“Will the judge of all the earth not do justice?”—Abraham, Genesis 18:25.

There are things in Torah we do not understand, and Torah provides no explanation.

G‑d made a covenant with Abraham that his children would inherit the Land of Israel. But first, he was told, his children would have to suffer oppression in a foreign land.

Why? We do not know.

All we know is that it is impossible that this was a punishment. It is also impossible that it served no purpose, that it was not necessary. G‑d is just. That is all we know.

So too, it is impossible that the Holocaust was a punishment for sins.

Even the Accusing Angel himself could never have found sufficient sins in that generation to justify the extermination of six million holy martyrs with such unspeakable cruelty.

The wisdom of Torah provides us no explanation at all . All we know is that this was His decree, although certainly not something He desired. And that it is somehow necessary and justified, as we will one day understand.

For a moment, painfully for Him and for us, He abandoned us. But certainly, it was not a punishment for sins.

10th of Tevet, 5751 (Sefer Hasichot 5751, vol. 1, pg. 233.)