Another Response

I wanted to respond to a few points made in Rabbi Besser's post. While I agree with Rabbi Besser's message that it is an important value to reflect on world catastrophes that happen and not leave those experiences unchanged as a person, I do however disagree with a couple of points. Firstly, I think it's important to note that the specific Jewish and non Jewish theologians who make comments attributing tragedies to sins are usually only a few extremists who are not taken seriously at all by the mainstream. I am reminded of a great quote by Rav Lichtenstein who states, "I don't have G-d's phone number, the way some others seem to have" (see an interesting article on that topic here). Most respected religious leaders would never make such comments and therefore I don't think the comments of a few extremists warrant an argument deserving of consideration. Secondly, I don't know if a secular country passing a law which grants rights to minorities can even be part of discussion of Divine punishment.

I think the message to take from the tochecha is that even though we no longer live in a world of nevua where we can make direct correlations from world tragedies to our own actions, we should always strive to be reflective about experiences that we go through, asking ourselves what message we can take from them in order to become better people, instead of directing blame outwardly onto others. For example, the lesson I took from all the worry over what the hurricane would do to NYC, was that we shouldn't take our homes and safety for granted, something that we often do living in the luxury of the United States, and that we should appreciate what we have, knowing that it can be taken away from us at any moment.