There is one concept in kabbalah that always have bothered me, the concept of suffering of the righteous for the purpose of "cleansing" the soul for olam habah. The question often comes up in the discussion of the holocaust and other horrible events, and the inner meaning of those.
My problem with this is that how can this "cleansing" be of any good? I mean, for example, lets say my soul deficiency is that I have a problem with keeping faithfulness to my wife... will me being subjected to something terrible really fix this? Dont i need to do the same tikkun from where my original sin was in? How can me being subjected to terrible evil be helping me of my specific need of correction and then also of any good?
