On June 24, 2021, every apartment dweller's nightmare came true.

In the middle of the night, part of a 12-story condominium building in the Miami suburb of Surfside, Florida Florida suddenly collapsed. As of this broadcast on July

2nd, 18 persons are confirmed dead and 145 remain missing as rescue operations continue.

It's not the worst civilian tragedy of its kind, but it does share with other natural disasters, earthquakes, floods,

hurricanes, and also with naturally occurring sicknesses, something that is awful for believers

in a just God to consider. Loss of innocent human life in a way that seems so disconnected

from justice, from reward, and from punishment.

The women and men who lost their lives and the building collapse must have contained within

their number the pious and the impious, the meritorious and the wicked alike.

Such catastrophe causes suffering on the part of those stricken with a disease or injured in a disaster,

but also on the part of the people who love them. Why is their suffering? And how do we as Jews

understand a world laden with suffering and still relate to the God of all creation, who, we believe,

maintains out of his loving kindness and enduring

covenantal love for us.

Welcome to the Tikva podcast.

I'm your host, Jonathan Silver.

My guest today is the theologian and professor Rabbi Shulam Karmi, a professor of Jewish

philosophy at Yeshiva University, a columnist at first things.

And from 2004 to 2019, he was the editor

of Tradition, the Theological Journal of the Rabbinical Council of America.

One of the texts that we reference in this discussion is called Aninut and Avelut by Rabbi

Joseph B. Soloveitchik, it's housed in a volume of Rabbi Soloveitchik's

...