Holocaust theology: Encyclopedia II - Holocaust theology - Jewish theological responses

Holocaust theology - Jewish theological responses

Here are some of the major responses that Jews have had in response to the Holocaust:

• No new response is needed. The Holocaust is like all other horrific tragedies. This event merely prompts us again to investigate the issue of why bad things sometimes happen to good people. The Holocaust shouldn't change our theology.
• Rabbinic Judaism has a doctrine from the books of the prophets called mi-penei hataeinu, "because of our sins we were punished". During Biblical times when calamities befell the Jewish people, the Jewish prophets stressed that suffering is a natural result of not following God's law, and prosperity, peace and health are the natural results of following God's law. Therefore, some people in the Orthodox community have taught that the Jewish people in Europe were deeply sinful. In this view, the Holocaust is a just retribution from God.
• The Holocaust is an instance of the temporary "Eclipse of God". There are times when God is inexplicably absent from history.
• If there were a God, He would surely have prevented the Holocaust. Since God did not prevent it, then God never really existed in the first place.
• "God is dead". If there were a God, He would surely have prevented the Holocaust. Since God did not prevent it, then God has for some reason turned away from the world, and left us to ourselves forever more. God is therefore no longer relevant to humanity.
• Terrible events such as the Holocaust are the price we have to pay for having free will. In this view, God will not and cannot interfere with history, otherwise our free will would effectively cease to exist. The Holocaust only reflects poorly on humanity, not God.
• Perhaps the Holocaust is in some way a revelation from God: The event issues a call for Jewish affirmation for survival.
• The Holocaust is a mystery beyond our comprehension. It may have a meaning or a purpose, but if so this meaning transcends human understanding.
• The Jewish people become in fact the "suffering servant" of Isaiah. The Jewish people collectively suffer for the sins of the world. (Also mentioned by Reform Rabbi Ignaz Maybaum proposed that the Holocaust is the ultimate form of vicarious atonement.The Face of God After Auschwitz, pages 35 and 36.)
• God does exist, but God is not omnipotent. This is similar to Open Theism. All of the above arguments are based on the assumption that God is omnipotent, and could have interfered to stop the Holocaust. What if this is not so? In this view, the Holocaust thus only reflects poorly on humanity, not God. This is a view promoted by many liberal theologians, including Rabbi Harold Kushner.

Holocaust theology - Orthodox and Haredi Jewish responses

Many within Haredi Judaism blame the Holocaust on the abandonment of many European Jews of traditional Judaism, and their embrace of other ideologies such as Socialism, Zionism, or various non-Orthodox Jewish movements. Others suggest that God sent the Nazis to kill the Jews because Orthodox European Jews did not do enough to fight these trends, or did not support Zionism. In this Haredi theodicy, the Jews of Europe were sinners who deserved to die, and the actions of God which allowed this were righteous and just.

• Satmar leader Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum writes:

• There were redemptionist Zionists, at the other end of the spectrum, who also saw the Holocaust as a collective punishment for a collective sin: ongoing Jewish unfaithfulness to the Land of Israel. Rabbi Mordecai Atiyah was a leading advocate of this idea. Rabbi Zvi Yehudah Kook and his disciples, for their part, avoided this harsh position, but they too theologically related the Holocaust to the Jewish recognition of Zion. Kook writes "When the end comes and Israel fails to recognize it, there comes a cruel divine operation that removes [the Jewish people] from its exile. [Aviezer Ravitzky, ibid.]
• Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzinsky, in 1939, stated that the Nazi persecution of the Jews was the fault of non-Orthodox Jews (Achiezer, volume III, Vilna 1939, in the introduction. This is discussed in "Piety & Power: The World of Jewish Fundamentalism" by Orthodox author David Landau (1993, Hill & Wang).
• Rabbi Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler had similar views, also discussed in Landau's book.
• A few Haredi rabbis today warn that a failure to follow Orthodox interpretations of religious law will cause God to send another Holocaust. Rabbi Eliezer Menachem Man Schach, a leader of the Lithuanian yeshiva Orthodoxy in Israel until his death in 2001 made this claim on the eve of the 1991 Gulf War. He stated that there would be a new Holocaust in punishment for the abandonment of religion and "desecration" of Shabbat in Israel.

Holocaust theology - Modern Orthodox Jewish views

Most Modern Orthodox Jews reject the idea that the Holocaust was God's fault. Modern Orthodox rabbis such as Joseph Soloveitchik, Norman Lamm, Abraham Besdin, Emanuel Rackman, Eliezer Berkovits and others have written on this issue; many of their works have been collected in a volume published by the Rabbinical Council of America: Theological and Halakhic Reflections on the Holocaust (edited by Bernhard H. Rosenberg and Fred Heuman, Ktav/RCA, 1992).

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Jewish theological responses", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki