Shabbat Gathering: Turning to faith.

Brian D. Johnson

29 May 2026 • 5 min read

Gud Shabbos Khaveyrim, as is our custom, we will gather tonight at 5.45p ct to welcome Shabbat. These are the coordinates:

Zoom
Meeting ID: 883 8469 4181
Password: 822665
Phone: +1 312 626 6799

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Here we go.

If you’ve had nothing better to do than keep track of what I write in these newsletters, you might recall I’ve been struggling with the idea of G!d letting evil loose in the world. Among other remedies, I’ve mentioned I picked up Why Bad Things Happen to Good People. I finished the book and was left unsatisfied.
To make matters worse, I’ve taken a rather deep dive into the world and thinking of the Baal Shem Tov and have been overwhelmed by the optimism and belief that we live in the best of all possible worlds. And I haven’t been able to quite square that with the wickedness I see in the world.

I have a rather haphazard education in the Great Books and my first encounter with the idea that we live in the "best of all possible worlds” was in Voltaire’s Candide. Dr. Pangloss famously says this to his protege, Candide. When I read this in high school, I didn’t suspect that Voltaire was painting Dr. Pangloss as someone whose ideas couldn’t be trusted. What I read on the surface fit into the optimistic Christian cosmology I was being raised in. And that, over the decades, that optimism faded away until it was transparent.

Lately, I’ve almost been able to reconcile the evil I see in the world with a world that Hashem created. I think I’ve discovered that I might have been looking through the wrong end of the telescope of discernment. What I’ve done most of my life is to use discernment to unwind things into smaller and smaller different bits. Instead, I need to turn discernment around, look through the other end, and see commonalities — how things actually fit together into a bigger whole — rather than focus on the differences.

But like any optic, there are limitations and this is where faith comes in. I can’t prove, even to myself, that the world is a perfect place or that all is for the best. Reason and logic simply perform no service at all. I need to use my faith — and I have faith — that my meager vision can’t see the big picture.

Definitionally, (Merriam Webster 2.b.1) faith is “a firm belief in something for which there is no proof” and that’s resonating with me. It’s actually resounding with me. If I’m seeing gaps in the world, I need to do the work to close those gaps and work on my faith, not on my reasoning skills.

Do we live in the best of all possible worlds? Well, there's a lot of work to do, but, maybe, we're inching closer. And maybe I've found my path.

And may it be for all of us a blessing.

See you tonight!
Mit vareme grusn,
(With warm regards,)

All my love,
brian.