A few months ago, the President of [Reform] Hebrew Union College decided to spend a delightful Saturday morning flying an airplane. Ahhh - Oneg Shabbos! His plane crashed and he died. No more Oneg Shabbos.
I thought to myself - that was Hashem's way of making him a very public example of what people who are מחללי שבת בפרהסיה deserve. And this guy should have known better. He was the head of an institution that ordains "rabbis". The gemara [Ksubos 30b] says that in our days when our courts no longer mete out the four types of capital punishment, Hashem still does. Since this person would have received סקילה for his חילול שבת [with עדים והתראה] and falling from a high place is the first stage of סקילה, it makes perfect sense.... What a better example than the President himself??!!
Is that a valid thought? Yes - and no.
"Yes" because we believe in reward and punishment. The Rambam says that it is "cruel" to attribute tragedy to pure happenstance and chance. Such an attitude just bring on more tragedy רח"ל. Hashem no longer speaks to us with "words" but with events. We must learn from whatever happens what is going on in Hashem's "mind". The Nevi'im are filled with this idea. We do this sin - we get that punishment.
"No" because while it is true that there is reward and punishment, without a Navi, there is NO WAY to be fully sure why ANYTHING happened. I know absolutely nothing about almost everything and very, very little about a few things. How then can I presume to know the secret workings off Divine Providence?? As Warner Wolf used to say on the Channel 2 sports report "gimme a break"!!! BY GOLLY, ich bin a gornisht. ואנכי עפר ואפר - I am less that dust and ashes!! How can I be so presumptuous as to claim that I understand G-d??!! Hubris!! As Barack Obama said recently ["surprisingly" - about Republicans] "HUTZPAH!!"
That is the ultimate truth. We cannot pretend to understand Hashem. Can we explain one and a half million children brutally murdered in the Holocaust? Can we explain a pure, holy child lying in a bed RIGHT NOW in Shaarei Tzedek hospital connected to machines to keep him or her alive?? Not a chance.
Learn a chapter of the book of Iyov.
We can't POSSIBLY understand Hashem without any special Divine revelation.
What happened in Pittsburgh was both a human and a particularly Jewish tragedy. Conservative Judaism is a perversion of Hashem and his Torah but there is no way to know why things happen. People like when things make sense so they offer contrived explanations but some things just don't "make sense" within our limited scope.
So all we can do is feel the pain of suffering people, daven hard that such tragedies shouldn't happen in the future and, of course, do teshuva. But at the same time to have the humility to admit that we don't "get it".
