"It is in the course of discussing this rule
that the Gemara veers into the most fascinating part of this week’s
reading—a long stretch of aggadah that begins on Pesachim 87a
and addresses the most fundamental question of Talmudic Judaism, the
Exile. After quoting a passage from the book of Hosea, the rabbis go on
to expound that prophet at length, retelling the story of how Hosea,
infuriated at Jewish sin, begged God to divorce the Jews and “exchange
them for another nation.” In response, God told Hosea to marry a
prostitute, which he did, going on to have three children with her.
Then, when God instructed Hosea to divorce his wife, he refused, saying,
“Master of the Universe, I have sons from her and I am unable to
dismiss her or to divorce her.” God replied that he felt just the same
way about the Jewish people: Just as Hosea could not “dismiss” his wife,
God could not dismiss the Jews, even though they were steeped in sin.
Yet the rabbis were living at a time when God evidently had divorced
the Jews. The Amoraim were in exile in Babylonia, meticulously
interpreting the laws of a Temple that had been burned down centuries
earlier. How could this evidence of divine wrath be reconciled with
God’s promise to remain faithful to his people? For Rabbi Elazar insists
that “even at the time of the anger of the Holy One, Blessed be he, he
remembers the attribute of compassion.”
Then the Amoraim perform a remarkable and moving feat of
interpretation. If God loves Israel, they reason, then even when he
punishes Israel he must manifest that love. The Exile cannot be all bad;
it must have redeeming features, which prove that God had the welfare
of his people in mind, even as he condemned them to dispersion. Indeed,
Rabbi Oshaya says, the dispersion itself is a blessing in disguise. By
scattering the Jews around the world, God made sure that their enemies
could not exterminate them at one blow. Oshaya once argued this very
point with a Roman: If the Romans had not managed to annihilate the Jews
after so many years, it was not because they were well-disposed to the
Jews, but “because you do not know how to do it.”
To which the Roman responded: “I swear by Gappa, god of the Romans,
with this we lie down and with this we rise up.” That is, the Roman
admitted that his people think of nothing else, morning and night, than
how to exterminate the Jews. This, the Talmud takes for granted, is the
condition of the Jewish people in exile: defenseless before hate-filled
enemies, constantly vulnerable to persecution and violence. The one
protection God granted them was to scatter them around the known world,
in Rome and Babylonia and elsewhere, so that no single enemy could
destroy them all at once. And for this, Oshaya implies, we must be
genuinely grateful to God. Oshaya’s speech is one of the most
astonishing things I’ve read in the Talmud so far: Nothing could be more
eloquent of the despair the rabbis felt in Exile, or of their deep need
to find a reason, however slight, to keep praising God".
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/146602/daf-yomi-51
