Is There a "Halakhic" Response to the Problem of Evil?* Moshe Sokol Touro College • Introduction On the face of it, the very title of this paper may appear puzzling. Responses to the problem of evil are by their nature theological or philosophical, whereas halakha, or Jewish law, is about behavior. In what sense, then, can there be a halakhic response to the problem of evil? I propose to inquire into whether or not a theological construction of Judaism according to which halakha stands at its core might provide a conceptual matrix out of which to respond to the problem of evil. There is something prima facie attractive about such an enterprise. The problem of evil is one of the oldest in the history of theological and philosophical inquiry, one that has engaged countless thinkers, religious and nonreligious, over many centuries. But what do Jewish think- ers, qua Jews, have to contribute to the discussion? Does the Jewish tradition have insights particular to its own picture of God, humankind, and the world, that are distinctive in important ways from the insights of other religious traditions, or from the insights of philosophical inquiry generally? 1 Do those insights avoid what many believe to be an unfortunate property of much of the classical literature on *I would like to thank Professors Jon Levenson and David Shatz for helpful comments on an earlier version of this essay, as well as participants in the Academy for Jewish Philosophy session at the Association for Jewish Studies conference in Boston, December 1997, where a portion of the essay was read and discussed. 'For a recent study, see Oliver Leaman, Evil and Suffering in Jewish Philosophy (Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). HTR 92:3 (1999) 311-23