1 The word of the Lord came to me: 2What do you mean by quoting this proverb upon the soil of Israel, “Parents eat sour grapes and their children’s teeth are blunted”? 3As I live—declares the Lord God—this proverb shall no longer be current among you in Israel. 4Consider, all lives are Mine; the life of the parent and the life of the child are both Mine. The person who sins, only he shall die. 5Thus, if a man is righteous and does what is just and right: 6If he has not eaten on the mountains or raised his eyes to the fetishes of the House of Israel; if he has not defiled another man’s wife or approached a menstruous woman; 7if he has not wronged anyone; if he has returned the debtor’s pledge to him and has taken nothing by robbery; if he has given bread to the hungry and clothed the naked; 8if he has not lent at advance interest or exacted accrued interest; if he has abstained from wrongdoing and executed true justice between man and man; 9if he has followed My laws and kept My rules and acted honestly—he is righteous. Such a man shall live—declares the Lord God. 10Suppose, now, that he has begotten a son who is a ruffian, a shedder of blood, who does any of these things, 11whereas he himself did none of these things. That is, [the son] has eaten on the mountains, has defiled another man’s wife, 12has wronged the poor and the needy, has taken by robbery, has not returned a pledge, has raised his eyes to the fetishes, has committed abomination, 13has lent at advance interest, or exacted accrued interest—shall he live? He shall not live! If he has committed any of these abominations, he shall die; he has forfeited his life. 14Now suppose that he, in turn, has begotten a son who has seen all the sins that his father committed, but has taken heed and has not imitated them: 15He has not eaten on the mountains or raised his eyes to the fetishes of the House of Israel; he has not defiled another man’s wife; 16he has not wronged anyone; he has not seized a pledge or taken anything by robbery; he has given his bread to the hungry and clothed the naked; 17he has refrained from oppressing the poor; he has not exacted advance or accrued interest; he has obeyed My rules and followed My laws—he shall not die for the iniquity of his father, but shall live. 18To be sure, his father, because he practiced fraud, robbed his brother, and acted wickedly among his kin, did die for his iniquity; 19and now you ask, “Why has not the son shared the burden of his father’s guilt?” But the son has done what is right and just, and has carefully kept all My laws: he shall live! 20The person who sins, he alone shall die. A child shall not share the burden of a parent’s guilt, nor shall a parent share the burden of a child’s guilt; the righteousness of the righteous shall be accounted to him alone, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be accounted to him alone. 21Moreover, if the wicked one repents of all the sins that he committed and keeps all My laws and does what is just and right, he shall live; he shall not die. 22None of the transgressions he committed shall be remembered against him; because of the righteousness he has practiced, he shall live. 23Is it my desire that a wicked person shall die?—says the Lord God. It is rather that he shall turn back from his ways and live. 24So, too, if a righteous person turns away from his righteousness and does wrong, practicing the very abominations that the wicked person practiced, shall he live? None of the righteous deeds that he did shall be remembered; because of the treachery he has practiced and the sins he has committed—because of these, he shall die. 25Yet you say, “The way of the Lord is unfair.” Listen, O House of Israel: Is My way unfair? It is your ways that are unfair! 26When a righteous person turns away from his righteousness and does wrong, he shall die for it; he shall die for the wrong he has done. 27And if a wicked person turns back from the wickedness that he practiced and does what is just and right, such a person shall save his life. 28Because he took heed and turned back from all the transgressions that he committed, he shall live; he shall not die. 29Yet the House of Israel say, “The way of the Lord is unfair.” Are My ways unfair, O House of Israel? It is your ways that are unfair! 30Be assured, O House of Israel, I will judge each one of you according to his ways—declares the Lord God. Repent and turn back from your transgressions; let them not be a stumbling block of guilt for you. 31Cast away all the transgressions by which you have offended, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit, that you may not die, O House of Israel. 32For it is not My desire that anyone shall die—declares the Lord God. Repent, therefore, and live! (Ezekiel 18:1-32)

7And Nathan said to David, “That man is you! Thus said the Lord, the God of Israel: ‘It was I who anointed you king over Israel and it was I who rescued you from the hand of Saul. 8I gave you your master’s house and possession of your master’s wives; and I gave you the House of Israel and Judah; and if that were not enough, I would give you twice as much more. 9Why then have you flouted the command of the Lord and done what displeases Him? You have put Uriah the Hittite to the sword; you took his wife and made her your wife and had him killed by the sword of the Ammonites. 10Therefore the sword shall never depart from your House—because you spurned Me by taking the wife of Uriah the Hittite and making her your wife.’ 11Thus said the Lord: ‘I will make a calamity rise against you from within your own house; I will take your wives and give them to another man before your very eyes and he shall sleep with your wives under this very sun. 12You acted in secret, but I will make this happen in the sight of all Israel and in broad daylight.’” 13David said to Nathan, “I stand guilty before the Lord!” And Nathan replied to David, “The Lord has remitted your sin; you shall not die. 14However, since you have spurned the enemies of the Lord by this deed, even the child about to be born to you shall die.” (II Samuel 12:7-14)

Positive and Negative (Good and Evil) are relative

A positive test for pneumonia is negative to you.  When the disease is succeeding, you are succumbing.  Every void that opens is filled.  In the words of Maimonidies, evil is what obstructs you from achieving your goals.

Re: Stewart Weiss "The God Factor" 3/4/01 Jerusalem Post

With due respect to Mr. Weiss, he seems to misunderstand the nature of God. God works in mysterious ways. The rabbis label this as "hester panim"(BT Haggigah 5a), the hidden face, as hinted at in the Persian name of Esther. We see God's actions through history and with hindsight, "Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the shore of the sea. And when Israel saw the wondrous power which the Lord had wielded against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord; they had faith in the Lord and His servant Moshe" (Ex 14:30-31). We see from here that _God is a perspective_. The Israelites saw the dead Egyptians and concluded that there is a God that saved them. The Egyptians on the other hand, were not prepared to concur. Thus, throughout Jewish history we have seen God's hand in his salvations and necessarily in our decimations as per the divine epithet of Isaiah 45:7 "maker of peace and creator of evil" which even the rabbis (BT Berakhot 11b) emended to "maker of peace and creator of everything". We don't like to see God as the source of evil, but He is. Maimonidies takes to task this idea of God in his Guide (3:11-12) and explained evil as being not from God, but our perception of natural events that obstruct our goals. According to the prophets, God planned history to be the way it is (Isaiah 37:26 Jeremiah 10:23). How can you praise both the deity who wrought the Jewish victory in 1948 and the one who wrought the atrocity of 1939-1945? We must follow Maimonidies' approach. We must realize that God is the source of everything yet not directly responsible for it. The destruction of the Temple (70 CE) was wrought by human hands as much as the establishment of the State (1948 CE). That is, "All is in the hands of heaven but the fear of heaven." (BT Megillah 25a). God perhaps can tip the scales, but is nevertheless a perspective in history. The Greeks saw their gods in history. So too, we see our God in history. That is our task as Jews (Isaiah 43:9-13). But we must admit that it is our perspective, our myth, and not the requirement of all others. Just as Maimonidies claims God created a world that does not always meet our desires, one may simply say the world does not always meet our desires. It is the nature of the Bible to read God into history. We must recognize that that is not a necessary way of seeing the world. God is a perspective. I ask your tolerance of those who disagree. 

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