Rav Nosson Weisz wrote an article about how do deal with a tragedy. I got it from aish.com it’s Parshas Chukas under advanced and Mayanot – the title “The Tragedy of Tragedy” here’s a part that I think deals with how to deal with this horrific tragedy:
CAUSE OF INNOCENT DEATHS
Rav Dessler in his eulogy of the Chazon Ish expressed a thought that can be applied as an approach to this problem. When a believer in Divine Providence is witness to a tragedy in which innocent victims lose their lives, his reaction should inspire him to follow a certain train of logic:
Step 1: The people who died were deserving of life at least as much as I, if not more. I believe that God runs the world and that He is just. It follows, therefore, that if they suffered such tragic untimely deaths — and I am no better or more deserving than they — that I should also have suffered a similar fate. But I know that I have committed no crime that deserves such severe punishment. Logic therefore dictates that they did not die as a punishment for their sins. But if so where is Divine Justice?
Step 2: As the victims did not lose their lives to atone for their personal sins, and yet as God is just, they must have suffered justly, therefore, it follows that their deaths are an indication that there is something seriously wrong with my society. My society must be infected with the disease of unjustifiable cruelty toward some of its members. I know that the punishments of God are “measure for measure.” In a world run by God, a society that is functioning as it ought, would be protected from senseless evil. Senseless evil that occurs in the outside world is a certain indication that we the Jewish people are practicing senseless evil against each other.
Step 3: It follows that God allowed this tragic event to take place in order to shock us out of our complacency. We should, therefore, assemble for an introspection session and attempt to identify the areas in which we are failing in the fulfillment of our obligations to our fellow Jews and in the observance of our duty towards God.
Step 4: If we do this, than the people who died in the tragedy will not have died in vain. On the other hand, if we remain in our state of complacent slumber, it is we who are responsible for turning their deaths into pointless tragedies, and it is we who will be held responsible for the human waste.
Step 5: This means that we should not focus the brunt of our attention on the natural causes of the tragedy. Every event that occurs in our world even one that is Divinely ordained has some natural cause. We do not live in a world of miracles. When the building collapses it was obviously structurally weak. But it doesn’t follow that the structural weakness was the ultimate cause of the deaths of the victims. God has an infinite number of methods at His disposal, none of them miraculous to insure that weak buildings collapse without harming anyone. No scientific test ever devised could possibly determine that the building had to collapse precisely when it did collapse. The most brilliant engineers would not have been shocked had the floor managed to hold up under pressure through the night or only developed a large crack instead of collapsing outright.
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WHO CAUSED THE TRAGEDY?
Therefore, to focus our attention exclusively on the owners, engineers and licensing authorities as though they were entirely responsible for the tragedy is the ultimate form of cruelty. They may have caused the collapse. God brought on the tragedy. (See Maimonides, “Laws of Fasting,” Chapter 1.)
How can the rest of us go on about our business as usual, satisfied that we have discovered the culprits and solved the problem, expecting to live peacefully on as though nothing had happened?
Such expectations border on heresy. For if I am allowed to live on in peace, and I am no better than the people who perished, than their deaths were totally senseless. Thus I am really saying that God is indifferent to what happens in the world and He doesn’t give a hoot when the innocent suffer. I avoided their fate purely by chance. It was blind luck that placed the victims there at the wrong place and the wrong time. Such a thought must be rejected as anathema as soon as it enters the mind of a true believer.
How can a believer possibly entertain the notion that God allowed a senseless tragedy to afflict His children?
The thought that God works in mysterious ways and we cannot penetrate the workings of Divine Justice, while no doubt perfectly true, is not much better in this case. How can a believer possibly entertain the notion that God allowed a shocking tragedy to afflict His children, the Jewish people, without specifically intending to shock them? Was He asleep?
Therefore, my expectation of a continued peaceful life can only be termed an empty fantasy. The only reason I did not perish along with the victims is because God took mercy on me. I had better wake up and do something.
The cruelty to which Maimonides refers (in Laws of Fasting, chapter 1) is as obvious as it is enormous. If tragedies are indeed warnings, when they are ignored, it is obvious that the need for further warnings has hardly been eliminated. On the contrary, if small tragedies are insufficient to wake us up, greater tragedies are obviously called for.
The ignorance of Divine warnings causes the appearance of an even greater danger on the horizon of Providence, the reaching of the point of no hope, when God abandons His attempts to arouse us from the smugness of our slumbers as beyond His reach. If that time ever arrives, then God forbid, another policy entirely comes into effect, the policy of destruction.
God stated in the clearest terms that He isn’t interested in supporting pointless existence. It was evening it was morning the sixth day (Genesis 1:31) Rashi states regarding this passage: God stipulated, “If Israel accepts the Torah on the sixth day of Sivan, then I am willing to have a world. If not, I see no point in it.”
There is little difference between non-acceptance and non- compliance. A Jewish society that does not concern itself with the purpose of life and focuses the bulk of its energy on maximizing the quality of life in this world — while abandoning spiritual concerns by the wayside and entrusting fellow Jews to the tender mercy of uncaring governments — is a Jewish society that is going nowhere fast. Such a Jewish society is in danger of facing very great tragedies which involve mass annihilation. It is infinitely preferable to heed God’s warnings and wake up.