Was the doctrine of ‘on account of our sins’ really as generally accepted and undisputed in the pre-modern period as one might infer from the conclusion of our last chapter?

Discussing the effect of the destruction of Temple and state in the year 70 CE upon the early Rabbis, Richard L. Rubenstein argues that ‘they were convinced that they and their contemporaries deserved the misfortunes which had befallen them.’ Rabbinic Judaism's all-powerful God would, of course, have been the most convenient object of blame for Jewish disaster, since He was ultimately responsible for what had happened. Nevertheless, from a psychological perspective, Rubenstein asserts that there would have been too much anxiety and tension in blaming God. Self-accusation may be bitter, but it is both safer and less anxietyproducing. The religious Jew of the Rabbinic period, then, had but two alternatives: ‘He could blame himself for his misfortunes; or he could proclaim the death of the omnipotent Lord of history, reluctantly regarding the cosmos as hopelessly absurd and ultimately gratuitous, as did Elisha ben Abuya and as do such modern existentialists as Sartre and Camus.'

Rubenstein himself, as we have already noted, opts for the second alternative, siding with Elisha ben Abuya, Sartre and Camus. But he describes Rabbinic Judaism as being totally committed to the first alternative. The people's suffering is to be understood as God's punitive retribution.

Bearing in mind the abundance of medieval penitential poems which enlarge upon the theme of ‘on account of our sins’ in response to specific instances of persecution, and remembering the rather recent origin of the outright challenges hurled against that doctrine, Rubenstein’ s view of the alternatives, and of Rabbinic Judaism's option, would seem to be conclusive.

But the matter is far more complicated than that. Not only do a number of medieval poems-some of which will be presented here-express a theology somewhat at variance with the theology expressed in the majority of the medieval penitential poems as well as with the theology imputed by Rubenstein to Rabbinic Judaism as a whole, but those exceptional poems are in many instances but poetic restatements of ideas first encountered within the Rabbinic literature itself.