Tisha BeAv: The Book of Iyov (Job)

Very well. We are going to take a shortcut through the book of Iyov, because an hour would not be enough. But if I chose it to conclude, in a sense, this series of lectures, it is because we are approaching Tisha BeAv. And we used to — I remember from when I was young — I would stay after the prayer service with my grandfather, and we would read a few chapters of Iyov. The reason is that Iyov raises the problem of human suffering, and by extension the suffering of the Jewish people. For that reason, reading the book of Iyov was recommended as a source of reflection on the tribulations of the Jewish people, which lie at the root of the Ninth of Av and which have continued through time. And each time there is a change, a crisis, a new orientation, a conversion into something new, there are birth pangs. These birth pangs take on, of course, a tragic cast. We have indeed barely risen again from the tragedy of the last war — and barely at that.

And so there arises the problem of the eclipse of G-d, the problem of tzaddik vera lo: why must the righteous man suffer? You will perhaps understand, then, why the time of Iyov is not specified. When the sages asked themselves in what era Iyov lived, they gave ten possibilities. Some said the time of Avraham — and one understands this very well in light of the binding of Yitzchak. There are those who say Iyov lived in the time of the meraglim (the spies), that is, when the road to the Land of Israel was opening and the people were settling in its land; others placed him, for example, in the era of Achashverosh. It is a way of saying that Iyov belongs to every era.

There is no specific era in which one can place him, but we may consider that his wanderings begin with Avraham, since Avraham was put to the test some ten times, and the summit of those trials was G-d’s demand that he sacrifice his son Yitzchak — when just the day before He had told him, ki veYitzchak yikare lecha zara, “for through Yitzchak shall your seed be called,” your descendants are promised to come through your son Yitzchak. And the next day He says: take your son, your only one, the one you love so much, whom you awaited so long, go, and offer him up there as a burnt offering. As I see it, one understands that, for Avraham, every horizon is closing.

Indeed, there is an allusion to that era, because the first verse reads: there was a man in the land of Utz whose name was Iyov, and that man was whole and upright, fearing G-d and turning away from evil. When Iyov is described to us, he is placed in the land of Utz. Now Utz is mentioned for the first time in the genealogy of Terach, and there we find both Utz and Buz — and we know that one of the friends who comes to visit Iyov is from Buz. But all this is simply to say that the story of Iyov is a story common to all eras, to all people, and of course to all of Israel.

Whether he was Jewish or not, we know nothing. The tendency is to say that what can happen to Iyov is not necessarily what would happen to a righteous man belonging to the faith, let us say, of the children of Avraham; it could be a righteous man of the nations — why not? But the problem is suffering: why? Is it the result of a person’s behavior, of his deviations, of his perversity? Or is it quite simply, as the Rambam sets out in his book, that there are tragedies we live through that do not always depend on us: that a child is born malformed, that we fall victim to an earthquake, to a tsunami, to a road accident — none of which is our fault.

All this can happen, and indeed it raises many questions: why me? There is also the fact that there are historical conditions entirely independent of my will, to which I am subject and which truly deprive me of everything I have hoped for until now. It is not my doing; it happens; I am struck. And then there is the third aspect: that of the man who abuses his freedom in one way or another and suffers the consequences — and sometimes it is not he himself who suffers them, but he makes his offspring suffer them. In any case, the problem of an evil in which man struggles — sometimes from birth, as the book of Iyov sets out; sometimes because of the aspirations he has set for himself, of which Iyov also speaks; and because of the society in which we live, which oppresses us to a certain extent and deprives us of what we might truly have dreamed of — this too is a third possibility.

In the book of Iyov there is a tragic aspect, an idealistic aspect, and a third, prophetic dimension. After this introduction, let us see what it is about. A man who is tam veyashar — tam, whole; upright — yerei Elokim, fearing G-d, vesar mera, and turning away from all evil. Would anyone say he is a perfect man? No. We are far from believing it, because being whole and upright can be a choice one makes because one has no means of doing otherwise. It can happen — a state of weakness. Yerei Elokim, fearing G-d: what does it mean to fear G-d? Rabbi Chaim Vital says: careful, there is a restriction here in the fear of G-d.

It does not say yerei Hashem; yerei Elokim — this fear of G-d is bound to an immanent G-d, not to a G-d of the beyond. Fearing G-d here is not disinterested; it is because one is afraid of Him, because one expects Him to answer one’s expectations. This service of G-d is not gratuitous; this service of G-d awaits its reward, whether in this world or in the world beyond. It is always a means of securing G-d’s favor. And what allows us to say that this yerei Elokim is somewhat negative is that sar mera comes afterward — “turning away from all evil.” Turning away from all evil: one should have begun with that — sar mera, tam veyashar, yerei Elokim.

Let us say that sar mera describes someone who does not want to do evil, who does not want to harm anyone, who has chosen integrity and uprightness and who indeed holds fast to G-d. Now the title yerei Elokim, fearing G-d, was given to Avraham Avinu as soon as he consented to offer his son as a sacrifice. So the fear of G-d is truly of another order. Why, then, read it here in a restrictive sense? Indeed, there are two kinds of yirat Elokim. And here we have the yirat Elokim that is the work of the Satan. The Satan is the one who always haunts our mind. He is the one who calls us into question. He is the one who undermines us, who gnaws at us from within, and who, to a certain extent, comforts us in what we believe, who gives us a certain assurance — but nothing is free: he expects something in return.

Now the Satan is one of G-d’s messengers. We have it in the text. I move on: seven sons and three daughters were born to him; he possessed seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels. His sons were in the habit of holding a feast in the house of each of them in turn. This is an important idea. Here is a man, righteous, upright, fearing G-d and turning away from all evil. What are his children? What education did he give his children? There is a disconnection here between the children and the parents. His sons were in the habit of holding a feast in each one’s house in turn — so we can picture these children who lacked for nothing and lived the good life every day, inviting their three sisters to eat and drink with them. And when the cycle of feast days had come round, Iyov would send for his sons to urge them to bring sacrifices according to the number of them all. Why? Because, Iyov said, perhaps my sons have sinned and renounced G-d in their hearts.

Without going that far, there is a break, a rift in the family. Where is Iyov’s responsibility? And there is one thing the text does not say: whether Iyov was a chacham, whether he was intelligent, whether he was wise. We are somewhat inclined to believe that this is a faith founded on tradition, on popular beliefs. Because, mind you, throughout the entire book of Bereshit there is no mention of people who rejected the notion of G-d. Take, for example, yetzer lev ha’adam ra mine’urav, “the inclination of man’s heart is evil from his youth” — it is true that evil dwells in man from his birth: lapetach chatat rovetz, “sin crouches at the door.”

And little by little man tries to detach himself from it, until he reaches the age of bar mitzvah, when the yetzer tov (the good inclination) begins to take its place. But until then the young boy struggles with the yetzer lev ha’adam, with what it can indeed produce and generate — that is, evil — because — as […] explains — of his youth, of his lack of maturity. True, true — but these children have grown up. We are dealing with adults. There is a tradition that does not continue through the children; there is a rift, a break. And this is what will allow the Satan to say: “Come now, this service of G-d, as this man Iyov conceives it, is a way of compensating for his own fears. The proof is that, for the moment, we have a description of this Iyov who has not opened his door to everyone, where no hesed is mentioned, where no social life is mentioned, as with Avraham Avinu, who waited for his guests at the entrance of his tent.” And that is why the text goes on to speak of the bnei ha’Elokim: the day arrives on which the sons of G-d come to present themselves before the Eternal.

We know that these sons of G-d are none other than G-d’s messengers, and they are many. And these messengers of G-d — we have already spoken of this — are the virtues each one embodies, which in a sense govern the whole of creation through their potential, their ideas, their functions. And the Satan comes among them too. Of course, Satan comes from the verb satah, to swerve, doesn’t it? To go around. True. And sometimes one must make use of that — one must use cunning to avoid danger — and the Satan is important, even at the level of human drives. Consequently, he may well be counted among G-d’s messengers. And when the Eternal questions him and asks, “Where do you come from?”, the Satan answers: “I have been roaming the earth, I have gone to and fro in it.” And G-d asks him: “Have you set your heart on My servant Iyov?” — that is, there is none like him on the earth. The Holy One, blessed be He, testifies that there is none like him on the earth. The Holy One, blessed be He, is very generous in the way He regards His creatures.

As I told you a moment ago, in the book of Bereshit, according to the Midrash, the Flood came because of hamas (violence), of the three scourges — the three capital sins, let us put it that way; or the dor haflagah, the generation of the Tower of Babel, which sought to reach G-d at the summit and to share with Him in governing the universe. But look how Pharaoh, how Avimelech, acknowledge G-d and speak of G-d. Az huchal likro beshem — from the very beginnings everyone speaks of the Creator; the world speaks of G-d. Even Pharaoh, when he appoints Yosef, tells him: “Since G-d has made all this known to you, you shall be my viceroy.”

The real deviation begins in the book of Shemot, at the time of the forming of the Jewish people — and this, once again, is a period in which Iyov is placed: he is said to have been one of Pharaoh’s counselors, who gave his opinion that the children should not be thrown into the sea, that they should not be destroyed, but simply enslaved. Someone who condemns a people to servitude finds himself enslaved in turn. Did he truly commit a sin? He would thus also belong to the time of Pharaoh. All this is to say that when the Holy One, blessed be He, puts Iyov to the test, He delivers him into the hands of the Satan, telling him: you may do as you please — for at first you may deprive him of his possessions.

Now, there are those who renounce their faith after losing everything; there are those who keep it in the hope of keeping something else. But when they have lost all their possessions through natural catastrophes, and even their children have been carried off, and overnight they find themselves with nothing — how can you expect them to keep their faith in G-d? And yet the fact is that Iyov is the one from whom we learned the laws of mourning, namely: to stand up in order to say, I will survive despite everything. That is why the tzidduk hadin (the acceptance of the divine judgment) is recited standing: one rises to accept the divine verdict, and then one tears one’s garment. The tearing of the garment is there, in the mourning Iyov takes on for everything that befalls him and his children. But what leaves us somewhat unsatisfied is that he shares his pain with no one. His wife intervenes only once, to tell him: you know, after everything you have endured, you may indeed […] curse G-d and die. Iyov answers her: shall we indeed accept the good from G-d and not accept the evil? The Eternal has given, the Eternal has taken away; blessed be the name of the Eternal. There is a paradox in Iyov’s way of serving G-d. The text lets you touch it with your finger, because Iyov in fact observes a period of mourning. Only three friends come to visit him. You know there are three words that render the word “friend”: yedid, the beloved; chaver, the friend; and re’a, usually translated as “fellow.” Which do you prefer — friend, beloved, or fellow? The Torah did not say ve’ahavta lechaverecha kamocha, “love your chaver as yourself,” or lididecha kamocha, “your yedid as yourself.” It says ve’ahavtem et hager, “you shall love the stranger”; you shall love your re’a, your fellow — and the fellow is other than you. You shall love the stranger, you shall love the one who is different from you. Love is proven by our being drawn to love someone different, not someone who resembles me. Well, here in the text of Iyov we are dealing with re’im. We are not dealing with chaverim, with yedidim. Granted, they come from afar to console their friend. It is strange that a man like Iyov keeps only three friends in the end — but they come, and mind you, this is the moment to say: “My G-d, save me from my friends; my enemies I will take care of myself.” For we have three friends, but when we analyze their intervention after three days — since we are advised not to try to appease a person in the hour of his anger, in the hour of his distress — one does not try to console a man and debate with him while he is full of bitterness.

One must let him speak. It is up to him to address you first. And when these three friends do take the floor, we have three different speeches. Elifaz, the first, presents himself as the representative of Esav. Then we have Tzofar, whose speech places him rather in the belief of Islam. And we have Bildad the Shuchite, who presents yet another tendency, somewhat straddling those of Elifaz and Tzofar. What are these tendencies? The first, Elifaz, says: listen, in principle, if a misfortune strikes us, we are fully responsible for it; we are atoning for sins we have committed, or, if we did not commit them directly ourselves, we are suffering the consequences of our predecessors. Therefore stop proclaiming your innocence and cursing the day of your birth because you believe yourself a victim of G-d — no. In fact, what is happening to you, you somehow deserve, and you should examine your deeds and your acts and seek to repent and change direction. Paradoxically, the Rambam seems to take up this idea of Elifaz, saying that to lean on some kind of assurance — saying that we are perfect, that we have done nothing, that we do not deserve this, that we need not question ourselves and see how we might get out of this trial and master the situation — that is ga’avah, a sin of pride. And this sin of pride shows itself somewhere in chapter 24, where Iyov says: I who lived by justice and charity, I who was respected by everyone, loved by everyone — and here I am, reduced to this.

So the loss of recognition from which he suffers, the poverty to which he is reduced and the suffering in which he is settled, make him bitter. But he does not search himself; he says to G-d: set out Your charges against me, and I am willing to consider them. Tzofar adopts another principle, namely that G-d tests only the righteous. And if in fact we are subjected to trials, it is above all so that we may reach a higher level once we have overcome them. And if He were not sure of our advancement, He would not impose the trial on us. This tendency, as I told you, is upheld by Islam, and it is in fact called the method, the current, of the Ash’ariyya: that G-d is just in all He does, and when misfortunes befall a man, it is in that man’s interest, and only that.

The third position, the one Bildad the Shuchite upholds, is that it is useless to search, to ask questions about G-d’s way of governing His world. He is the master of all, He does as He wills; we are His subjects, and we have only to accept our lot while remaining faithful to Him. It is indeed a way of rejoining, as I told you, the second aspect — rather the first aspect — namely that a sin weighs upon us, sins weigh upon us, and G-d alone knows what is due to us and what is not. And then there is the intervention of a fourth companion, Elihu, who is younger, and who will make the synthesis of everything and will partly vindicate Elifaz, Tzofar and Bildad — but he adds another element.

Elihu’s final element is this: man considers himself a genuine counterpart of G-d; he truly wants to address the Shofet kol ha’aretz, the Judge of the whole earth. Does he not realize that his life itself is a kindness — not a curse, but a blessing in itself? And what business has he wanting to enter the meanders of divine justice and insisting at all costs on putting G-d on trial? It is audacious. Now, all these elements interfere with our way of seeing things, of understanding, of situating our relationship with G-d. This is not peculiar to Iyov. As his name indicates, Iyov is the enemy — oyev: Iyov is his own enemy. He is someone who has not yet found his true place, his true function, and who is rather reducing G-d to the function of a judge — to a social function — whereas he ought instead to attend to his obligations toward G-d, under whatever conditions.

And indeed, when G-d at last dares — or rather breaks His silence, because that is what Iyov wanted, that G-d should manifest Himself and speak to him — He begins first by rebuking Elifaz and all his friends, because they judged Iyov very badly: Iyov was not to be the object of their accusations, of their suspicions; they should not have passed judgment on Iyov’s faith. There remains the problem of Iyov’s desire to dialogue with G-d and to understand things. We said at the beginning that the word chacham was absent from the speech — or rather from the presentation of Iyov’s personality. But in reality, through his sufferings, it seems that he is going through the school of his true relationship with G-d, of yirat Elokim. And as we once presented, we expect nothing from our service […].

We have devoted ourselves to His cause; we are partners in the full sense. For in order truly to understand this relationship of G-d with His creation, we would first have had to understand the phenomena of creation ourselves. That is what G-d says to Iyov: Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Where were you in the structures I gave My world? Could you indeed understand them? Do you understand them today? Can you demonstrate them today? And now that’s all that is left — you lack nothing, you have understood everything; the only thing you lack is justice, which you would like to grasp, and in the end you would like to become the guarantor of My justice.

As the Rambam explains it, G-d says: know one thing — your ways are not My ways, your directions are not Mine, your way of thinking is not Mine; all the more so since you are always focused on the individual, on the detail of certain small groups, whereas I govern the entire universe, and therefore there are other parameters, another whole. That is the reason. Am I to come and enter into your system? Look — this last passage is wonderful, in chapter 42, after G-d restores everything to him and gives him back all he had lost. Know this: vaHashem shav et shevut Iyov behitpalelo be’ad re’ehu — “and the Eternal restored the fortunes of Iyov when he prayed for his friends.” […]

[…] After he had prayed for his friends, He gave back to him double what he had had. […] G-d returned with man. One must not believe that the Holy One, blessed be He, rejoices in the suffering of the righteous. He weeps as much — G-d is in exile with man; He suffers with him. What He expects is that one should extend one’s hand toward the other. There is a passage in the Talmud where Rabbi Yochanan comes to visit Rabbi Chiya, who was ill, and asks him: chavivin alecha yissurin? — “Are your sufferings dear to you?” He answers him: lo hen velo secharan — “Neither they nor their reward.” I do not want them; I do not even want the reward.

If it is to promote me to another world, I do not want it. Then the text says: he extends his hand and raises him up. He raises him up — that is to say, he heals him in this way. To extend one’s hand to the other, to show this love toward the other: this is a way of expressing the love of G-d and of remedying everything that goes wrong, all the ills of society. And then, for example, Rabbi Yochanan falls ill one day, and Rabbi Chanina comes to visit him. He asks him: are these yissurin (sufferings) dear to you? He answers: no, I do not want them, I do not want their reward.

This time too the text tells us: he extends his hand and raises him up. To extend one’s hand to the afflicted, to those who have lost everything — that is the way to console, that is the way to give thanks, and that is the way of shav et shevut Iyov, of bringing G-d back to Iyov. Then we can understand why the reading of Iyov was set aside for the day of Tisha BeAv, when we lost our Sanctuary and compelled G-d Himself to go into exile with us. He weeps as much as we do; He is as afflicted as we are. We did not know how to give our faith its true dimension, its true level. Too often we reduced it to our own person alone.

We reduced it to our own interests; we did not know how to show a gesture of kindness, a hand held out toward the other. Yet we must know that every time there are crises, they are preparing a new birth. I began by saying it: there are birth pangs. The righteous pay more than anyone, because they are at the center of all, they are the guarantors of all. But this conversion is what is called a transmigration, a gilgul, in which one passes from one era to another; and this passage from one era to another demands new structures, a new readaptation, even at the level of our leaders, of our judges. Indeed, this is why the Torah tells us to turn to the judges of your own time. You must not say that things were better a few years ago, in the past generation. No — tzaddik vera lo. The righteous man, said Rabbi Nachman of Breslov: tzaddik vera lo, a righteous man who suffers, is a righteous man who no longer belongs to his time, who goes on living in the past and does not know that the world is moving forward, and that he ought to renew himself and readapt to the new structures, to the new circumstances. One should not cling to the language of the past at all costs as though it were the only one of value. No — just as in a person there is a development from earliest childhood, passing through various crises, so it is in the life of a people, and all the more so for the people that must be the guardian of values for the nations: one must know how to move beyond these crises and not get bogged down in them, while saying with Avraham, “I am dust and ashes.” That is the reason: there is a little ash, and we will rebuild ourselves from that ash and that dust; we will not get bogged down. Iyov too ended this way, when he says to G-d: lishma ozen shema’ticha — until now, when people spoke to me of G-d, I only heard of You through speeches, sermons, recipes of faith. No: ve’atah eini ra’atecha — now I see You, now I realize Your presence; to realize G-d before oneself. How wonderful! This is truly Avraham, the only one of whom the text says vehe’emin baHashem, “he believed in the Eternal,” because Avraham’s service was a service be’ahavah, a service of love, that expected absolutely nothing, that defended justice — not for himself, but justice for others, for the people of Sodom and Gomorrah; he demanded of G-d, “Hashofet kol ha’aretz lo ya’aseh mishpat” — “Shall the Judge of all the earth not do justice?” — but not for himself. That is the true passage of man through every phase of conversion into a new being.

I will stop here, and I would like to leave room for questions, if you have any. — Rav Benizri, I have a question in light of the reading I was able to do this morning. I did not have time to read the three chapters, because I already spent four hours on the first chapter. And the small remark I take away from this morning’s study — first of all, I thank whoever thought of studying Iyov, because it is truly wonderful. I found something of myself in the character, thank G-d. Let us say: why does G-d need — because we know that in the Tanya it is stated that our soul, the soul of every Jew, swore to G-d that it would be righteous.

So, by virtue of that, why does G-d need to send a force — in this case the Satan — to cast doubt on Iyov’s righteousness, his tzidkut? Had you told me: here, I am sending a force to save a city because there are resha’im (wicked people) in it… But what is it, in the end, that makes Iyov an entirely unique figure, such that the Satan has to be sent? — The Satan is sometimes your next-door neighbor, if you please. Today I have not identified him, have I? But know that the Satan lives among us, with us. So sometimes it may even be the son, it may even be the wife, it may be the husband for the wife. The Satan, mind you, is the one who takes the contrary angle on everything and calls everything into question.

One must be aware of it. Do we agree? Thank you, Raoul. Another question. — I do not have another question, but I had another remark that came to me while listening to your lecture. I suppose that if we start from the principle that we are not certain Iyov existed, then all the more so, I suppose, all the figures around him, including these three friends — we are not sure of their existence either. — Listen, our sages told us: Iyov lo haya velo nivra, ela mashal haya — Iyov did not exist, never existed; rather, he is a parable, a model, a model of being. It is to say: be careful — Iyov is you, it is me, it is the other. We should not focus on an Iyov in history, a particular Iyov.

This Iyov of misfortune dwells within us, always at different levels. Perhaps not that one in his entirety, but I would say that all those who, unfortunately, lived through the tragedy of our century were all Iyovs, and certainly these questions never ceased to haunt them, and the answers they tried to find are evasions. That is not all: one does not simply […] question one’s own real situation in relation to everything that happens to us, and […]; rather, one observes a mourning — but from this mourning one must rise. It cannot be otherwise, because if mourning is not something one rises from, then it is not only one death that strikes us: it is the death of several generations.

Now, as I said, when one blesses G-d and says baruch Dayan ha’emet, “blessed is the true Judge,” one recites it standing, because one thereby affirms that from this mourning one must rise. — Rav Benizri, can we say, in light of the first perek, the first chapter, that the main problem lies in the education of the children? So the main problem, the negative point, lies in the poor education of these children? — Listen, you are asking a very important question, because it is not a problem of our day alone. It is a problem that existed long before. Iyov puts his finger on it: in the end, when children have deserted their parents’ heritage, is it not sometimes because we held to fixed principles, and we always believed that the old language, the old teaching, is the most valid and must be imposed — and we did not put ourselves on the children’s level, to listen to what they are seeking, to what they are asking, and to adapt our language to their questions? And I do not know: these children of Iyov who celebrate every day — is it the doing of rebellious children who reject the whole heritage of their parents, all of their parents’ legacy, or is it a flaw in education, a desertion by the parents, such that they themselves did not know how? And to this day, unfortunately, you will sometimes see children of illustrious rabbis who did not follow their parents’ path, who deserted.

Today they are called chozrim bishe’elah (those who leave religious observance). Why? Because there has been a gap in our way of communicating with the new generation, with the new structures of a generation. — Rav Benizri, you have perhaps answered the question. Have you finished answering Mani’s question? — Yes. — I had a small question. Why do I have the impression that in this book of Iyov, Iyov’s wife is relatively absent, not very present? And that the name of Iyov’s wife, which I believe is Sitis, is in the end very similar to the name Satan? Perhaps that is a flight of fancy on my part. — Because the Satan, at bottom — it is his wife who urges him to curse G-d, because she becomes the Satan’s accomplice.

That is what the Satan would like to obtain; that is what the Satan would like to obtain. And the problem is that at no point did Iyov associate his wife with his misfortunes. We are told about his wife simply to tell us that she says to him: now that you have lost everything, that’s it — detach yourself from G-d, stop believing in Him. Now I will tell you that such moments can cross the mind of someone who watches helplessly the suffering of his child, the illness of his child — may G-d spare us — who may ask himself many questions and could lay the responsibility on G-d’s absence. The idea crosses the mind. Let us not forget that the verb kafar, meaning to deny, is the same verb as kiper, to atone.

What does one atone for? Moments of weakness, moments of rebellion against G-d. It can happen, but one should not settle into it. You know, the Bible is wonderful because it has opened its doors to all times, to all currents of thought, even to unbelievers. And in the Pesach Haggadah we also give a place of honor to one of our children, the rasha (the wicked son), and we say to him, rasha mah hu omer — what are you saying, my poor friend? And we try to find the right language so that he stays at our table, so that he does not leave it. And the book of Iyov, in principle — in any self-respecting religious philosophy, it should not have found its place in the biblical canon.

Now, we have only zoomed in on the book of Iyov, but there are passages that are revolting. Try reading a few chapters sometimes — it is beautiful poetry, by the way — but you will see, it has nothing to do with treatises on proper conduct toward G-d, toward the Creator. Yet for us, the whole existence of G-d rests on the creation of the world. G-d exists because He created the world; the world exists because G-d exists. We cannot separate G-d’s existence from the world, and we cannot separate the world from G-d’s existence. For if G-d had brought a universe into being and abandoned it to its fate — which would be the G-d of Aristotle — then He would have given us a poisoned gift. To bring a child into the world and abandon it to its fate — are those worthy parents? One cannot imagine it.

If the world exists, it is because a G-d exists. The reality of G-d and that of the world are intimately bound together. Another question? — Perhaps to move toward an optimistic note: you drew a connection between Iyov’s suffering and the suffering of all our brothers during the Shoah. What would the Jewish world’s answer be today to that — to a mourning, a true mourning, for those sad events, events that still touch us today? What would our answer be for the future? — The answer is the one given by […], namely that one should not seek an answer to what we have seen; what one must realize is that we were not alone in our suffering. Even G-d suffered with us; He was present even in […]. He wept as much as we did. We took Him with us, and He took us with Him.

This is what the Rambam rightly says: that we do not have the same parameters of thought. We cannot reduce G-d to our human condition. But for the future: we go on existing, we go on living, we are alive. And for the future, today, since the Jewish people is still here, facing all its detractors, it says: I am present — while many empires have disappeared and continue to disappear. There it is. So I wish you a good holiday; we will meet again after the holidays, and in the meantime enjoy yourselves. — Thank you very much. Thank you, thank you very much. Good evening, thank you, Rav Benizri. Goodbye. Thank you so much. It was a masterful lecture. Goodbye. Thank you so much. Masterful. It is a lecture that does good but that is also painful. — It also makes one think, yes. — We appreciated it very much. Goodbye everyone, have a good holiday. — You too. — Will it resume at the beginning of September, then? We don’t really know?

— I don’t know. We have just done that with the first message. — Sorry? — We will resume on August 23. — Ah yes, all right. You will send a short email, I imagine. — We will send the announcement by WhatsApp, by email, by Facebook, by email as well. — All right. By the way, if I may, for the people of Brussels — for those who are in Brussels — on Thursday we are organizing a guided tour, “Jewish Brussels in the Middle Ages.” Yes, we will go through all the stages — since we are speaking of suffering today — we will go through the stages that caused suffering to the young Jewish community in the fourteenth century, in 1369, when we were accused of desecrating hosts and were imprisoned. It was the first pogrom of Brussels, if I may put it that way. And we will pass by all the places where the Jewish community lived at that time, and by all the signs, all the evidence of what happened then.

— It is up to you to organize something for the Israelis too. — Eventually we will try to dramatize our guided tours, that is, they will also be on YouTube, but for the moment that is not possible. — In any case, Luc, I say kol hakavod to you — what you are doing is wonderful, Luc. Truly, thank you so much, thank you. — Is this tour listed in the calendar? — Yes, this tour is listed in the calendar of the Maison de la Culture Juive, absolutely. — And it is this week? — It is this week, on the 16th, the 16th at 2 p.m. — Ah, all right. — The 16th at 2 p.m., and on Sunday we will have the opportunity to visit the Jewish section of the Dieweg cemetery in Uccle.

— Ah yes, that is extraordinary. It is really lovely, really lovely. — Wasn’t it on the 12th? Wasn’t it on the 12th? I think there’s a mistake. — Ah no — ah, I see. — You are right, it took place today, but there were so many people that we are doing it again next week. — Ah, I see, all right. And is all the information on the website? — Absolutely, all the information is there, absolutely. You book either by email or by phoning the guide; his phone number is listed. — All right, very good. Okay, very good, thank you. That’s great, thank you very much. — Thank you very much, good evening. — Manuel, I hope I will have the pleasure of seeing you in Netanya. You did notice that my question was much more accessible — you can tell I did a little work this morning. Happy holidays, everyone.

— You absolutely must ask short questions. — They were short, very short, but I made an effort, I made an effort. — Luc, you wanted to end on a note of poetry — that is more or less what you said — I would have liked to end on a note of humor, by saying that he who loses his work, unfortunately, that is the source of all misfortunes: he who loses his job, of course. Good evening, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.