Divine Providence and Justice

Divine Providence and Justice are not presented as doctrines that resolve suffering, but as questions tested by grief, guilt, and human conduct. Michel Sommo interprets his ordeal as punishment and struggles to accept the silence of Heaven; Alexander Gideon challenges the logic behind providence, atonement, and holiness. Their exchange leaves the problem open even as practical acts of mercy begin to answer it.

Guilt, Punishment, and Restraint

Michel's account places personal responsibility beside the possibility of divine judgment. He confesses that he failed to stop a scheme and wonders whether greed blinded him. He describes his conduct as a transgression against the verse “Thou shalt not be excessively righteous,” then understands his present suffering as Heaven's sevenfold punishment and himself as being scourged. The interpretation is severe: a period in which Sommo could stand upright as a father, husband, and human being has ended, and he fears a return to nothingness. Providence here is not an abstract guarantee of fairness; it is an explanation Michel imposes on a devastating reversal.

Yet the account also exposes the limits of that explanation. Michel goes to the Talpiyyot woods at sunset and asks where help will come from and why the wicked prosper. The hills give no answer. Remembering Rabbi Bouskila's counsel to accept suffering with love, Michel tries to place his questions among those that have remained unanswered for generations. In the dark, he comes to regard Sommo's sorrow as small beside what exceeds human understanding. He acknowledges thoughts of despair and of harming the person he addresses, but says that he regrets them, submits, and quiets himself by moonrise. Submission is therefore a hard-won restraint, not evidence that the questions have been solved.

Justice and the Unequal Measure of Blood

Michel also disputes the moral judgments made by other people. He contrasts his own claim never to have shed blood or harmed an Arab with the blood Alexander Gideon shed in war, yet says Gideon is praised as a humanitarian while Michel is dismissed as a cruel zealot. The accusation makes public reputation part of the problem of justice: the labels applied to each man do not, in Michel's view, correspond to the harm each has done. His appeal is not simply for vindication. He insists that Gideon return the child on Sunday morning, while admitting that doubt remains and that he is trying to give the other person the benefit of it under conditions set by Rabbi Bouskila.

The account turns to King David as a precedent that complicates any easy equation between divine punishment and human consolation. David was barred from building the Temple and reminded of innocent blood he had shed, but, Michel observes, such punishment did not console those whose blood had been shed. A judgment may be understood as deserved and still fail to restore its victims. The comparison prevents Michel's theology from becoming a neat balance sheet in which punishment alone repairs injury.

Gideon's Challenge to Providence

In a separate address to Michel, Alexander Gideon presses against the assumptions that Michel uses to interpret suffering. He asks what grounds Michel's confidence in “supreme Providence”: atonement, rewards and punishments, or grace. He demands proof or a miracle, and suggests that religious belief might instead be foolishness, deception, abasement, or fear. The questions are pointed, but they also disclose an unresolved need: Gideon says he has spent some nine years seeking a reasonable definition of holiness and still does not know what holiness, purpose, or grace mean. His language of doubt is not a settled alternative theology; it is a record of continued searching.

Michel's own evenings make that uncertainty concrete. After another walk beneath the hills, he wonders whether the Garden of Eden, Noah's Flood, the Binding of Isaac, and the Burning Bush might be allegories, or whether the ancient sacred geography has been wrongly identified. He even asks whether the apparent absence of God in this place could result from such an error. The question arises amid his struggle to understand the child's absence and his own suffering; it does not establish that he has abandoned belief. Both men's accounts instead hold faith and doubt close together, without letting either become a final explanation.

Mercy as Action

The correspondence eventually moves from argument toward acts of care. After learning that Alexander is desperately ill and on his deathbed, Michel asks forgiveness for the harsh insults in his earlier letter, explaining that he wrote in the grip of great grief. As the Days of Awe approach, he invites Ilana and Yifat home and urges Alexander to come immediately for treatment at Hadassah Hospital, Jerusalem. He offers him a place as a guest, asks Boaz to stay near his father and tend him, and arranges to seek special treatment through a family connection in the hospital's oncology department.

Michel does not present this response as proof that his earlier questions have been answered. Rather, he entrusts Alexander's recovery to remorse, suffering, battlefield heroism, divine mercy, and the possibility of treatment, joining religious hope to practical effort. He plans to consult Rabbi Bouskila and goes to the Western Wall to pray and place a note asking for Alexander's recovery. He also asks Alexander to tell Ilana and Boaz that the men have forgiven each other, and says he believes Heaven will forgive them all. Providence remains uncertain as an explanation of suffering, but the closing appeal gives it a relational form: care offered to an ill adversary, prayer for his recovery, and forgiveness extended without a demonstrated miracle.