COMMENTARY: God’s unfathomable ways prompt a cosmic `why?’

c. 1996 Religion News Service (Rabbi Rudin is the National Interreligious Affairs Director of the American Jewish Committee.) (UNDATED) Recent news reports of the bizarre and untimely deaths of Nobel Prize-winning economist William Vickrey and wildlife photographer Michio Hoshino make me wonder whether God takes perverse pleasure in reminding us just how frail and ambiguous […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Rudin is the National Interreligious Affairs Director of the American Jewish Committee.)

(UNDATED) Recent news reports of the bizarre and untimely deaths of Nobel Prize-winning economist William Vickrey and wildlife photographer Michio Hoshino make me wonder whether God takes perverse pleasure in reminding us just how frail and ambiguous is human existence.


While it is unlikely that either a divine or a human response will fully satisfy my bewilderment, I must still raise the question why Vickrey and Hoshino died the way they did.

Only 72 hours after winning the Nobel Prize for economics, Vickrey, the 82-year-old Columbia University professor, suffered a fatal heart attack on a New York State highway while driving to a scholarly meeting where he would have received the accolades of his peers.

For decades Vickrey labored and taught far from the spotlight of celebrity. He described his tiny office as”the world’s biggest mess.”Visitors reported he had only six inches of workspace on his desk because the rest of the room was crammed with books, papers, broken eyeglasses, and long-abandoned coffee cups. Labeled”eccentric”by both colleagues and students, Vickrey was the perfect example of a rumpled, absent-minded professor.

But at last, in the fullness of years, Vickrey was awarded the Nobel Prize for his ability to find mathematical solutions to everyday problems. He was particularly praised, for example, for common-sense, mathematical solutions to traffic congestion: staggering the times at which commuters travel and varying road and bridge tolls.

Sadly, Vickrey had little time to savor his fame. And the fact that he died behind the wheel of his car on a heavily traveled highway force me to ponder the apparent whims of God.

Does God, the Ultimate Playwright, possess an exquisite sense of irony regarding the human drama? Why did God keep Vickrey backstage for so many years and then permit him only three days in a starring role before closing the curtain on his life? We well know that fame is fleeting. But, really _ only 72 hours of acclaim after decades of waiting?

Vickrey’s wife was understandably devastated by her husband’s passage. But one of Vickrey’s Columbia University colleagues, Dean Jonathan R. Cole, clearly sensed the absurdity lurking in his friend’s death. Cole believed the Nobel Prize would have given Vickrey”a new life … a new drama. The denouement came too soon,”Cole told a reporter.

But why?

Hoshino, a photographer well-known for his superb pictures and books about wild animals, was recently mauled to death by a bear on the Kamchatka peninsula in eastern Russia where he was making a television documentary about bears.


At about 4 a.m., according to news reports, a brown bear entered the photographer’s tent and began to pummel him. In the gruesome encounter between a large vicious animal and a sleeping human being, the grim result was inevitable.

The other team members heard Hoshino’s screams and came running, but the bear dashed into the nearby woods dragging Hoshino to his death. Hoshino, who lived in Fairbanks, Alaska, died young. He was in his mid-40s and left behind a wife and son.

Ever since I read about Hoshino’s death, the grisly image of being attacked by a bear has distressed me deeply.

Why was such a man, who through his photos and books expressed love for bears, so violently killed by one of his own subjects? Did God, the Creator of all life, use Hoshino’s grotesque death to remind us that animals are not always docile creatures and not always noble in their behavior?

Was Hoshino’s death a reminder that God’s delicate balance of nature is drastically upset when we invade the natural habitats of animals like brown bears? While a TV camera is more friendly than a rifle, both represent an unwanted incursion into an animal’s living space. The Bible specifically commands us to”have dominion”over animal life, but it does not give us permission to intrude upon them or to treat them as mere esthetic objects.

Hoshino’s death is also a ghastly reminder that we must not attempt to give human attributes to creatures of the Earth. Despite the romantic notions of nature-lovers, animals are not always our worthy companions. They remain a savage and destructive element, and even a true animal lover like Hoshino can become a victim.


So there you have it. William Vickrey, who used the logic of math to calm the chaos of commuting, died on a traffic-filled highway. And Michio Hoshino, nature lover, was killed by a bear, a dominant subject of his artistic life work.

I am left feeling bewildered, uttering the most profound question in any language: Why?

MJP END RUDIN

Donate to Support Independent Journalism!

Donate Now!