ABSTRACT
Against the background of the rabbinic conception of the Torah as the primordial blueprint of Creation, this chapter examines the Talmudic demand for a primacy of obedience in a Torah-governed life. The chapter shows that rabbinic cosmological awareness equated chaos and cosmos – with elemental drives to transgress and to obey – with an evil impulse and a good impulse. In such a world, a perfectly righteous life, a life without sin, would have to be a successful, happy life. Yet, in one discussion, the Talmud posits that perfect sinlessness does exist and that it may be accompanied by unjustifiable suffering. Rather than affirming a pathology of “afflictions of love,” by which such suffering can be welcomed as an expression of divine love, this remarkable text chose to set a limit for its Torah-based cosmopolis. It not only recognizes unjustifiable suffering, but locates it not in the realm of moral or interpersonal meaning, but in the realm of the tragic.
