Pensée juive sur Berakhot 9:5

(1) One who trusts G-d accepts His judgment in all his matters, and thanks Him for good as well as for bad, as written "G-d gave, G-d took back, blessed be His Name" (Iyov 1:21), and as written "of kindness and of judgment I will sing to You" (Tehilim 101:1), which the sages explained "if kindness, I will sing, if justice I will sing" (Berachos 60b) (Rashi: when You bestow kindness upon me, I will praise you [with the blessing:] "Blessed be He Who is good and does good", and when You perform judgment upon me, I will sing, "Blessed be the true Judge." In either case, to You, O Lord, I shall sing), and they also said: "a man is under duty to bless G-d on the bad (with joy - ML) just like he blesses on the good" (Berachos 54a).

Such striving does the Almighty require of us, according to the words, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might”,¹¹Deut. VI, 5. that is, with all the faculties of thy soul, each faculty having as its sole ideal the love of God.¹²Cf. Moreh, I, 39 (end) which refers to this passage in the Peraḳim, and to the Mishneh Torah (Yesode ha-Torah, II, 2). The prophets, similarly, urge us on in saying, “In all thy ways know Him”,¹³Prov. III, 6. in commenting upon which the sages said, “even as regards a transgression (of the ritual or ceremonial law),”¹⁴Berakot, 63a. This does not imply that the end justifies the means; that crime may be committed to bring about religious or charitable ends. It refers only to the violation of the ceremonial or ritual laws, as the breaking of the Sabbath, and eating on Yom Kippur, for the sake of saving life, etc. Cf. Ketubot, 5a, “You must remove debris to save a life on the Sabbath”; and Shabbat, 30b, “Better to extinguish the light on the Sabbath than to extinguish life, which is God’s light”, etc. The distinction in regard to the various kinds of transgressions which M. makes below, Chapter VI, pp. 76—78, applies here. See Shemonah Peraḳim, ed. Wolf, 1876, p. 53, n. 5. meaning thereby that thou shouldst set for every action a goal, namely, the truth, even though it be, from a certain point of view, a transgression.¹⁵Cf. M.’s Commentary on Berakot, IX, 5: ובכל לבבך בשני יצריך ביצר הטוב וביצר הרע. Cf. also his Commentary on Abot, V, 20 (Rawicz, Commentar, p. 108), and Moreh, III, 22 (end). The sages of blessed memory, too, have summed up this idea in so few words and so concisely, at the same time elucidating the whole matter with such complete thoroughness, that when one considers the brevity with which they expressed this great and mighty thought in its entirety, about which others have written whole books and yet without adequately explaining it, one truly recognizes that the Rabbis undoubtedly spoke through divine inspiration. This saying is found among their precepts (in this tractate), and is, “Let all thy deeds be done for the sake of God”.¹⁶Abot, II, 12. This, then, is the thought we have been dwelling upon in the present chapter, and what we have said must be considered sufficient for the needs of this introduction.¹⁷That is, the Shemonah Peraḳim, which constitute M.’s introduction to his Commentary on Abot. See Introduction, p. 5. H. Deot, III, 3 contains a summary of the contents of the latter part of this chapter.

Judaism made this notion more profound when it combined the idea of the repair ‎‎(tikkun) ‎of evil and its elevation with the perfection and elevation of goodness. Judaism ‎states that the ‎kindnesses of God are not given to man as an unconditional gift, without obligation; ‎they require ‎something in return; their very essence impose a moral, halakhic demand upon the ‎man who ‎enjoys them. Indeed, while loving-kindness emanates from the open, overflowing, ‎generous hand ‎of the Holy One, it is not an unlimited or unconditional gift. Such a gift is not ‎absolute. The ‎bestowing of good is always conditional and temporary. When God bestows wealth, ‎property, ‎influence, and honor, the recipient must know how to employ them; how to turn these ‎precious ‎gifts into fruitful, creative powers, how to include others in his happiness and greatness, ‎and how ‎to render loving-kindness with the divine kindnesses that emanate and issue forth to him ‎from a ‎never-ending font. If an abundance of good does not bring man to absolute subordination ‎to the ‎Holy One, then he is guilty of a fundamental sin resulting in the severe distress that in turn ‎reminds ‎him of his obligation to the Creator of the universe for the gift of His kindnesses. Our great ‎sages ‎have taught: “Man is obligated to give thanks for evil as he does for goodness” (M. Berakhot ‎‎9:5). ‎Just as good obliges man to perform deeds of a higher order and demands creative and ‎innovative ‎actions from the individual or the populace, so does suffering require the repair of the ‎soul and the ‎cleansing of life — if at the time of God’s favor and beneficence one was not aroused ‎to action. For ‎it happens that man is summoned to repair, through his afflictions, the damage he ‎caused in God’s ‎creation at the hour when the Holy One extended His bounty. The feeling of ‎subordination to the ‎Almighty and the understanding of one’s obligation to purify and sanctify ‎one’s self by dint of ‎one’s suffering must brighten man’s soul when he finds himself in distress and ‎perplexed by his ‎existence. He must overcome the obtuseness of his heart that caused him to sin ‎when he stood in ‎the presence of God’s bounty. In short, man must solve, not the question of the ‎causal or ‎teleological reason for suffering with all its speculative complexity, but rather the ‎question of its ‎curative role, in all its halakhic simplicity, by turning fate to destiny and elevating ‎himself from ‎object to subject, from thing to man.‎