Impact of Holocaust Theology

1
Impact of Holocaust Theology

• Explain the contribution to the development and
  expression of Judaism of ONE significant person
  OR school of thought
• Analyse the impact of this person OR school of
  thought on Judaism

2
Historical Context Patriarchs

• Abraham/Moses
• The chosen people
• The kingdom
• The promised land
• The covenant
• Word of God as given to Moses
• Beliefs
• One God
• Omniscient/Omnipotent/Omnibenevolent

3
Historical Context Scripture/texts

• Sacred Scriptures/texts
• Torah
• Oral Torah (Talmud)
• Tenak - Hebrew Scriptures containing 613 laws
• Halakah complete Jewish law
• Midrash stories about the stories
• Prophetic vision Tikkun Olam heal the world

4
Mid 1800s Enlightenment leads to variants

• Orthodox
• remain faithful in all ways to the halakah
• Progressive/Reform Jews
• the most liberal Jews Jews who do not follow the
  Talmud strictly but try to adapt historical forms
  to modern world 
• Conservative reaction to Progressive/Reform
• Jews who keep some of the requirements of the
  Mosaic law but allow for adaptation of other
  requirements
• Zionism
• belief/philosophy that Jews need to create
  messiah/promised land not wait

5
History as a Persecuted People

• Jews marginalised
• Slavery/Exodus
• Destruction of 1st and 2nd temples
• Massacres/expulsion from Spain
• Attacks by Catholic Church
• Diaspora (The Diaspora the collective group of
  Jews diaspora condition of living outside of
  promised land, spread out)

6
Anti-semitism

• New testament
• Matthew 2725 which spoke of some Jewish leaders
  was used instead to apply to all Jews "His blood
  be on us and on our children...Ye are of your
  father the devil."
• Protocols of the Elders of Zion
• grew from rumours of Jewish conspiracy/poisonings,
  spread of plague

7
Hitler

• Nuremburg laws
• Final Solution
• Concentration camps
• Ghettos
• Work Camps
• Pogroms
• Shoah/Holocaust 6,000,000 Jews murdered

8
Immediately Post-Holocaust

• Muselmänner - (Primo Levi) the living dead
• UN decree
• Jewish state, Holy land
• Jews given land, fight to establish statehood
• 1948 state of Israel declared
• Emotions too raw to have any no
  thought/reflection
• Many Jews disillusioned with faith

9
Varied ResponsesThere is no God

• Reform - Richard Rubinstein After Auschwitz
• Only honest response to the Holocaust is the
  rejection of God, and the recognition that all
  existence is ultimately meaninglessness.
• No divine plan or purpose, no God that reveals
  His will to mankind, and God does not care about
  the world.
• Man must assert and create his own value in life.
  
• His views were rejected by Jews of all religious
  denominations, but his works were widely read in
  the Jewish community in the 1970s.
• Later views one may believe that God may exist
  as the basis for reality.

10
Varied ResponsesFree will

• Modern Orthodox Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits
• Faith after the Holocaust
• man's free will depends on God's decision to
  remain hidden.
• if God were to reveal himself in history and hold
  back the hand of evil tyrants, man's free will
  would be rendered non-existent.
• Holocaust (Shoah) is not Gods fault, but result
  of mans choice to choose evil over good

11
Varied ResponsesThe Mystery of God

• Conservative Theologian Neil Gillman
• all arguments proposed by Jewish scholars fail to
  answer the problem posed by the events of the
  Nazi regime
• there can be no resolution of the religious
  questions posed by the Shoah
• we should stop trying to explain what is beyond
  comprehension

12
Varied ResponsesThe Mystery of God

• Reform/Progressive - writer David Ariel What Do
  Jews Believe?
• there is simply no way that the Holocaust can be
  explained
• Gods will is unfathomable (Gods response to
  Job)
• we can empathize with Jobs suffering, but it is
  impossible to understand Gods will
• the mystery of how God could have permitted the
  murder of millions of innocent victims remains
  inexplicable

13
Jewish State - 1967

• Kibbutz -collective community in Israel that was
  traditionally based on agriculture , socialism,
  Zionism
• Idealistic approach to Israel/ mission as Gods
  chosen people
• Six Day War Israel fights to maintain
  independence
• In response to threats to Israel, Emil
  Fackenheims 614th commandment

14
614th Commandment

• Thou shalt not grant Hitler posthumous
  victories
• Survive as Jews lest the Jewish people perish
• Remember the martyrs of the Holocaust
• Forbidden to deny or despair of God lest the
  jewish people perish
• Forbidden to despair of the world lest the Jewish
  people perish
• Focus becomes Jewish survival/protection in face
  of enemies

15
Quotes of Emil Fackenheim

• I myself for many years compared the Holocaust to
  prior tragedies in Jewish history, and avoided
  the fundamental differences, thus reaching the
  comfortable conclusion that Judaism and the
  Jewish faith are not called into question in a
  unique, unprecedented way. Yet there is a
  radical, fundamental, shattering difference.

16
Quotes of Emil Fackenheim

• Hence after Auschwitz, there is need for a new
  Jewish theology, perhaps a new philosophy,
  possibly both.
• Realist that he was, Maimonides did not consider
  the time ripe for Jewish sovereignty, Messianic
  as it would have to be, in a Jewish state.

17
Quotes of Emil Fackenheim

• (Jews who visit Jerusalem today) would see Jews
  from Western countries as well as Muslim and Arab
  countries -- Jews from as far away as India and
  China. They would be filled with a profound
  astonishment, as if to say "The city that sat
  solitary yesterday, that was ruins even if holy
  ruins -- how full of people it is now!" ... the
  deepest Jewish response to taunts about the
  destruction of Jerusalem is Jewish Jerusalem
  rebuilt. It is today the most profound expression
  of the Jewish faith that the long but not
  incurable disease of Jew-hatred will one day come
  to an end.

18
Implications of 614th

• Christian faiths - doctrines normally advocate
  conversion of nonbelievers, but many have a deep
  respect for Fackenheim's concept
• After Auschwitz the Christian churches no longer
  wish to convert the Jews. While they may not be
  sure of the theological grounds that dispense
  them from this mission, the churches have become
  aware that asking the Jews to become Christians
  is a spiritual way of blotting them out of
  existence and thus only reinforces the effects of
  the Holocaust.

19
Implications of 614th

• Holocaust remembrance
• The concept encounters broad acceptance in
  connection with Holocaust remembrance. In the
  late twentieth century, efforts to document the
  memories of remaining Holocaust survivors echoed
  the notion that preserving these facts for future
  generations was a way to keep Hitler and his
  ideas in the grave.

20
Criticisms of Fackenheims 614th

• Rabbi Toba Spitzer
• Holocaust is compared to the Exodus/Passover
• ...of a people born in slavery, freed by their
  God, and taken on a transformational journey. It
  is the story of the steps taken towards becoming
  a community bound by a holy covenant, where
  social relationships are defined by the Godly
  principles of tzedek and chesed, justice and love

21
Criticisms of Fackenheims 614th

• Rabbi Marc Gellman
• I am Jewish because my mother is Jewish, and,
  more importantly, because I believe Judaism is
  loving, just, joyous, hopeful and true. I am not
  Jewish, and I did not teach my children or my
  students to be Jewish, just to spite Hitler.

22
Criticisms of Fackenheims 614th

• Rabbi Harold M. Schulweiss
• We abuse the Holocaust when it becomes a cudgel
  against others who have their claims of
  suffering. The Shoah must not be misused in the
  contest of one-downsmanship with other victims of
  brutality....The Shoah has become our instant
  raison d'etre, the short-cut answer to the
  penetrating questions of our children 'Why
  should I not marry out of the faith? Why should I
  join a synagogue? Why should I support Israel?
  Why should I be Jewish?' We have relied on a
  singular imperative 'Thou shalt not give Hitler
  a posthumous victory.' That answer will not work.
  To live in spite, to say 'no' to Hitler is a far
  cry from living 'yes' to Judaism.

23
Criticisms of 614th

• Daniel Shoag on Zionism in The Harvard Israel
  Review
• Fackenheim fails to locate a religious or divine
  source for his moral imperative. For Fackenheim,
  self-defense, and its manifestation in Zionism,
  are not religious values but rather things that
  precede religious value or stand outside of it.
  Thus Fackenheim locates the significance of the
  Jewish State in the Holocaust rather than in
  traditional Judaism.

24
Newer generations of Jews and 614th

• few survivors of the Holocaust - many Jews feel
  their memories and opinions deserve respect
• idea that people must not further Hitler's goals
  has become a meaningful part of public discussion
  about Judaism, Zionism, and anti-Semitism
• many who discuss it sympathetically do not
  embrace it wholeheartedly
• some in the newer generations only know Holocaust
  as history - they feel the commandment to grant
  Hitler no posthumous victories denies positive
  interpretations of the subjects what the
  Holocaust means for Jews

25
Today

• Eliezer Schweid Is There A Religious Meaning To
  The Idea Of The Chosen People After The Shoah?
  (1999)
• Israel and normalisation
• focus on the individual/economic achievement does
  not allow for a sense of the universal message
  that Judaism is about.

26
Eliezer Schweid Modern Orthodox

• On the basis of their loyalty to their
  humanistic, monotheistic, and moral Jewish
  purpose, these movements must spark a renaissance
  for Jewish humanism, bringing the Jewish people
  back to the ideal of moral elevation as its
  purpose and destiny. In practical terms, this
  means reviving the norm of communality based on
  the principles of charity and justice a balance
  between rights and duties and responsibility for
  our fellows and for the collective.

27
Eliezer Schweid

• My conclusion is that unless the Jewish people
  is restored to its real self as a people engaged
  in the realization of a redeeming principle for
  itself and for humanity, it will become a
  stranger to itself, will bring itself to the
  brink of another catastrophe, as it has already
  done several times during its long history.

28
Eliezer Schweid

• but the idea of a chosen people may become
  meaningful again, and indeed redeeming, if
  interpreted in terms of the ancient prophetic
  covenant that obligated the Jewish people to the
  ethics of responsibility to build a different
  society and a different statehood based on
  freedom and justice.

29
Where to? Moral imperative for Israel

• Eliezer Schweid
• The morality of the covenant is the only way to
  reunite the Jewish people, to ground it in its
  sources and historical memory
• The commandment to mend the world should be
  interpreted in the terms of the covenant.
• Israel must strive to realize the eternal
  prophetic values of Judaism and redeem the Jewish
  people spiritually as well as materially, and
  contribute to the redemption of humanity.
• Israel must become a society and a state that
  will become the spiritual centre for the Jewish
  people and the source of a universal message to
  humanity.

30
Resources

• Eliezer Schweid
• http//www.doingzionism.org/resources/expand_autho
  r.asp?id77
• http//www.jcpa.org/jl/vp440.htm
• Other
• http//www.azure.org.il/authors.php?id211
• https//muse.jhu.edu/journals/modern_judaism/summa
  ry/v017/17.3er_schweid.html