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Three students, namely Walid, a Druze man, Fatimah, a Muslim woman and Sigal, a secular Jewish woman are eating lunch in the cafeteria at the Western Galilee Academic College.

In the course of presenting his celebrated 'vale of soul-making' theodicy, John Hick claims that in a world where all human suffering is either justly deserved divine punishment or imposed by God for the spiritual growth of the sufferer, people would lack opportunity to be involved in genuine acts of deep compassion. I argue that the relief of divinely imposed suffering can be a morally valuable and spiritually beneficial activity, and mention ideas from the Jewish tradition which suggest that it is right for people to ameliorate suffering even when that suffering constitutes a just punishment from God. In the course of presenting his celebrated 'vale of soul-making' theodicy, John Hick invites his readers to consider what consequences would have followed had God chosen to govern the world in a way which would make His justice completely intelligible to human beings. I will refer to the possible world which God governs in this way as 'Justland'. Hick's explanation of why God would not find such a world to be worthy of creation is partially based on certain assumptions about people's reactions to just, divinely imposed suffering. Careful scrutiny of these assumptions shows them to be faulty. In order to be fair to Hick, I shall begin my discussion by quoting his description of Justland at length: ... try to imagine a world which, although not entirely free from pain and suffering, nevertheless contained no unjust and undeserved or excessive and apparently dysteleological misery. Although there would be sufficient hardships and dangers and problems to give spice to life, there would be no utterly destructive and apparently vindictive evil. On the contrary, men's sufferings would always be seen either to be justly deserved punishments or else to serve a constructive purpose of moral training. In such a world human misery would not evoke deep personal sympathy or call forth organized relief and sacrificial help and service. For it is presupposed in these compassionate reactions both that the suffering is not deserved and that it is bad for the sufferer. We do not acknowledge a moral call to sacrificial measures to save a criminal from receiving his just punishment or a patient from receiving the painful treatment that is to cure him. But men and women often act in true compassion and massive generosity and self-giving in the face of unmerited suffering, especially when it comes in such dramatic forms as an earthquake or a

L'anthropologue Mary Douglas a fait justice de l'erreur qui consistait a dire que les societes primitives etaient universellement religieuses. L'essai de P. Winch sur les notions de magique et sur les pratiques de la population africaine des Azande est un produit de ce mythe de la piete primitive. Winch critique l'interpretation du mysticisme Zande proposee par Evans-Pritchard. Une analyse plus approfondie du travail d'Evans-Pritchard montre qu'il considere la culture des Azande comme une culture essentiellement seculaire

Berel Dov Lerner argues for inconsistency.‘Consistency is a virtue for trains: what we want from a philosopher is insights, whether he comes by them consistently or not.’Stephen Vizinczey.

Berel Dov Lerner now argues, inconsistently, for consistency.