10th Tevet

1
CALEV BEN DOR
10th Tevet The Theological Significance of the
Shoah
Nor do we for a single moment entertain the
thought that what happened to European Jewry in
our generation was divine punishment for sins
committed by them. It was injustice absolute
injustice countenanced by God....however the
experience of Gods 'absence' is not new each
generation had its Auschwitz problemThe shock of
those who perished or lived through the
destruction of the Jewish commonwealth of
antiquity, or the Crusades or the Chmelnikci
period was not much different from the experience
of our generation (Eliezer Berkovits, Faith
after the Holocaust)
Theologically, religiously, it seems to be absurd
to hold that the extirpation of Judea, Rhineland,
or Southeastern European Jewry was a more
acceptable experience than what transpired
between 1939-45. Is the vision of an infinite God
who is Guardian of Israel less shaken by the
annihilation of only a million Jews at the hands
of the Romans, or only several hundred thousand
each by crusaders, Cossacks, haidamuks, than by
the 6 million dead in German Europe? And Judaism
has survived until 1939, as it shall now, without
denying its God and the covenant with Him. The
question to God Why? is the same for the
first child struck down in human history and for
the last to perish in Auschwitz. That is the
eternal confrontation of all men with God (David
Weiss Halvini After the Holocaust, Another
Covenant?)
It is surely correct that the Holocaust be
understood as a seismic event in Jewish history,
structurally unique, a meta-historical absurdum
in the midst of a Jewish experience that had been
willing, generously, to over credit the
enlightenment and reasonableness of the
emancipated nations among whom Jews had lived.
This cannot be stressed enoughThe Holocaust
should become for all of us the critical event of
modern Jewish history a caesura, a Red Sea of
evil which parted time and space, separating the
past of the Jewish people from its future. But,
unlike the Red Sea of Exodus, it was not the
enemies of Israel, but the Jews themselves, who
drowned when the sea closed (Arthur Cohen,
Review Essay of Emil Fackenheim)
The Holocaust is a novum epoch making event in
human history which ruptures Christian, Jewish
and philosophical thought. (To Mend the World
Foundations of Post Holocaust Thought) Our
hermeneutic situation is radically altered by the
Holocaust. An abyss separates our here and now
from the then and there of both the Bible and
its rabbinic interpreters. (Fackenheim The
Jewish Bible after the Holocaust A Re-reading)
2
Understanding the Shoah within tradition
Free Will / Hester Panim He who demands justice
of God must give up man he who asks for God's
love and mercy beyond justice must accept
suffering....if at Auschwitz we witnessed 'The
Hiding of God's Face' in the rebirth of the State
of Israel and its success we have seen a smile on
the face of God it is enough." "Freedom and
responsibility are the very essence of man.
Without them man is not human. If there is to be
man, he must be allowed to make his choices for
freedom. If he had such freedom, he will use it.
Using it he will often use it wrongly. He will
decide for the wrong alternative. As he does so,
there will be suffering for the innocent."
(Eliezer Berkovits, Faith after the Holocaust)
Punishment for Sin because of our sinfulness we
have suffered greatly, worse than Israel has
known since it became a people. In former times,
whenever troubles befell Jacob, the matter was
pondered and the reasons sought which sin had
brought the troubles about but in our
generation one need not look far for the sin
responsible for our calamitythe heretics have
made all kinds of efforts to violate these oaths,
to go up by force and to seize sovereignty and
freedom by themselves, before the appointed
timethey have lured the majority of the Jewish
people into awful heresyand so it is no wonder
that the Lord has lashed out in anger. (Joel
Teitelbaum, from Aviezer Ravitsky, Messianism,
Zionism and Jewish religious Radicalism)
Suffering God Now the Jew tormented by his
afflictions thinks that he alone suffers, as if
all his personal afflictions and those of all
Israel do not affect above, God forbid. Scripture
states, however, in all their troubles he was
troubled (Isaiah 639) and the Talmud states
When a person suffers, what does the Shekhina
say? my head is too heavy for me, my arm is too
heavy for me. Our sacred literature tells us
that when a Jew is afflicted, God, blessed be He,
suffers as it were much more than the person
does. (Kalonymous Kalman Shapira, Rebbe of the
Warsaw Ghetto the Holy Fire)
3
CALEV BEN DOR
Is Rejecting God a Jewish Idea?
if I believed in God as the omnipotent author of
the historical drama and Israel as his chosen
people I had to accept Dean Grubers conclusion
that it was Gods will that Hitler committed six
million Jews to slaughter. I could not possibly
believe in such a God not could I believe in
Israel as the chosen people after Auschwitz The
theological account of the Shoah as retribution
(because of our sins) is blasphemous against both
man and God. If indeed such a God holds the
destiny of mankind in His power, His resort to
the death camps to bring about his ends is so
obscene that I would rather spend my life in
perpetual revolt rather than render Him even the
slightest homage.....what sin could be so great
as to justify such retribution, the only worthy
reaction is a rejection of the Jewish theological
framework... we stand in a cold, silent
unfeeling cosmos, unaided by any purposeful power
beyond our own resources. After Auschwitz what
else can a Jew say about God?" (Richard
Rubenstein, After Auschwitz)
They formed a Bet Din, and conducted the trial
completely in accordance with Halakha. They
gathered evidence against God, building a strong
case against the Holy One Blessed Be He. The
trial lasted several days, with the judges giving
all those who wished a chance to speak their
minds. Witnesses were heard, and painful personal
testimonies were given Wiesel remarked in
amazement how none of the witnesses even remotely
defended God. It was time to issue a ruling,
and the rabbinic court pronounced a unanimous
verdict The Lord God Almighty, Creator of
Heaven and Earth guilty of crimes against
creation, against humanity and against His own
Chosen People of Israel. Soon after this
painful judgment was pronounced, followed by a
reaction from the people that Wiesel describes as
an infinity of silence, the rabbi presiding
over the rabbinic court looked up to the sky, saw
that the sun had set, and that the darkness of
night was upon the world. This rabbi, who had
just indicted God and pronounced Him guilty of
crimes, looked towards the silenced crowd and
said Come, my friends, we have a minyan it is
time to pray Maariv. The other members of the
rabbinic court, together with the witnesses and
the onlookers, all gathered around the rabbi to
join in their evening prayers to God. (Elie
Wiesel, Night)
4
The Search for New Language
Primo Levi Shema You who live secure In your
warm houses Who return at evening to find Hot
food and friendly faces Consider whether this is
a man, Who labors in the mud Who knows no
peace Who fights for a crust of bread Who dies at
a yes or a no. Consider whether this is a
woman, Without hair or name With no more strength
to remember Eyes empty and womb cold As a frog in
winter. Consider that this has been I commend
these words to you. Engrave them on your
hearts When you are in your house, when you walk
on your way, When you go to bed, when you
rise. Repeat them to your children. Or may your
house crumble, Disease render you powerless, Your
offspring avert their faces from you.
Emil Fackenheim 614th Commandment Jews are
forbidden to hand Hitler posthumous victories.
Jewish existence itself is a holy act. To submit
to cynicism is to abdicate responsibility for the
world and to deliver the world into the hands of
the Luciferian forces of NazismThey are
commanded to survive as Jews, lest the Jewish
people perish. They are commanded to remember the
victims of Auschwitz lest their memory perish.
They are forbidden to despair of man and his
world, and to escape into either cynicism or
otherworldliness, lest they cooperate in
delivering the world over to the forces of
Auschwitz. Finally, they are forbidden to despair
of the God of Israel, lest Judaism perish.
Irving Greenberg Broken (but Voluntary) Covenant
No statement, theological or otherwise, should
be made that would not be credible in the
presence of burning children... The cruelty and
the killing raise the question whether even those
that believe after such an event dare talk about
a God who loves and cares without making a
mockery of those who suffered....the Holocaust
offers us only dialectical mores and
understandings...our relationship to God can't
not be affected... the Shoah marks the era where
the Siniaic covenant was shattered...Israel is
now the senior partner in the covenant (God is
the silent one)...and the covenant is now
voluntary.......If Treblinka makes human hope an
illusion, then the Western Wall asserts that
human dreams are more real than force and facts.