Its Open Season on Jews

[skyguy918]

Can we test your head? 
Free will to Catholics. Everything happens because of the choices we make. While G-d knows the choices we will make G-d does not influence them. The Holocausts happened because of the choices evil human beings made.
Not asking if you agree but can you understand that concept?

We believe in free will, but we also believe that everything happens for a reason. In every instance that someone (let's say a Nazi) exercises their free will to perpetrate an evil deed on another person, the person on the receiving end is having that happen to them for a reason. It's a tangled web that only G-d can manage.

[ltttc]

We believe in free will, but we also believe that everything happens for a reason. In every instance that someone (let's say a Nazi) exercises their free will to perpetrate an evil deed on another person, the person on the receiving end is having that happen to them for a reason. It's a tangled web that only G-d can manage.

...and in no way justifies the act of the evil.

[CountValentine]

We believe in free will,

Just pointing out we have different concepts of free will.
Otherwise I would have to bring out the Kool-Aid, head buried in the sand, you need to get out more and other classics over a misunderstanding. 

[skyguy918]

I believe that there are certain things hashem puts forth on this earth that just can't be understood or rationalized.

Going along the logic that the holocaust was caused by assimilation, I don't think we've learned our lesson. In as much as we've seen stories of people who's neshama re-sparked because of their treatment in the holocaust, there are plenty more who've completely abandoned judaism because of it. (IINM, in this year's kinus video featured a young man in europe who was raised christian, only to find out by his grandmother on her deathbed that she had been hiding her judaism for so many years - yes her grandson is slowly coming back to yiddishkeit, but that's not the point). With that rationale, I can understand why gedolim were allowed to be killed - many in cruel ways - for their culpability in not trying to be mekarev people - but millions of jews in the shtetl? Some who were frum, and knew no assimilated jews because they were confined to their little daled amos?

I've had the misfortune of losing my parents at a young age. My parents were good, g-d fearing people. They weren't blessed with wealth so they did their chesed the old-fashioned way, with their own two hands. They did g-d's work in many ways. There were moments of doubt where I thought that it was their sins or our sins that caused them to die so young - but I couldn't allow myself to think that way. Instead I focused on something different. The bracha of being alive. Both of my parents had long-term health issues that could have easily killed them at much younger ages. Hashem had different plans, he allowed them to live, raise and marry off most of their children before they passed. Every day was a blessing.

I think of the holocaust in a similar vane. Why did Chaim Yankel die in Auschwitz, and not his brother Moshe? Why were all of my grandparents zoche (worthu) to flee europe before the real trouble began, while many of their relatives did not? Why are my wife's grandparents among the few of their family members to survive?

I can only begin to imagine the complex calculus going on in heaven during that time. It's hashem's to know and not ours to find out, because it's far more complicated than we can imagine.

I don't think anything you've written is a contradiction to R' Miller's points. As yitzgar points out, there's a big difference between taking out a lesson for klal yisroel as a whole and making cheshbonos about each individual. Of course there's a cheshbon for each individual as well - one that doesn't necessarily involve looking at it from purely a transgression/punishment lens.

[skyguy918]

Just pointing out we have different concepts of free will.
Otherwise I would have to bring out the Kool-Aid, head buried in the sand, you need to get out more and other classics over a misunderstanding. 

What aspect of free will do we disagree about? It sounds more like 'everything happens for a reason' is where the disagreement lies maybe.

[CountValentine]

What aspect of free will do we disagree about? It sounds more like 'everything happens for a reason' is where the disagreement lies maybe.

When you say "everything happens for a reason" it makes it sound like G-d had a hand in that happening.
Anti-Semitism happens because of evil people. It is not a sign from G-d to let you know you are going off the path.

[yitzgar]

When you say "everything happens for a reason" it makes it sound like G-d had a hand in that happening.
Anti-Semitism happens because of evil people. It is not a sign from G-d to let you know you are going off the path.

Is this a Catholic belief, or your personal belief?

[ltttc]

When you say "everything happens for a reason" it makes it sound like G-d had a hand in that happening.
Anti-Semitism happens because of evil people. It is not a sign from G-d to let you know you are going off the path.

You're kind of understanding this in a backward way

[yitzgar]

You're kind of understanding this in a backward way

I believe that it is incorrect, but I'm not sure what's backwards about it

[CountValentine]

Is this a Catholic belief, or your personal belief?

Free will or anti-Semitism?

[yitzgar]

Free will or anti-Semitism?

Free will

[skyguy918]

When you say "everything happens for a reason" it makes it sound like G-d had a hand in that happening.
Anti-Semitism happens because of evil people. It is not a sign from G-d to let you know you are going off the path.

Right, so it's the 'everything happens for a reason' we disagree about, not 'free will'. You're reading our understanding of it as an infringement of your understanding of 'free will'. We likely agree on the concept of 'free will', we just don't view our understanding of 'everything happens for a reason' as infringing on 'free will' the way you do.

Let's take a step back and remove other people from the picture. A person's house burns down in a fire; freak occurrence or natural disaster or whatever, nothing to do with anyone's free will. Was G-d involved in that? Did it happen to you for a reason?

[CountValentine]

Free will

Catholic but then to really confuse things you need to throw in predestination. IMHO you can't have the two but we accept them. Probably things in Judaism that contradict each other? 

[ltttc]

I believe that it is incorrect, but I'm not sure what's backwards about it

Blunt version: Everything happens for a reason. Often we don't know/can't understand the reason. (And so trying to understand why xyz was killed or saved won't help.) Anti-semitism happens because of eisav sonei es Yaakov. Fact. (Trying to figure out how to get around that, won't help either.)
It's up to the individual to take the recent tragic events as wake up call -(difficult but correct route) or to play ostrich (easy route, covered up trying to come up with causes, theories etc.)

[CountValentine]

Let's take a step back and remove other people from the picture. A person's house burns down in a fire; freak occurrence or natural disaster or whatever, nothing to do with anyone's free will. Was G-d involved in that? Did it happen to you for a reason?

Great questions I don't have answer for.
You remember the story on DD about the TA that wouldn't book a flight over Shabbos for someone. The plane crashed and some said the reason his life was saved was because he kept Shabbos. You know what my flip side question would be. The point is we just don't know. All we can do is believe.

[Dawie]

Good thing its Friday already in HKG

[CountValentine]

Good thing its Friday already in HKG

Can't be Friday. Have not seek a Kool-Aid remark yet.

[gingyguy]

Wow what a way to go off topic and it's not even friday. And people are being so civil to each other , ....

[CountValentine]

And people are being so civil to each other , ....

Some of us can flip a switch when it comes to certain subjects and others can't. That's will power not free will. 

[gingyguy]

Some of us can flip a switch when it comes to certain subjects and others can't. That's will power not free will. 

lol