Jeremy Rosen
Reward and Punishment
Summary
Jeremy Rosen explores the concept of reward and punishment in religion and the difference between theism, deism, and the grey area that perhaps lies in between.
Jeremy Rosen
Manchester-born Jeremy Rosen was educated at Cambridge University England and Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem. He has practiced as an orthodox rabbi, as principal of Carmel College in the UK, and as professor at the Faculty for Comparative Religion in Antwerp, Belgium. He has written and lectured extensively in the UK and the US, where he now resides and was the rabbi of the Persian-Jewish community in Manhattan.
Well, yes, I think that’s precisely what that quote I gave from the Pirkei Avot, from the Mishnah. The reward for a good deed is another good deed. And the punishment for a bad deed is you do another bad deed, you go on swindling people.
Well, you are right if that’s the only reason for doing it, if you do the good deed because you hope to be rewarded. My father put it this way, don’t expect to be rewarded for a good deed. Very often, you are not, but do it because it’s the right thing to do. We’re coming back to Ben Azzai. Do it because it’s the right thing to do. One good deed follows another good deed. You’re not appreciated. Sadly, that’s life. That’s life.
Well, the truth of the matter is we can’t. We think we do because when bad things happen and happen perfectly naturally, for example, when you get older, they happen naturally, you can try to do things to stop, but in the end there’s going to come a moment when you can’t, we’re all going to die. And similarly, we don’t know where sicknesses are going to come. Sometimes sicknesses come from some genetic disorder, in which case they were built into our body when we were born. So we can’t say we’ve deserved that because it’s nothing to do with our actions.