As bombs fall, it’s OK to ask: Where is G-d?
On Oct 7, 2023, the Jewish state endured the greatest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Babies beheaded. Grandmothers burned alive. Young women raped next to the corpses of their murdered friends. And now, just months later, thousands of Iranian missiles are blowing Jewish and Arab Israelis to smithereens.
Where is the world’s outrage?
But more hauntingly — for believers like myself — where is G-d?
It’s a question many religious leaders are too afraid to ask. But Judaism is not a religion of silence. Ours is not a faith of resignation. We do not submit to suffering — we challenge it. In the Jewish tradition, it is not only permitted to question G-d in times of moral catastrophe — it is a mitzvah.
Because the opposite of faith is not doubt — it is indifference. And the Jewish people, even in our darkest moments, have never been indifferent to G-d’s silence.
We have challenged it.
Our very name — Yisrael (Israel) — means one who wrestles with G-d. Not worships blindly. Not accepts passively. But wrestles.
When Abraham stood before G-d and heard that Sodom would be destroyed, he did not fall to his knees in obedience. He stood tall and asked: “Shall the Judge of all the earth not do justice?” When Moses descended Mount Sinai and saw the Golden Calf, he did not excuse G-d’s wrath — he smashed the Tablets, demanded mercy, and told G-d He would need to forgive the people or blot him out from the Book of Life.
This is our spiritual inheritance: not piety in the face of evil, but protest.
And today, in the wake of Oct. 7 and in the shadow of Iranian rockets, we must summon that protest once more.
• • •
We must ask the Almighty: How can You allow such horrors to befall Your people? We rebuilt the land You gave us, we revived Your Torah, we made the deserts bloom, we returned to Zion not with swords but with song — and we were answered with slaughter.
How long must the Jewish people pay the price of divine silence?
Iran funds global terror. Hamas carries it out. The international community nods in performative disapproval but does little. And then there is the silence of Heaven.
I do not question G-d’s existence. I question His manifest presence. I do not question G-d’s omnipotence. I question his plan. What good can there possibly be in Iran raining fire and brimstone missiles and incinerating families?
On Oct. 7, where was the G-d who promised Abraham, “I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you”? Where was the G-d who split the sea, felled Pharaoh, and guided us through the wilderness?
That G-d seemed absent from Be’eri. Absent from Kfar Aza. Absent from the Nova Music Festival. Absent as women were violated and children executed.
This is not blasphemy. It is theology in its rawest form. It is the Judaism of Job, who screamed from his ash heap. It is the Judaism of King David, who asked, “Why, O Lord, do You stand far off? Why do You hide Yourself in times of trouble?”
It is the Judaism not just of kings but of prophets, as when Moses said, “Why Lord have you behaved wickedly with your people?”
If our religion cannot accommodate anguish, then it is not the faith of Israel.
But it can. And it must.
In the wake of tragedy, many turn to theology for comfort. But too often, comfort becomes complicity. They say, “This is G-d’s will.” Or worse, “We must have sinned.”
This is moral cowardice masquerading as faith.
Do not tell the mother who lost her son at the hands of Hamas that there is a reason. Do not speak of divine plans to the father whose daughter was raped and executed. G-d does not need defenders. He needs challengers.
• • •
Let me say it plainly: When G-d is silent, we must speak. When He hides, we must seek. When He delays justice, we must demand its immediate deliverance.
Because if we believe that G-d is good, then we must hold Him to that goodness. If we believe He is just, then we must hold Him to that justice.
Anything less is theological treason.
I have long argued that what we need today is a theology of confrontation — a Jewish theology that restores the right, the obligation, to protest seeming divine inaction.
This is not a rejection of G-d. It is a refusal to reduce Him to a passive deity whose ways are forever beyond us. If G-d is our Father, as we say every day in the Amidah, then we must ask: What father would watch his children being butchered and remain silent?
And if we say that G-d has reasons we cannot understand, then what are we saying about the murdered children of Oct. 7? That their deaths were meaningful? That they were necessary?
No. A thousand times no.
We must scream: “Ad matai, Hashem?” — How long, O Lord? How long will You stand by while Your people bleed?
This is not heresy. This is the Judaism of the Prophets, who thundered not only against kings but against Heaven itself.
I do not question G-d because I have lost faith. I question G-d because I am certain beyond the shadow of even a molecule of doubt of His existence, omniscience, and omnipotence.
Because I believe G-d is not indifferent. Because I believe G-d is moral. Because I believe G-d loves the Jewish people. Before I believe that G-d protect the innocent and safeguards the righteous.
And love, real love, demands accountability.
• • •
If you saw a loved one doing something destructive, would you remain silent? No. You would speak out — precisely because you love them.
So too is my most deep-seated love of G-d, my Creator, protector, and Guardian of Israel.
The Book of Isaiah opens with G-d crying out, “Come, let us reason together.” The Hebrew word used — niva’necha — can also mean, “Let us argue.” This is the G-d of Israel — not a dictator to be feared, but a most senior partner to be engaged.
And partners, even divine ones, must answer for their seeming inaction.
After the destruction of the First Temple, Jeremiah wrote Eicha — Lamentations. Today, after the desecration of October 7th and the existential threat of Iranian missiles, we must write our own lament.
But not just of mourning.
Of protest.
Of anguish transformed into activism.
Of heartbreak turned into holy confrontation.
Let us write a new megillah not in ink, but in tears — tears that demand a response from Heaven.
Let our psalms be less praise and more plea. Less “Hallelujah” and more “Where are You, G-d?”
And let us never confuse submission with spirituality. Real faith does not make peace with evil. It demands its defeat.
We Jews are not G-d’s cheerleaders. We are His conscience.
We exist, as Isaiah said, to be a “light unto the nations.” But sometimes, that light must shine inward — toward the Divine throne itself.
Not to reject G-d, but to remind Him.
Remind Him of the covenant.
Remind Him of His promises.
Remind Him that the blood of children cries out from the earth.
After Auschwitz, many asked: Where was G-d?
Today, we must ask again.
And we must not whisper it. We must scream it, from pulpits, from platforms, from synagogues and from the Knesset.
Because this is what it means to be a Jew: not to accept injustice, even seemingly from G-d.
Indeed, especially from G-d.
We will never abandon G-d. But we will never absolve Him either.
O
ur relationship with the Divine is not one of obedience but of partnership. And just as G-d commands us to pursue justice, so too we must remind Him of His commandments.
When He delays, we must press Him.
When He is silent, we must provoke Him.
When He turns away, we must turn toward Him — not with reverence alone, but with righteous anger and holy indignation.
This, too, is holiness.
So to those who ask where G-d was on October 7th — I ask something more urgent:
•Where are we?
•Will we speak for the murdered? Will we rage for the raped?
•Will we cry out for the orphaned?
•And will we cry to G-d, not as beggars, but as covenantal partners?
Because if there is one thing more tragic than G-d’s silence, it is our own.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is the founder of the World Values Network.
Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
