Holocaust theology developed in the 1960s and 1970s as a means to grapple with the meaning of the shoah. Using insights from Norman Solomon’s 1997 article in “The Way”, do you think that Wiesel’s decision to cast the events he witnessed in Auschwitz back in time almost 300 years changes the effectiveness(either better or worse) of “The Trial of God” as an exercise in Holocaust Theology
The Way, Vol. 37, No. 3, July 1997
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Theological Trends
JEWISH HOLOCAUST THEOLOGY
By NORMAN SOLOMON
‘
borrowed from
the vocabulary of sacrifice. Some prefer the biblical Hebrew term Shoah
‘destruction’ (Ps 35:8 and elsewhere), which is theologically neutral.
The Shoah was an act of mass murder, an attempted genocide. 1 The Jewish
philosopher Emil Fackenheim lists five ‘basic facts’ about it which are in their
combination unique:2
One-third of the Jewish people was murdered, endangering Jewish
survival as a whole.
The plan was to ‘exterminate’ every Jewish man, woman or child.
Jewish birth was in itself sufficient cause to merit torture and death.
The ‘Final Solution’ was an end in itself, not a pragmatic project serving
political power or economic greed.
Most of the perpetrators were not pathological sadists or perverts, just
ordinary jobholders led by ‘idealists’ whose ideals were torture and
murder.
Fackenheim agonizes later over the studied and perverse manner in which
the Nazis and those under their direction sought to humiliate, dehumanize, and
induce self-disgust in Jews even before killing them.
The Shoah was unique in another aspect. The attitudes which enabled the
Nazis to ‘demonize’ the Jews and thus carry out their programme were
already deeply embedded in the popular cultures of the nations amongst
whom they operated. For so long had Christians taught that Jews were a
despised people, the rejecters and killers of Christ, obdurate in their adherence
to a superseded faith, that European culture was saturated with this image of
the Jew. It is surely unique that for little short of two thousand years one
people has been singled out for constant and religiously sanctioned vilification
through much of the ‘civilized’ world, Muslim as well as Christian.
Jews have suffered major tragedies before – the destruction of the Temple
in 70 CE, the expulsion from Spain in 1492 – and these were accompanied by
horrendous sufferings. Fackenheim writes (p 26):
OLOCAUST’ IS A THEOLOGICALLY LOADED WORD,
H
The earlier catastrophes were great but not beyond belief and thus
lived on in the memory of the generations until the time was ripe for a
response. Our catastrophe, in contrast, is beyond belief and becomes
ever more so with the passage of time.
Well, this is not quite true. It happened, it must and can be reflected upon.
Fackenheim himself reflects upon it volubly. But the tendency to deny is
read more at www.theway.org.uk
THEOLOGICAL TRENDS
243
strong, and manifests itself not only in the fringe phenomenon of outfight
denial by ‘revisionist’ historians, 3 but in the tendency to assimilate the Shoah
to general categories of tragedy and cruelty, ‘losing’ it as ‘just an example’ of
something or other, denying its special character.
Jewish Holocaust theology: traditional responses
The Shoah confronts all human beings, of whatever faith. Alice Eckardt
writes: ‘At even deeper levels and in more radical ways the Holocaust is a
Christian problem’.
The most characteristic expression of traditional Judaism is the halakha, or
law. God, in his gracious compassion, granted us the Torah with its many
commandments (mitzvot) so that we might learn from it to live according to
his will.
The halakha of Kiddush Hashem is specially relevant to the problems faced
by victims o f the Shoah. Let us listen to the measured words in which
Maimonides (1135/8-1204) sums up the tradition:
All the House of Israel are commanded to sanctify this Great Name
(i.e. God), as it is written: ‘I shall be sanctified amongst the people of
Israel’ (Lev 22:32). Likewise, they are commanded not to profane it,
as it is written: ‘Do not profane My holy name’ (ibid). How is this
fulfilled? If an idolater arises and forces a Jew to traa]sgress any of the
commandments of Torah under pain of death, he should transgress
rather than be killed, for it is written of the commandments: ‘that a
man shall do and live by them’ (Lev 18:5) – live by them, not die by
them – if he die rather than transgress he is guilty of taking his own
life.
In what circumstances does this apply? With regard to any of the
commandments other than three, viz. idolatry, adultery/incest and the
shedding of blood. With regard to these three, should he (the Jew) be
ordered to commit them or face death he should die rather than
transgress…
If the idolaters said to a group of women ‘Hand over one of you and
we will defile her or else we will defile all of you’ they must not hand
over even one Jewish life. Similarly, if the idolaters said (to a group of
Jews) ‘hand over one of you and we will kill him, or else we will kill
all of you’, they must not hand over even one Jewish l i f e . . . 4
It would be a romantic reconstruction of Shoah history to claim that all
victims followed the ruling of Maimonides in these matters. The remarkable
thing is not that some failed, whether out of weakness or ignorance or selfinterest, but rather that so many succeeded in maintaining a high standard of
moral integrity – in ‘giving witness to God’, as the religious express it – in
these appalling circumstances.
In this sense, the halakha of kiddush Hashem was the everyday law of the
Shoah. Sadly, confessing Christians acted the part of the ‘idolaters’ of whom
that law speaks.
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THEOLOGICAL TRENDS
Rabbi Ephraim Oshry survived the Holocaust in the ghetto of Kovno,
Lithuania. There, people approached him with their questions. He committed
the questions and answers to writing on paper torn surreptitiously from
cement sacks, and hid the writing in cans which miraculously survived the
War.
The daily fife of the ghetto, the food we ate, the crowded quarters we
shared, the rags on our feet, the life in our skin, the relationships
between men and women – all this was contained within the specifics
of the questions…5
A glance at the range of subjects bears out how ordinary people in the
ghetto, with the deep strength born of faith in God, were concerned quietly to
walk in the precepts of God: ‘Jews forced to shred a Torah scroll’, ‘Sabbath
Torah reading for slave labourers’, ‘The blessing for martyrdom’, ‘Saving
oneself with a baptismal certificate’, ‘Contraceptives in the ghetto’, ‘The
repentant Kapo’ – such headings rend the heart of the reader as the answers
gave sacred meaning to the lives and deaths of the victims.
Yet of all the questions submitted by quite ‘ordinary’ people to Oshry and
thousands of other rabbis of the Shoah period none are so agonizing as those
involving harm to the life of other victims. The Nazis did their utmost to
degrade and dehumanize Jews by forcing them to destroy each other. In
substantial measure they failed. And that they failed is due in large part to the
spirit engendered by the halakha on the sanctity of life.
Traditional interpretations of suffering depend not only on a strong sense of
guilt, but also on the belief in life after death. This belief, whether expressed
as bodily resurrection, eternal life of the spirit, or some combination, remains
central in orthodox teaching.6 The Kabbala adopts in addition the concept of
the transmigration of souls. Such beliefs simplify the theology of suffering, for
they diminish the significance of the vicissitudes of ‘this world’, and they
provide an opportunity for ‘ compensation
• ‘ for the evils of this world in the
next. The transmigration of souls easily explains the suffering of innocent
children – either they are being punished now for sins committed in a previous
incarnation, or else they will get compensation for their present sufferings in a
later one.
Fundamental to the traditional Jewish understanding of suffering is the
distinction between hashgacha peratit and hashgacha kelalit – individual and
general (collective) Providence. In terms of general Providence the Shoah can
be ‘understood’, for it is not hard to rationalize the destruction of part of the
people of Israel as part of God’s redemptive process, leading ultimately to
Israel’s restoration, whether or not in terms of the Land. It is the individual
Providence which is most problematic. Since everything is subject to God’s
will, it is legitimate to ask not just why the people of Israel suffered, but why
each individual suffered. If spiritual excellence is something we can recognize
at all, it certainly characterized many of those who perished.
THEOLOGICAL TRENDS
245
Elchanan Wasserman (1875-1941) was one of the leading rabbis of the prewar generation. His writings, speeches, life and martyrdom offer a paradigm
Of the orthodox theology of suffering. Wasserman visited the United States in
1938, and was there when the news of Kristallnacht arrived. He was dismayed
by the lack of Torah learning and observance amongst the Jews he met in
America, and there he completed, in Yiddish, his booklet Iqvata-diMeshicha,
‘In the footsteps of the Messiah’,7 in which he predicts that dire destruction
will come upon the Jewish people on account of its lack of faith and its laxity
in the observance of God’s commandments. Gershon Greenberg, in a perceptive paper on Wasserman and his brother-in-law Chayyim Ozar Grodzinski of
Vilna, has summed up their views as:
. . . for Achiezer [Grodzinskl], Reform [of the authentic revealed
tradition] is responsible. It, along with the suffering it evokes, is now
pressing eastward. The response must be education to engender faith
and Torah. Wasserman blames religious and cultural assimilation;
nationalism as an act of normalization and defiance of religion and
God; and denunciation of Torah. The response called for is the same
for both leaders. For Achiezer, Torah and faith are means to endure the
suffering, to turn the catastrophe back, and to bring redemption•
Wasserman believes the catastrophe is the birth pain of the Messiah
• . . man’s role is to turn to God through Torah.
Similar views are nowadays commonplace in orthodox writing, and have
even received popular expression, as in Benjamin Maza’s With God’s fury
poured out (New York: KTAV, 1984). To understand the rabbis who spoke and
even now speak in this way it is necessary to know how deeply they felt the
gulf between the ideal demanded by Torah and the reality of modem secular
civilization.
‘It is clear beyond all doubt that the blessed Holy One is the ruler of the
universe, and we must accept the judgment with l o v e . . . ‘ These words of the
Hungarian Rabbi Shrnuel David Ungar 8 exactly express the simple faith of
those who entered the gas chambers with Ani Ma’amin (the declaration of
faith as formulated by Maimonides) or Shema Israel (Deut 6:4-9, declaring
God’s unity and the duty to love him and obey his commandments – it is read
daily at the morning and evening services and forms part of the deathbed
confession) on their lips. What was happening defied their understanding, but
their faith triumphed over evil and they were ready, in the traditional phrase,
to ‘sanctify the name of God’ – kiddush Hashem. Hence it is normal amongst
Jews to refer to those who perished under the Nazis as kedoshim, ‘holy ones,
saints’.
The concept of ‘dying for kiddush Hashem’ is analogous to that o f
martyrdom. It is applied to those killed because of their faith even where they
had no choice. Its use is extended to those killed not because of their faith but,
as in the Shoah, because of their ‘race’. We erect memorials to the ‘six million
246
THEOLOGICAL TRENDS
martyrs’; but although the emotion is understandable the theology is
precarious.
Has not God acted unjustly towards Israel? Israel has indeed sinned, but
surely others, not least Israel’s oppressors, have sinned more? The traditional
reply to this is that of Amos, that it is precisely God’s love for Israel that leads
him to chastise them more than any other nation – ‘For you alone have I cared
among all the nations of the world; therefore will I punish you for all your
iniquities’ (Amos 3:2, NEB translation).
Suffering is thus received as a token of God’s special concern for Israel.
The sense of apocalyptic, of being part of the events heralding the Messiah
and the final redemption of Israel and the world, was strong amongst the
orthodox victims of the Shoah. Precisely the same concept was being developed, before and independently of the Holocaust, by Ray Kook, the first Chief
Rabbi of Palestine in modern times, for he understood the return to Zion as
atchala di-geulta, the beginning of redemption. 9 The further step, taken by
many religious Zionists, has been to interpret both the Shoah and the strife
surrounding the emergence of the state of Israel as ‘birth pangs’ of the
Messiah.
Kiddush Hashem is a demonstration of faith which leads those who witness
or hear about it towards God. This shades into redemptive suffering and the
vicarious atonement for sin.
Here i s Oshry’s eye-witness account of Wasserman’s response as he was
seized to be taken to his death in July, 1941:
Reb Elchonon spoke in a quiet and relaxed manner as a l w a y s . . .
the same earnest expression on his f a c e . . , he addressed all Jews:
‘It seems that in Heaven we are regarded as tzadikkim, 1° for we are
being asked to atone with our own bodies for the sins of Israel. Now
we really must do teshuva (repent) in such a manner – for the time is
short and we are not far f r o m t h e ninth fort 11 we must have in mind
that we will be better sacrifices if we do teshuva, and we may (?save?)
our American brothers and sisters.
‘God forbid that anyone should allow any improper thought to enter
his head, for the korban (sacrifice) is invalidated by improper thought.
We are about to fulfil the greatest mitzva of all – “with fire You
destroyed it, with fire You will rebuild it ”12 – the fire which destroys
our bodies is the selfsame fire which will restore the Jewish people.’
–
–
Implicit in Oshry’s account is the notion of vicarious atonement. Although
Jewish apologetics has tended to minimize the role of vicarious atonement in
Jewish theology, Wasserman was perfectly in accord with a continuous
tradition running from the biblical understanding of animal sacrifice through
such rabbinic concepts as the death of the righteous atoning for the ‘sin of the
generation’ to the hyperbole attributed to the second-century Simon bar Yohai
that ‘I could exempt the whole world from judgment since the time I was bom,
THEOLOGICAL TRENDS
247
and were my son Eleazar to join with me, from the day the world was created
until now’. 13 The theme is widely echoed in medieval Hebrew liturgical
poetry. TM
The idea of God being ‘hidden’ – deus absconditus – features strongly,
perhaps because of its full development by the mystics (kabbalists). It seems
contrary to the common midrashic idea of God, or the Shekhina (divine
presence), being ‘in exile’ with Israel, for ‘I am with him in his distress’
(Ps 91:15). Psalm 44 is more explicit, agonized, on the subject of hiddenness.
Martin Buber asks: ‘How is a life with God still possible in a time in which
there is an Auschwitz? The estrangement has become too cruel, the hiddenness too deep.’ 15 Eliezer Berkovitz, espousing the notion of the ‘hidden face
of God’, 16 is in accord with tradition when he not merely finds the hiddenness
of God compatible with God’s existence, but discovers actual presence within
his silence.
On the other hand, there seems little echo of the idea espoused by
Maimonides 17 that evil is merely the absence of good. This may be because
the Holocaust gives such a strong sense of the reality of evil that any doctrine
assertingits non-reality is self-evidently false.
Hannah Arendt, a secular Jewess, came close to the docaine of privatio
boni when she argued that only the good has depth, whereas even the most
extreme evil is superficial and banal. TM Barry Clarke rightly rejected Arendt’s
characterization of Eichmann’s activities in organizing transport to the gas
chambers as ‘banal’. Organizing transportation may indeed be ‘banal’, in
contrast with’radical evil’ as understood by Kant. However, the concept of
freedom of the will means that ‘Eichmann surrendered only his autonomy and
not his spontaneity and at each moment of time he could presumably have
resumed exercising his judgment and reason and used his freedom of will to
recommence choosing for himself’. 19
The critique of traditional responses
Judaism teaches that God shapes history, on occasion actually intervening
even for the sake of individuals. But, as Irving Greenberg has put it:
The Holocaust poses the most radical counter-testimony to both
Judaism and Christianity . . . The cruelty and the killing raise the
question whether even those who believe after such an event dare to
talk about God who loves and cares without making a mockery of
those who suffered. 2°
Richard Rubenstein 21 is driven by reflection on the Shoah to reject the
traditional idea of God as the ‘Lord of history’. God simply failed to intervene
to save his faithful. Though denying atheism, he urges both Christians and
Jews to adopt non-theistic forms of religion, based on pagan or Asian models,
and finds deep spiritual resources within the symbolism of Temple sacrifice.
Rubenstein and others of similar outlook are determined to maintain Jewish
identity – in this case a religious identity – even if not based, as it was in the
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THEOLOGICAL TRENDS
past, on theistic faith. Other Jews would express their identity in secular terms,
including the secular forms of Zionism, or simply in social terms.
Elie Wiesel, in his heart-rending reminiscences and stories of the Shoah,
enabled people to talk about it, to enter, so to speak, into its ‘social and
cultural context’ .22 He imposes no systematic structure or interpretation on the
reality he places before us, but rather creates a new myth through which the
reader or hearer absorbs the meaning that cannot be said. His stories comprise
a ‘narrative exegesis’ of the Shoah.
Theologians will see in many of Wiesel’s stories paradigms of suffering
leading to salvation. This is a common enough Jewish concept from Exodus
onwards, but Wiesel’s closeness to Christian expressions of the theology of
suffering verges on the substitution of the six million for Christ on the cross .23
Liturgy is the religious means of conveying that for which words are
insufficient. Marcia Littel124 is amongst those responsible for the development
of Holocaust liturgies for use by Christians, Jews or both together, and these
have achieved widespread use particularly in North America. YomHashoah
(Holocaust Memorial Day), which often attracts joint Christian and Jewish
participation, is so far observed by only a minority of Jews, as some prefer to
assimilate remembrance of the Holocaust to the existing fast of 10th Tevet or
that of 9th Ab. 25
The psychiatrist Viktor Franld developed his ‘logotherapy’ as a victim in
Auschwitz and Dachau, and left a profoundly moving account of how he
discovered meaning and ‘supra-meaning’ precisely there, where the oppressor
aimed to deprive the life of the Jew of all meaning and value. Those who were
unable to achieve the ‘will to meaning’ soon perished, Frankl observed; those
who could somehow find meaning survived wherever survival was physically
possible. 26
Likewise, in religious terms, Rabbi Isaac Nissenbaum declared in the
Warsaw ghetto at the time of the uprising:
This is a time for kiddush-ha-hayyim, the sanctification of life, and
not for kiddush ha-Shem, the holiness of martyrdom. Previously the
Jew’s enemy sought his soul and the Jew sanctified his body in
martyrdom [i.e., he made a point of preserving what the enemy wished
to take from him]; now the oppressor demands the Jew’s body, and the
Jew is obliged therefore to defend it, to preserve his lifeY
There is an aesthetic version of kiddush-ha-hayyim also. Much of the visual
art produced in the appalling hell of the concentration camps has been
rescued, exhibited, published. But what of music? CouId the ‘songs of the
Lord’ be sung in that dark land (Ps 137)? Indeed yes. At Theresienstadt,
where Jews of Czechoslovakia were interned prior to being exterminated in
Auschwitz, orchestras were formed, operas staged, the composers wrote and
the singers sang. This was truly kiddush ha-hayyim, to assert the beauty (for
beauty is a category of holiness) of life in the face of so much suffering.28
THEOLOGICAL TRENDS
249
Fackenheim grounds his own Holocaust theology in the actual resistance of
Shoah victims to whom no realistic hope remained. 29 ‘A philosophical
Tikkun 3° is possible after the Holocaust because a philosophical Tikkun
already took place, however fragmentarily, during the Holocaust itself. TM
Before writing To mend the world Fackenheim had achieved note for his
statement that there should be a 614th commandment – to survive as Jews, to
remember, never to despair of God, lest we hand Hitler a posthumous
victory.32 What one discerns in his evolving position is, at least, an affirmation
of life and of God, and a challenge to Christian, Jew and all humankind to
‘ m e n d the world’. For Fackenheim, Israel (the Jewish state) is the central
affirmation of Jewish survival, central in the world process of Tikkun; hence
he has now made his home there.
Dr Gerhart Riegner, in the office of the World Jewish Congress in Geneva
in 1942, had the task of relaying to a disbelieving world the news of the ‘Final
Solution’. Since then, he has devoted his life to the furtherance of international Jewish-Christian dialogue. I once asked him how it was that his
experience in 1942 had not embittered him, had not made him turn away from
the ‘nations of the world’ who had been unwilling to help Israel in her hour of
need. His answer was illuminating. ‘It was then that I decided that my task in
life was to end the isolation of Jewish people.’ Though the response of many Berkovitz for example – has been to declare that dialogue with a Church
which failed to warn its followers away from Hitler is simply not possible,
Riegner and others have determined otherwise.
Beyond survival is the title of an important book by Dow Marmur, who
expresses the feeling not only of Reform Jews like himself but of many others
that the ‘imperative to survival,’ which is the end result of Holocaust theology
such as that of Fackenheim, is a hollow call. Survival is not an end in itself,
nor is the proving wrong of Hitler an adequate goal for life in general. One has
to ask, ‘survival for what?’
Irving Greenberg divides the history of Judaism into three eras. The first
extended from Sinai to the destruction of the Second Temple. The second, the
rabbinic period, characterized by powerlessness and by the ‘hiddermess’ of
God but at the same time by a deep faith in the covenant and redemption,
extended from 70 CE until the Shoah. The Shoah shattered the naive faith in
the covenant of redemption, inaugurating a third era the shape of which is
determined by our response to the crisis of faith. Greenberg insists that this
response must involve all Jews, not merely those who share his orthodox
commitment. Auschwitz was ‘a call to humans to stop the Holocaust, a call to
the people Israel to rise to a new, unprecedented level of covenantal responsibility . . . Even as God was in Treblinka, so God went up with Israel to
Jerusalem.’ Jews today, in Israel and elsewhere, have a special responsibility,
in fidelity to those who perished, to work for the abolition of that matrix of
values that supported genocide. 33
So, for Greenberg, post-Holocaust Jewish philosophy has to be formulated
in terms of empowerment – now that Jews have ‘taken on power and
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THEOLOGICAL TRENDS
responsibility to act’, how will they use that power? It is but a small step from
this (a step Greenberg has resisted) to espousing some form of Jewish
‘liberation theology’, and the step has been taken by Dan Cohn-Sherbok 34 and
Marc Ellis. 35
Does the Shoah require a radically new theology?
Let us concede that the Shoah is historically unique. Is it theologically
unique?
Consider Irving Greenberg’s strikirlg statement that, after the Shoah, ‘no
statement theological or otherwise should be made that could not be made in
the presence of burning children’ – or Kierkegaard’s remark that a single
event of inexplicable horror ‘has the power to make everything inexplicable,
including the most explicable events’. Then reflect sombrely that children
were burned long before the Shoah and continue to be burned, and people,
many of them undoubtedly innocent, were crucified long before Jesus and
frequently afterwards.
Both Judaism and Christianity developed at least partly in response to
horrible experiences, and in the awareness that such horrible experiences were
likely to be the lot of humankind until some transforming event (Messiah,
kingdom of God on earth) would come about. Therefore, they both have a
‘theology of suffering’, an attempt to ‘assert Eternal Providence, and justify
the ways of God to men’ 36 Deuteronomy presupposes a direct relationship
between sin and suffering, obedience and prosperity; Psalms, Job and Ecclesiastes try to come to terms with the presence of suffering and injustice in the
world.
Holocaust theologians insist that the Shoah was not only quantitatively, but
qualitatively, different from previous suffering. It introduced a novum (Fackenheim), a tremendum (Arthur A. Cohen), 37 which invalidates previous
responses to suffering. It is as if God has abandoned his covenant, even, as
David R. Blumenthal has recently dared to argue, as if our ‘Father in heaven’
has treated us like an abusing parent. 38
Certainly, it is more horrible for a million to perish than for one to perish,
and it is more horrible to be subjected to humiliation and killed than to be
killed without humiliation. Also, some of the traditional ‘answers’ are harder
to apply to large numbers than small; for instance, if a mere handful of
righteous people suffer apparent injustice we can easily convince ourselves
that despite all appearances they were not really righteous, whereas if millions
suffer it becomes much less reasonable to suggest that all of them were really
evil. But this is an effect of quantity, not of quality. If we could know that an
individual was really righteous (as, for instance, Scripture assures us in the
case of Job), then the dodge of saying ‘perhaps appearances were deceptive’
cannot be used, any more than it can where the numbers involved are so great
that it would be absurd to maintain that none of the sufferers was righteous.
So, even though the Shoah was in significant ways dissimilar from other
historical events, it does not appear to have posed radically new questions for
THEOLOGICAL TRENDS
251
theology. The questions were there all the time. The Shoah has focused our
attention on them as never before, but they are the same questions.
To a surprising degree the answers given by the Holocaust theologians are
the s a m e a n s w e r s as those to be found in earlier traditional sources. Many of
them – those we have described under the headings of narrative exegesis,
liturgy, the assertion of meaning and value, the imperative of survival, and
tikkun – are varieties of one of those answers, that of redemption through
suffering, worked out with new insights arising from modem psychological
and sociological perspectives and applied, often with great sensitivity, to the
present situation of the Jewish people.
If the Shoah does not of itself demand a new theology, and the demands for
new theologies made by post-Shoah theologians do not result in anything
really new, why have so many of them felt impelled to distance themselves
from traditional Jewish theologies of suffering? There are two reasons.
First, the traditional theologies of suffering n e v e r w e r e satisfactory. In the
words of the second-century rabbi Yannai: ‘It is not in our power to explain
either the prosperity of the wicked or the afflictions of the righteous’ (Mishna,
A v o t 4:19). Yannai’s words did not stop rabbis in his own or later generations
speculating on the problem of evil. Indeed, though none of the answers is
satisfactory they may all c o n t r i b u t e , if only a little, to the upholding of faith in
the face of evil.
Second, the traditional interpretations of suffering depend heavily for such
cogency as they may have on the belief in life after death and/or the
transmigration of souls. Equally, they depend upon a belief in the inerrancy of
Scripture and in the authenticity of its rabbinic interpretation. These beliefs
have been under attack in modem times for reasons which have n o t h i n g to d o
w i t h the Shoah. Modem biblical studies undermine the traditional type of
scriptural belief and demand a new kind of attitude to the authority of the
Bible; modem intellectual developments such as the radical questioning of
Cartesian dualism have placed new strains on the concept of life after death.
The Shoah came at a time when theology was already in a greater ferment
than ever before in its history. This is why, unlike earlier tragedies such as the
expulsion from Spain, the Shoah led many to the abandonment of traditional
modes of response to suffering.
It is dangerously misleading for Holocaust theologians to base their challenge to traditional beliefs on the fact of the Shoah. The serious intellectual
issues of faith in the modem world thereby become submerged in a deep
emotional trauma which prevents their being directly faced. The agenda for
Jewish theologians ought to comprise not only the broad social issues which
confront theologians of all faiths in contemporary society, but also the
intellectual problems which lie at the root of theistic, revelation-based faith. It
would be superficial to ignore the Shoah in these contexts, but to centralize it
distorts the very framework of the Jewish faith.
Notwithstanding a long and continuous tradition, from the Bible onwards,
of theology of suffering, and notwithstanding a history of martyrdom second
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THEOLOGICAL
TRENDS
tO n o n e , t h e f o c u s o f J e w i s h t h e o l o g y h a s c o n s i s t e n t l y b e e n n o t s u f f e r i n g , b u t
God and God’s commandments.
T h e r e is n o r e a s o n f o r t h i s to c h a n g e e v e n
after the Shoah.
NOTES
1 The word ‘genocide’ was coined only in the 1940s, with specific reference to the Holocaust. But
it is a general term, and cannot be withheld from any other event it fits.
2 Emil L. Fackenheim, To mend the world: foundations of future Jewish thought (New York:
Shocken Books, 1982), p 12. Others have produced more subtle analyses of the relationship of the
Holocaust to other persecutions and genocides. Amongst those given at the Oxford Conference
and appearing in Holocaust and genocide studies are Steven J. Katz’ ‘Quantity and interpretation
issues in the comparative historical analysis of the Holocaust’, HGC vol 4, no 2 (1989), Frank
Chalk’s ‘Revolutionary genocide’ in the same volume, and Henry Huttenbach’s ‘Locating the
Holocaust on the genocide spectrum’ in HGC vol 3, no 3 (1988). See also Steven J. Katz,
‘Defining the uniqueness of the Holocaust’ in Dan Cohn-Sherbok (ed), A traditional quest: essays
in honour of Louis Jacobs (Shefffield: JSOT Press, 1991), pp 42-57.
3 See Gill Seidel, The Holocaust denial (Leeds: Beyond the Pale Collective, 1986), for an
analysis of the phenomenon of right-wing Holocaust denial.
‘* Moses Maimonides (1135/8-1204), Mishneh Torah Hilkhot Yesodey Ha-Torah, chapter 5. From
BT Sanhedrin 74 it appears that formal codification originated at the rabbinical council in Lud
(Lydda) in the second century. BT Pesahim 53b refers to Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah in
Daniel 3 as prototypes for kiddush Hashem, and of course the examples of Eleazar and of Hannah
and her seven sons (2 Maccabees 6 and 7) were well known to the rabbis. Fourth Maccabees
develops the concept even further.
5 Ephraim Oshry, Responsafrom the Holocaust, translated into English by Y. Leiman (New York:
Judaica Press, 1983), p ix.
6 In the second century the Mishnah already regarded the rejection of belief in life after death as
heresy (Mishnah Sanhedrin 10:1). On the problem of evil in Jewish thought see Oliver Leaman,
Evil and suffering in Jewish philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
7 English versions include David Cooper’s translation, The epoch of the Messiah, published by
Hachinuch publishers in London in 1964.
s Cited on pp 98-99 of Robert Kirschner, Rabbinic responsa of the Holocaust era (New York:
Schocken, 1985).
9 See Bokser, Ben Zion, Abraham Isaac Kook (New York: Paulist Press, 1978) for an English
translation of some of Kook’s smaller works.
to ‘Righteous’. He is not boasting, but expressing mild surprise at the divine compliment of
having been selected for a sacred task.
11 The place where the Jews of Slobodka (Kovno) were murdered.
12 This phrase occurs in the liturgy for the Ninth of Ab and is reminiscent of Lamentations 4:11.
13 BT Sukkah 45b. Note the carefully chosen term attributed to Simon: liflor (exempt) not lig’ol
(redeem).
14 As the literature on this is vast let it suffice to mention Ephraim of Bonn’s poem Et avotay ani
mazkir, conveniently available with translation in the Penguin book of Hebrew verse (Harmondsworth, 1981), p 379. See also Shalom Spiegel’s The last trial (New York: Behrman House,
1979).
15 ‘The dialogue between heaven and earth’, a lecture first delivered in 1951.
~ ~ l i ~ i ~ k r ~ ‘ ~ z , Faith after the Holocaust ~q~-,~ Yt~k ~.KTNq, ~933).
17 For instance, in Guide of the perplexed, 3:10-12. The idea of evil as privatio boni is generally
traced back to pseudo-Dionysius, and is represented in Christian tradition from Augustine
onwards.
–
THEOLOGICAL TRENDS
•
253
18 Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: a report on the banality of evil (New York: The
Viking Press, 1963).
19 Barry Clarke, ‘Beyond the banality of evil’ in British Journal of Political Science vol 10,
pp 417–439.
20 Irving Greenberg, ‘Cloud of smoke, pillar of fire’ in Eva Fleischner (ed), Auschwitz: beginning
of a new era? (New York: KTAV, 1977).
21 Richard L. Rubenstein, After Auschwitz: radical theology and contemporary Judaism
(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merdll, 1966).
22 Waiter J. Hollenweger has written: ‘A narrative exegesis does not divorce the theological
dement from its cultural and social base, but has to argue its theology in its involvement, in its
function, in these other fields of conflict’, Conflict in Corinth (Mahwah NJ: Paulist Press, 1982),
p 66.
23 I have in mind the story in Wiesel’s The gates of the forest (New York: Avon, 1967), pp 9-12.
The same thought is explored in the Christian Franklin H. Litteil’s work, The crucifixion o f the
Jews (New York: Harper & Row, 1975). See also Ziva Amishai-Maisds’ paper ‘Christologicai
symbolism of the Holocaust’ in Holocaust and genocide studies vol 3, no 4 (1988), pp 457
onwards.
24 Marcia Sachs Littdl (ed), Liturgies on the Holocaust: an interfaith anthology (New York:
Edwin Mellen Press, 1986). A revised edition, edited by Littell together with Sharon Weissman
Gtltman, was published under the same title by Trinity Press lntemationai (Philadelphia, 1996).
2s Fackenheim, op. cit., pp 310f. challenges this view. But former Chief Rabbi Immanuel
Jakobovits, in his paper ‘Religious responses to the Holocaust’, published by the Chief Rabbi’s
Office, London, in 1987, argued strongly against the introduction of new fast days.
26 Viktor E. Franld, Man’s search for meaning (New York: Touchstone Books, Simon and
Schuster, 1959), and subsequent editions. First published in German under the title Ein Psycholog
erlebt das Konzentrationslager.
27 Fackenheim, op. cir., from Shaul Esh, ‘The dignity of the destroyed’ in The catastrophe of
European Jewry, eds Y. Gutman and L. Rothkirchen (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1976), p 355.
28 See Joza Karas, Music in Terezin: 1941-1945 (New York: Beaufort Books, 1985), p 197, and
Josef Bor’s novel The Terezin requiem (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1963). In the Warsaw ghetto,
an orchestra gave concerts under the baton of Szymon Pullmann (Simon Pulver).
29 Fackenheim, op. cit., especiaily IV:8-12.
30 This Hebrew word for mending or restoration is an important term for Fackenheim, and his
usage owes something to the Lurianic kabbala. I expect he wishes to avoid anything that sounds
like ‘saivation’.
31 p 266.
32 Fackenheim in Judaism 16 (Summer 1967), pp 272-273. The earliest attribution of the popular
tradition that the Torah contained 613 commandments is to the third-century rabbi Simlai, in the
Babylonian Talmud (Makkot 23b).
33 Irving Greenberg, ‘On the third era in Jewish history: power and politics’ in Perspectives (New
York, 1980). See also his 1981 article in the same jouruai.
34 Colm-Sherbok’s article, ‘Jews, Christians and liberation theology’, appeared in the Londonbased joumai Christian Jewish Relations vol 17, no 1 (March 1984). His book On earth as it is in
heaven was published by Orbis Books (Maryknoll, New York, 1987), shortly before Ellis’s work.
35 Marc H. Ellis, Toward a Jewish liberation theology (New York: Orbis Books, 1987). See his
contribution and the discussion in the dedicated issue of Christian Jewish Relations on the
Jewish–Christian diaiogue and liberation theology (London, Spring 1988).
36 John Milton, Paradise Lost I, 6-7. Leibniz’ Theodicy addresses an age-old problem.
37 Arthur A. Cohen, The tremendum: a theological interpretation of the Holocaust (New York:
Crossroad, 1981).
38 David J. Blumenthai, Facing the abusing God (Louisville KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1993).
Elie Wiesel (1928-2016)
RELS 2211
Hear, O Israel:
The LORD our God – the LORD is one.
And you shall love the LORD your God
with all your heart,
and with all your soul,
and with all your strength.
Deuteronomy 6.4-5
(trans. WLE)
Theodicy: The Problem of Pain
• There are four propositions that define the classical problem of
theodicy:
– 1.
– 2.
– 3.
– 4.
God exists
God is all-good
God is all-powerful
Evil is real
Twentieth-Century Religion
• The Twentieth-Century was rough on religion:
– Scientific discoveries
– Historical criticism
– Secularisation
• Change in values
– Emphasis on universal equality
– Emphasis on individualism
– Subjectivism
• Two further events affected Judaism in unique ways:
– The Holocaust (1933-45) “Shoah”
– Establishment of the modern state of Israel (1948)
Holocaust Theology
• Developed as a distinct genre during the 1970s
• What is the meaning of the Holocaust in light
of the Biblical and covenantal tradition of
ancient Israel?
• The classical Jewish meditations on suffering
(Job, the Psalms, etc.) do not question the existence
of suffering but rather its distribution.
• What is the meaning of the suffering as experienced in the
Holocaust?
– Experience of God / or of God’s absence?
– Did God forsake his people?
– Can God be redeemed? Can God be forgiven?
• Elie Wiesel’s work is a “narrative exegesis” of the Shoah
Elie Wiesel
• Born 30 September
1928
• Sighet, Romania
• Author of 57 books,
professor, political
activist, Nobel Prize
winner … and
Holocaust survivor
• In 1944 his village was
deported to Auschwitz
• The story is told in Night
Telling his Story: a “Narrative Exegesis”
• Night and the two other books in the trilogy, Dawn and Day are
Wiesel’s attempt to make sense of his experiences during and
after the Holocaust
The Holocaust/Shoah
(Heb. = Destruction)
• 1933 Hitler comes to power in Germany
• 1935 Nuremburg Laws
– Definition of “Jew” = one grandparent was Jewish
– Jewish authors and businesses banned
– Jews banned from public service, public life
Kristallnacht: 9-10 November 1938
Putting God on Trial
• In the Nazi concentration camps, God was put on trial – both
literally and figuratively
• God was found guilty of crimes against creation and against
humanity
• How does one have faith in the silent God?
• The paradox of the sound of God’s Word – and the
silence of God’s dead children
• In Wiesel’s The Trial of God (1979), nobody wanted to
defend God.
• What are the choices? Try God – or remain silent?
• http://www.eliewieselfoundation.org/eliewiesel.aspx
• See also http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00dc2hn
(although it doesn’t seem to want to work in Canada)