmuleyforcongress.com.