Rabbi Levi Yitzchak was an eighteenth-century Hasidic master who was famous for accusing God for injustice because of the suffering of the Jewish people. On one Yom Kippur, a simple tailor sought forgiveness from the great rabbi for having talked disrespectfully to God. The rabbi asked him what he had said, and the tailor told him:
I declared to God: You wish me to repent of my sins, but
I have committed only minor offenses. I may have kept
leftover cloth, or I may have eaten in a non-Jewish
home, where I worked, without washing my hands.
But you, O Lord, have committed grievous sins: You have
taken away babies from their mothers, and mothers from
their babies. Let us [call it] quits: May You forgive
me, and I will forgive You.
The great rabbi looked at the tailor and replied, “Why did you let God off so easily?” It is this argumentative tradition that Abraham initiated when he challenged God’s justice toward the Sodomites.