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 1800’s: 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 27:25 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 Responses“There 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 Responses“Free 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 God’s fault, but result of man’s choice to choose evil over good

11. Varied Responses“The 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 Responses“The Mystery of God” Reform/Progressive - writer David Ariel: What Do Jews Believe? • there is simply no way that the Holocaust can be explained • God’s will is unfathomable (God’s response to Job) • we can empathize with Job’s suffering, but it is impossible to understand God’s 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 God’s chosen people • Six Day War – Israel fights to maintain independence • In response to threats to Israel, Emil Fackenheim’s 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 Fackenheim’s 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 Fackenheim’s 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 Fackenheim’s 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_author.asp?id=77 • http://www.jcpa.org/jl/vp440.htm Other: • http://www.azure.org.il/authors.php?id=211 • https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/modern_judaism/summary/v017/17.3er_schweid.html