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Choosing Life Faith and Survival after the Holocaust

By Nadia Pandolfo

How is a life with God still possible in a time in which there is Auschwitz? The estrangement has become

too cruel, the hiddenness too deep. One can still “believe” in a God who allowed these things to happen,

but how can one still speak to Him? Can one still hear His word? Dare we recommend to the survivors of

Auschwitz, the Job of the gas chambers: “Call on him, for he is kind, for His mercy endureth forever. —

Martin Buber1

The destruction caused by the Holocaust has cut so deeply into the Jewish community

that, for many, it is still an open question whether the community can ever be able to fully

recover from the loss of human life and the loss of religious faith. The Nazis exterminated thirty

percent of all Jews alive in 1939; ninety percent of Eastern European Jewry, including eighty

percent of the Jewish scholars, rabbis, and full time students and teachers of Torah at the time.2

Beyond the actual human loss, the magnitude of evil encountered in the event created a rupture

in traditional religious thought, challenging both trust in the goodness of God and in the

goodness of humanity. Holocaust survivor and Talmudic scholar, David Weiss Halivni reflects,

“Since the Holocaust, we’re convinced the universe is not the same. There is a blemish on

creation and that blemish may lie dormant, but who knows when it will erupt and devour us?

There is a crack in the earth that hasn’t healed.”3 The Holocaust defies meaning and negates

hope. Traditional Jewish thought understands God as the author of history. If this is the case,

the question arises how the Holocaust could be part of a just and merciful God’s overall plan.

The other question that arises is how we can continue to trust modern secular social order will

uphold the value and dignity of life after the Holocaust. The Holocaust has threatened the

survival of the Jewish people and the survival of religious belief itself. If men and women of

today are to survive this event with a hopeful outlook on God or humanity, both modern

secularism and religious belief’s place within the social order must be critically examined.

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Jewish theologian, Rabbi Irving Greenberg proposes a kind of thought experiment to

challenge the way we think about both religion and modern society: “No statement, theological

or otherwise, should be made that would not be credible in the presence of burning children.”4

We might ask how can anyone except those who were there in the death camps imagine the

gravity of such a tragedy? However, if we use our imaginations to place ourselves in that

situation, how could we rationally justify faith in a God in such a way that could allow such

horrific suffering innocent children? Conversely, how could we rationalize a social order where

no moral authority exists beyond human reason? Christian theologian, John Baptiste Metz

suggests that doing theology in the way Greenberg suggests—in the presence of the burning

children—means confronting, “the riddle of our own lack of feeling, the mystery of our own

apathy,”5 and highlights that “there is at least one authority that we should never reject or

despise—the authority of those who suffer.”6 In order to articulate a viable theology of the

Holocaust, both Greenberg and Metz agree, one must first give oneself over wholly to the

devastation of the event and then allow oneself to react honestly to the feelings it draws forth,

even if it involves a repudiation of either God or humanity or both.

Post-Holocaust theology has tended toward two extremes: (1) A rejection of the God of

History; (2) An affirmation of the God of History (often done so with protest).

I still go to the synagogue—with my teeth clenched, for I cannot help but indict God. Why did the Jews

have to know within a few years the depth of horror and the summit of glory? Why did the State of Israel

have to be born from inside the flames of Auschwitz? I can see that the excess of evil may have

engendered deliverance, yet I refuse to acknowledge it.7

It is worth noting here, that there are also theologians who fail to recognize the Holocaust

as an unique historical event (both Jewish and non-Jewish), and who continue to do theology in

the same way, treating the Holocaust as any other catastrophic event (the destruction of the first

and second temples, the Spanish Inquisition, and the Armenian Holocaust). However, it is not

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the purpose of this paper to discuss such theological arguments that do not recognize the

Holocaust as a unique event.

Most post-Holocaust Jewish theologians agree—both God-affirming and denying—that

God’s covenant was broken with Israel during the Holocaust. Those who reject God

subsequently also reject the concepts of covenant and election of the Jewish people even though

they may continue to identify Judaism with certain cultural attributes. Those who affirm God,

mostly agree that God’s covenant with the chosen people of Israel was broken during the

Holocaust and is in need of repair of some kind. The rabbinic concept of tikkun—the “mending,”

“patching” or “repairing” of the world—has been retrieved by Jewish theologians, such as Rabbi

Emil Fackenheim and Rabbi Irving Greenberg, as a hermeneutic of repair—a way to interpret

how humanity can heal its bond with God.

For Fackenheim, humanity can go on after Auschwitz by using tikkun like a patch to

bridge the gaps between the fragments in our thought brought on by the incomprehensible evil

experienced in the Holocaust. These patches are reinforced with the firm resolve to go on living

in the world. Jewish post-Holocaust theology, “must dwell, however painfully and precariously,

between the extremes, and seek a Tikkun as it endures the tension.”8 The bonds of the past—

history, tradition, and former biblical images of God can all serve as patches in the work of

tikkun. We can look to the lives of the survivors themselves to understand how tikkun is

successfully done. In their mere commitment to stay alive, Holocaust survivors have provided

testament to the Jewish faith. This is true for Fackenheim whether or not the survivors

understand their own survival in this way. What is important that is that, in surviving, they have

effectively preserved the “remnant” of the Jewish people in history and, thus, have preserved the

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seed for future Jewish generations simply by “choosing life” over death. Survival, as

Fackenheim understands it, is the work of tikkun in its most basic form.

Most post-Holocaust theologians agree that we cannot deny the uniqueness of the

Holocaust. Some, such as Greenberg go as far as to say that the Holocaust presents a new

revelation. In other words it forces us to re-interpret the meaning of our existence and our

relationship with God in a radically new way. Greenberg understands that traditional Judaism is

reluctant to accept the possibility of any new revelation beyond the scriptures because it fears it

will open the door to claims of supersession by new emergent religious traditions. In the past,

Christianity has made the claim that it superseded Judaism in its revelation of Christ’s

resurrection. Islam has also made the claim that it superseded both Judaism and Christianity in

Muhammad’s revelation of the Qu’ran. It is understandable that sectarian religion guards itself

against any claims of new revelation. However, Greenberg argues that the Holocaust begs Jews

(and other religious traditions alike) to reconsider the possibility that the Holocaust offers new

religious revelation that transcends sectarian boundaries and any fear of supersession.

Greenberg views God’s covenant with humanity to uphold life as universal to all

religions. According to Greenberg, after the Holocaust, any religion professing the goal of

perfecting the world should be eager to reorient humanity toward life over death so much so that

it be willing “to overcome barriers, stereotypes, and shameful histories in order to forge such

partnerships.”9 Greenberg views religious pluralism as a chance for those who are opposed to

one another to strengthen and learn from one another and to check each other from excess. This

is not to say that one should view the “other” as the same as oneself, failing to see any

difference, but simply to recognize the value and contribution that the “other” has to offer, even

in its difference. For Greenberg, the measure of validity of any religion is that it affirms the

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triumph of life over death. Therefore, any religion that supports death or destruction over life

(such as that of the Nazis and Christians who supported the Nazis) is not a true religion.

Therefore, all authentic religions can and should work together in tikkun olam in their support of

life over death and destruction. Thus, the most important revelation the Holocaust offers is that

religions should model the truth that “the love of God leads to the total discovery of the image of

God in the other, not to its distortion or elimination.”10

Greenberg further argues against ultra-orthodox Jews who deny the revelatory nature of

the Holocaust and instead interpret the event as a punishment for sins:

For traditional Jews to ignore or deny all significance to this event would be to repudiate the fundamental

belief and affirmations of the covenant: that history is meaningful, and that ultimate liberation and

relationship to God will take place in the realm of human events.11

If Jews believe that God has historically revealed truths to Israel in response to real events, and

they profess to have faith in the same God of History, then, Greenberg argues, they must also

believe that God continues to reveal truths in the present and will do so in future.

If theologians fail to confront the issue that caused the Holocaust, chances are that it will

happen again. Only by giving oneself over wholly to this event and by allowing faith to pass

through the “demonic consuming flames of a crematorium,”12

can one access the opportunity to

transcend a naïve easy faith in a loving all-merciful God and reach a more profound sense of

self-understanding. For Greenberg, the Holocaust calls all people of faith to new levels of

responsibility, into a new relationship with God, into a new relationship with each other, and into

a new life.

The Jewish religion is founded on the divine assurance and human belief that the world

will be perfected.13

However, Greenberg reminds us that perfection happens step by step (not by

divine fiat) and this process, more often than not, involves taking steps backward in order to take

steps forward. We must remember that even though we live in an imperfect world, God’s

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divinity can still be encountered in the partial, flawed actions of humans, and it is up to us to join

in the work of tikkun olam, or perfecting the world.

Tikkun Olam—Repairing Faith

In the Jewish prayer, Aleinu, the phrase, tikkun olam means, “to perfect the world” in

partnership with God: l'takken olam b'malkhut Shaddai. At the heart of Judaism stands a vision

of this redeemed life (a perfect world) and a path for concretely moving toward this goal in

history.14

The central revelatory event and paradigm for redemption in the Jewish faith is the

biblical story of Exodus. When Jews relive the Exodus movement from slavery to freedom, they

are linked with their specific past and also experience God’s promised universal future. Having

known God’s redemptive and revelatory acts in times past, Exodus provides the Jewish faith

with the grounds for hope in redemption’s continued reality.15

Underlying all suffering, the Jewish faith believes there is a God who cares, a God who

wants all humans to be redeemed. One day all will live in a world where divine presence will be

actualized. The contradiction between evil and death in the world as we know it and the infinite

life and value behind this reality will be overcome in the final revelation—the world as we know

it and the underlying reality of redemption will ultimately become one and the same.16

Jewish

theology views redemption as a hope and not a present reality. Exodus provides the hope, but it

is only a taste of the future redeemed state. The reason why God has chosen to leave the world

in an imperfect and flawed state is to give humans the opportunity to learn autonomy through

experience, to mature in their freedom and dignity. The Jewish vision of perfection involves

promoting life and fruitfulness over death and destruction; this includes affirming the life of the

“other.”

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God’s covenant with the people of Israel provides the path for redemption, which

includes both human power (responsibility for the material world) and limitation (trust in their

Creator). Out of love for humanity, God imposes His own self-limits and calls humans to be His

partners in the process of perfection—tikkun olam. God commits to uphold the laws of nature

that allow humans to live constructive, dignified lives within the framework of a stable,

dependable natural order. Humans pledge to live in harmony with the rhythms of the universe—

that is, to increase life, improve nature and society in order to fully sustain the value of life with

all of its fundamental dignities, especially human life:

The ultimate truth is not the fact that most humans live nameless and burdened lives and die in poverty and

oppression. Rather, the decisive truth is that man is of infinite value and will be redeemed. Every act of

life is to be lived by that realization.17

Humans participate in tikkun olam by helping others and performing mitzvoth (obeying God’s

commandments).18

By performing mitzvoth humans actively restore God’s image in the world.

The Death of God in the Modern World

“Where is merciful God, where is He?”

“Where He is?” [Elie Weisel] asked himself, looking up at the hanging boy.

“This is where—hanging here from this gallows. . .” —Elie Weisel19

What sets the Holocaust apart from other mass murders committed throughout history

against millions of people (like the Armenian holocaust or the murders in Darfur or Bosnia) is

the ideological motivation behind the Nazis’ actions: “It is perfectly clear that Nazi ideology saw

in the Jew the non-human antithesis of what it considered to be the human ideal: the German

Aryan.”20

The Nazis not only believed the total annihilation of Jews was necessary for the

survival of the Germanic people but also necessary for the continued existence of humankind.

At one pole stood the Aryan race, and “at the other pole stood the Jew, a Satanic element and a

parasitic one, both weak and contemptible, and yet also immensely powerful and absolutely

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evil.”21

The Nazi motivation to kill Jews was not simply political, economic or strategic: “The

struggle against the Jews was a crucial part of the Nazi eschatology, an absolutely central pillar

of their world-view. . . . This pseudo-religious motivation made their anti-Jewish actions

unprecedented. There could be no exceptions to the murder of Jews, once that was decided

upon, because Satan had to be extirpated completely, or else he would arise again.”22

After the Holocaust, many Jews understandably have struggled with how the Holocaust

could possibly be part of a loving God’s plan. Not only was the Holocaust an attack on life, but

it was also an attack on the image of God as He is the creator of all life. How could God create

beings that could execute such horrific acts of violence against fellow creatures? Why do God’s

creatures exhibit such a lack of value for life and inherent self-destructive tendencies?

In many ways the Nazi “death factories” used to efficiently kill millions categorized in

the new moral order as “non-humans” and “useless eaters”23

can be seen as the climax of modern

science and secularism. Enlightenment philosophy, which promoted value-free science and

technology, paved the way for a humanistic ideology, which celebrated “the liberation of

humankind from centuries of dependence on God and nature.”24

Empowered by this freedom

from any higher moral authority, humans were in a position to create their own “morality”

governed by human reason alone, using principles of utility. This gave humans unprecedented

power over the material world. However, instead of harnessing it for good, the Holocaust

revealed human reason divorced from God to have sinister nature, breaking all previously

established limits of evil.

For enlightenment philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, God represents a morality of other

worldly values. Human instincts, which gave birth to those values—including the belief in

God—were able to provide meaning to life for a time. Nietzche’s use of the phrase “death of

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God” implies that the human concept of God can no longer provide ethical values in the modern

world. Therefore, human beings necessarily assume this role of Übermensch or “Superman” by

creating their own morality completely rooted in life on this earth.25

As modern secularism spread, the concept of “progress,” emerged, and replaced God as

the ultimate value of society. However, one would reasonably assume that the concept of

“progress” includes the promise of higher ethical standards for the protection of human life.

Even the victims of the Holocaust were deceived by this ill-founded assumption. In fact,

because belief Holocaust victims placed their trust in the secular concept of “progress,” they

were disarmed believing that such a betrayal of human dignity was simply impossible in a

modern country such as Germany during the twentieth century.26

Many had no idea what horrors

awaited them until the very last moments when they were standing naked in the gas chamber.

Ironically, many of the men and women operating the Nazi “death factories,” considered

themselves believers in God. In fact, Heinrich Himmler insisted that all S.S. men believe in God

so that they could consider themselves above the “Godless” Marxists.27

What does this say about

organized religion, which proved to be powerless in the face of Auschwitz, and in many cases

even aided and abetted the Nazi death campaign?28

The blatant disregard for human life and the

unthinkable level of suffering inflicted upon innocent victims contradicts organized religion’s

fundamental statements about human value and the image of God. For this reason, the Holocaust

puts the very credibility of religion and its assertions about God on the line.

In his 1966 book, After Auschwitz, Richard Rubenstein argued that the Holocaust is the

final proof that the God of history is dead in the modern world: “Jewish history has written the

final chapter in the terrible story of the God of History”29

; “we learned in the crisis that we were

totally and nakedly alone, that we could expect neither support nor succor from God nor from

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our fellow creatures. Therefore, the world will forever remain a place of pain, suffering,

alienation and ultimate defeat.”30

For Rubenstein, a critical part of the Jewish understanding of

God is that He intervenes in human history to protect and guide the covenant people, for

example, when He parted the Red Sea and provided manna from heaven for the Jews during their

travels in the desert in the story of Exodus.

Rubenstein has stated he is not an atheist. He simply no longer believes in the traditional

Judaic concepts of God. He has come to understand God as immanent in all things rather than as

a transcendental Being who exists outside of the material world. Rubenstein has also stated that

he no longer believes the Jews are “the chosen people.” Instead, he believes they are a people

like any other group.

Secular Judaism

Rubenstein’s idea that the God of history is dead, or an illusion, has penetrated very

deeply into the hearts of the Jewish people. In fact, a very high percentage of Israeli Zionists use

the term “Secular Jew” to describe themselves. This is because, although they identify with their

Jewish cultural heritage, they do not identify with the religious tradition and consider themselves

either atheist or agnostic.31

Jewish humanist Sherwin Wine argues that believing in God devalues

humans because it suggests that the source of human value lies outside of human beings

themselves.32

Some (not all) Secular Jews engage in Jewish rituals and practices without holding

any belief in God at all. Given Judaism’s emphasis on practice over belief, this doesn’t present a

conflict for these Jews. Some mainstream guides to Judaism even suggest that belief in God is

not a necessary prerequisite to Jewish observance. Based on Jewish law’s emphasis on

matrilineal descent, even religiously conservative orthodox Jewish authorities may accept an

atheist born to a Jewish mother as fully Jewish.33

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Rubenstein’s more recent work has been influenced by Kabbalah teachings, and he has

consequently revised some of his earlier statements about God and Jewish election. He now

argues that traditional Jewish religious faith is essential for Jewish survival in the modern world:

Whatever doubts secularized Jews may currently entertain, that [traditional] belief . . . has given the Jewish

people the supremely important gifts of meaning and hope. Instead of viewing their experiences as a series

of unfortunate and essentially meaningless happenings, biblical-rabbinic faith has enabled the Jewish

people to see their history as a meaningful expression of their relations with God. Moreover, no matter

how desperate their situation became, their faith enabled them to hope that, sooner or later, “Those who

sow in tears will reap in joy.”34

No matter what individual Jews’ present beliefs or lack thereof, Rubenstein has come to believe

that Judaism will ultimately remain rooted in the divine covenant and the concept of election.

Traditional Judaism has through the ages enabled Jews to cope with their very difficult life

situation as strangers in the Christian and Muslim worlds. The concepts of covenant and election

are the glue that bonds the community together. If these beliefs are finally dismissed or

forgotten, the only thing holding the community together will be, “nostalgia for the past and the

guilt the living feel toward the dead.”35

Rubenstein now understands liberal compromises in Judaism as untenable because they

detach Jewish life and practice from their intellectual and theological moorings. He has hope that

Jews who remain in the Synagogue for cultural reasons rather than religious will eventually

confirm their faith because, in the end, authentic faith (whole-hearted commitment) in the God of

covenant and election comprises the only system of religious beliefs that legitimizes what it is to

be “Jewish” and ensures Jewish survival as a group:

It is by no means certain that Judaism can survive without faith in the God of Israel as traditionally

understood. I can only hope that those who affirm the traditional interpretation of God are motivated by

honest belief rather than the conviction that, true or false, such a credo must be given verbal assent for the

sake of Jewish survival, often hoping that their children will be able to believe what they cannot.36

As long as a disjunction between authentic belief and practice remains, Rubenstein sees the

survival of the Jewish community at risk.

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Surviving for Survival’s Sake

As a survivor of Sachsenhausen concentration camp, Emil Fackenheim admits that God’s

saving presence was absent during the Holocaust. However, given that it was one of Hitler’s

professed goals to kill the God of Israel, Fackenheim argues vehemently against the idea that

“God is dead” on the basis that for a Jew to declare God an illusion would be to hand Hitler a

post-humous victory. Thus, it must be strictly forbidden by all Jews, secular and religious:

We are forbidden . . . to deny or despair of God, however much we may have to contend with him or with

belief in him, lest Judaism perish. We are forbidden, finally, to despair of the world as the place which is to

become the kingdom of God, lest we help make it a meaningless place in which God is dead or irrelevant

and everything is permitted. To abandon to any of these imperatives is to grant Hitler a post-humous

victory.37

In the face of annihilation, God’s commanding voice orders all Jews to survive and unite. This is

what Fackenheim calls the 614th

commandment. This new commandment from God is so

powerful in force that it transcends categories of “believing” and “non-believing” Jews. Jews

have no other option but to obey this command, even if they do not understand why they are

compelled to do so. Their mere continued self-understanding as a “Jew” can be seen as obeying

God’s commandment to “Choose life!” 38

For Fackenheim, the mere survival of a Jew after the Holocaust is a testimony, in and of

itself, to the God of History, whether the survivor articulates this way or not. “I confess I used to

be highly critical of Jewish philosophies which seemed to advocate no more than survival for

survival’s sake. I have changed my mind. I now believe that, in this present, unbelievable age,

even a mere collective commitment to Jewish group-survival for its own sake is a momentous

response, with the greatest implications.”39

Whether it is the testimony of an Orthodox or

Secular Jew, Emil Fackenheim describes it as “a stubborn persistence in our Jewishness, not an

attempt to abandon it or escape from it,” that affirms the God of History.40

For Fackenheim, a

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Jew does not need to fully understand the relevance of the Holocaust in order to give testimony.

In fact, he argues that we cannot possibly understand the historical implications of the Holocaust

at this point in time as we are still immersed in the modern crisis. “We cannot know the future,

if only because the present is without precedent. . . . The uncertainty of what will be may not

shake our certainty of what we must do.”41

The fact that Judaism was able to survive the

destruction of the second temple and live in exile with no end in sight, Fackenheim points out,

was not fully understood until a response was articulated as galut or “exile” Judaism.42

In this

liminal period, there is only one possible reaction for those Jews who have survived the

Holocaust—“commitment and possibly faith” in Jewish endurance.43

Even a secular commitment

to Jewish survival is, in his words, a “profound, albeit as yet fragmentary, act of faith, in an age

of crisis to which the response might well have been either flight in total disarray or complete

despair.”44

It is because of the phenomenon of Jewish survival after the Holocaust that the

Jewish agnostic and the Jewish believer are closer than ever before in their beliefs.

Since the evil of the Holocaust defies all thought—that is, it is without meaning or

purpose—the only reaction can be to resist the inhumanity and ungodliness it breeds. Because

the Holocaust is aligned with death, we resist it by choosing life. “For we are forbidden to turn

present and future life into death, as the price of remembering death at Auschwitz. And we are

equally forbidden to affirm present and future life, at the price of forgetting Auschwitz.”45

Fackenheim’s theology is informed by the testimony of Holocaust survivor, Pelagia

Lewinska, who remarked that when she became aware of the Nazis intent to annihilate the Jews,

she “felt under order to live.”46

It was this statement that inspired Fackenheim’s view of

“resistance as an ontological category.”47

The paralysis of thought that incomprehensible evil

brings about is transcended in the realization that one is ordered by God to “Choose life!” For

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Fackenheim, it is not important for one to understand evil, what is important is that one have the

strength to oppose the death and destruction it represents, in the self-conscious commitment to

life.

Without a recovered Jewish tradition—for the religious Jew, the Word of God; for the secular Jew, the

word of man and his “divine spark”—there is no Jewish future. Without a recuperation from the illness,

the tradition (and hence the Jewish future) must either flee from the Holocaust or be destroyed by it.48

One must first survive in order to participate in tikkun, thus survival itself is the first step

for tikkun. Even though the present state of Israel continues in the life or death struggle for its

existence—under constant attack by enemies who have vowed to destroy it—there is no better

example of tikkun, for Fackenheim, than the survival of modern Israel itself.

It is a state founded, maintained, defended by a people who—so it was once thought—had lost their hearts

of statecraft and self-defense forever. It is the replanting and reforestation of a land that—so it once

seemed—was unredeemable swamps and desert. It is a people gathered from all four corners of the earth

on a territory with—so the experts once said—not room enough left to swing a cat. It is a living language

that—so even friends once feared—was dead beyond revival. It is a City rebuilt that—so once the

consensus of mankind had it—was destined to remain holy ruins. And it is in and through all this, on

behalf of the accidental remnant, after unprecedented death, a unique celebration of life.49

That the Jewish people, who lived in exile (galut) for so many generations, have finally been

returned to Jerusalem after the Holocaust is proof, for Fackenheim, that redemption is a reality

for the Jewish people and that God has not abandoned them in their most dire time of need.

Whether the return to Israel was worth the price of the Holocaust is a question with

which many Jews continue to grapple; however, there is no question for most Jews—secular and

religious alike—that Israel must be defended and protected with all their heart and soul. Many

Holocaust survivors, who barely clung to their lives in the concentration camps and death

marches, freely gave their lives to fight in Israel’s war for liberation in 1948 so that future

generations of Jews would have never be without a guaranteed place to flee again. The

rebuilding of Israel demonstrates sincere commitment to restore the covenant and the covenant

people on behalf of believing and non-believing Jews alike.

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Hester Panim—The Hiding of God’s Face

The Bible knows of God’s hiding His face, of times when the contact between Heaven and earth seems to

be interrupted. God seems to withdraw Himself utterly from the earth and no longer to participate in its

existence. The space of history is then full of noise, but as it were, empty of divine breath. For one who

believes in the living God, who knows about Him, and is fated to spend his life in a time of His hiddenness,

it is very difficult to live. —Martin Buber50

For Martin Buber the religious person’s experience includes not only an awareness of

Gods nearness, but also experiences of his remoteness: “Whoever knows God also knows God’s

remoteness and the agony of drought upon a frightened heart, but not the loss of presence.” 51

Buber speaks about the modern age as being the “eclipse of God,” which refers to the biblical

concept of hester panim—the hiding of the face.52

Jewish theologians, Emil Fackenheim, Irving Greenberg and Eliezer Berkovits have

retrieved the biblical concept of hester panim in order to interpret God’s retreat from the world

during the Holocaust. Fackenheim states even though there are times in which God remains

silent, “He still speaks to those who can listen with their heart.”53

God was, therefore, present

even though He was hiding his face during the Holocaust. The idea of God’s hiddenness is

thought to be proportional to the increased need for human’s to accept personal responsibility.

Both Berkovits and Greenberg see God’s hiddenness as the pre-condition for human freedom.

Greenberg speaks of God becoming more and more hidden as secular society spreads and

human’s sense of agency expands.

Berkovits argues that in order for God to maintain His respect and care for humanity as a

whole, He necessarily has to withdraw or hide Himself, and allow human beings—even the most

cruel and vicious—to exercise free will. “[Human] freedom must be respected by God himself.

God cannot, as a rule, intervene whenever man’s use of freedom displeases him. It is true, if he

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did so, the perpetration of evil would be rendered impossible, but so would the possibility for

good.”54

The Holocaust, for Berkovits, is, thus, clearly a result of human failures and not God’s.

Hester panim is used in different contexts in the bible. For instance, the hiding of God’s

face in the Psalms is altogether different from its meaning in Deuteronomy. In the Psalms, God

hides his face in His indifference to humanity’s actions:

Awake, O Lord! Why do you sleep?

Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever.

Why do you hide your face

and forget our misery and oppression? (Ps 44:22-26).

In Deuteronomy, God withdraws as an expression of anger and judgment over those who

worship false idols. “And I will certainly hide my face on that day because of all their

wickedness in turning to other gods.”55

For some, God’s periods of remoteness granted a license

to behave badly. Under this context, hester panim can be seen as a test of devotion, as in the

story of Job, where God withdraws Himself in order to test the faith of his most righteous and

loyal servant. He does this because He wants to know whether Job’s service is really out of love

for God or selfish interests. God agrees to allow Satan to put Job to the test by taking everything

away from him in order to see if he will still remain faithful to his maker. The story of Job raises

the question of whether God can create one who worships Him freely. Job teaches that the

answer to that question is an invariable yes.

Jewish men of faith were familiar with the problem of hester panim. They experienced it

in moments of doubt and lack of understanding of events such as the destruction of the first and

second temples. The feeling of being forgotten by God was not always interpreted by the rabbis

as a punishment for human sins. Through the ages, the rabbis understood that the poor and weak

were often the victims of unjust suffering, and that the wicked and evil often held the upper

hand. Even in the presence of injustice, God is often seen in the bible as refusing to intervene.56

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Rabbi Akiba taught that whatever God created, He also created opposite. Thus, God

created both the wicked and the righteous.57

There could be no good without evil. In this sense,

God creates both the possibilities for good and evil. It is humans who freely decide which way

to act. God transcends all value; He is value. It is only humanity who strives for the good. God

is goodness itself. As long as man abuses his freedom for the purpose of evil, there will

inevitably be suffering of the innocent.58

For Berkovits, history is the exclusive arena of human responsibility. In spite of God’s

infinite power, He lets humanity find its own way. God’s strength is in His ability to forgive

those who offend Him. God suffers for the wicked and for the innocent alike. Even the wicked

are God’s creation. Because God allows and respects human freedom, He exercises restraint

while allowing suffering of some humans to happen at the hand of others. God remains patient

for the sinner to find his way to Him.

If man is to be, God must be long-suffering with him; he must suffer man. This is the inescapable paradox

of divine providence. While God tolerates the sinner, he must abandon the victim; while he shows

forebearance with the wicked, he must turn a deaf ear to the anguished cries of the violated. This is the

ultimate tragedy of existence: God’s very mercy and forebearance, his very love for man, necessitates the

abandonment of some men to a fate that they may well experience as divine indifference to justice and

human suffering.59

God makes Himself “powerless” so that history can unfold. Human freedom, for Berkovits,

comes at the price of a world that includes the Holocaust. This is not to say that God wills the

Holocaust to happen; it is rather that He wills human freedom to happen more so.

Jewish faith understands God both in the numerous revelations of divine presence and in

the long periods of His absence. God is just as present in moments of hiddenness as He is in

moments of redemption. Because of this dual understanding, Berkovits argues, the Jew can find

God even when He is most hidden. It was this dual understanding that made it possible for many

Jews to know God even along the path to the gas chambers:

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The God of history must be absent and present concurrently. He hides his presence. He is present without

being indubitably manifest; he is absent without being hopelessly inaccessible. Thus, many find him even

in his “absence”; many miss him even in his presence.60

For Berkovits, it is possible for humans to lose faith in God, but not for God to die. God remains

present even to those who have given up on Him in hopes that they will find Him again.

Jewish survival through the years of exile, for Berkovits, is proof of “God’s holy

presence at the very heart of his inscrutable hiddenness.”61

Nothing could have pulled the Jewish

survivors out of hopelessness as the creation of the State of Israel did after the Holocaust.

Because of God’s protection of Israelites through the ages, Berkovits reasons, the Jews have

been able to endure long periods of hester panim without denying God. The Hebrew prophets

could question God’s justice and yet continue to believe in Him.62

Restoring the Image of God

Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a

silent sky.

Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever . . . .

Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes. —

Elie Weisel63

Anyone, even those solidly committed in their faith (Weisel was a devout student of the

Talmud before he entered Auschwitz) are left shattered and shaken by the Holocaust―their faith,

never again the same. “The cruelty and the killing raises the question whether even those who

believe after such an event dare talk about God who loves and cares without making a mockery

of those who suffered.”64

The question remains: How can one understand the Holocaust and not

lose faith in God? After faith is shattered, one must face the task of rebuilding it. Greenberg

quotes Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav who once said, “there is no heart so whole as a broken heart,”

and adds, “After Auschwitz, there is no faith so whole as a faith shattered—and re-fuse—in the

ovens.”65

Thus, working in the world to restore the image of God is an essential part of

rebuilding a shattered faith.

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Because the Holocaust is often seen as the final proof for the “death of God” in the

modern era, if religion wants to remain relevant, it must reinvent itself and recover an image of

God that is meaningful to today’s men and women and the problems they face. This means

placing into question the very authority, doctrines, values and traditions of religion itself and

looking to the past to find new ways of interpreting scripture that speak to a modern audience.

This also means divesting itself of concepts that have proved harmful and disingenuous. Science

has introduced a new and powerful understanding of the world, and antiquated concepts no

longer provide practical guidance for modern men and women who question their very existence

and place in a rapidly changing world. In order to transcend itself, religion must step out of its

rigidity and find new ways to connect to those who need it most.

Over the past century, God and religion have increasingly been treated as figments of the

human imagination especially in the areas of science, history, psychology and philosophy. The

scientific tendency toward reductionism has reduced the human sense of the transcendent to

particles and matter. Greenberg suggests that post-Holocaust theology must address the need to

reconnect to a transcendent, which resists “the absolute claims of humans.”66

This, for him, is

not simply a matter of going back to tradition but of reconstructing our very notion of the image

God. For instance, in the modern world, we can no longer view God as the God of Exodus who

intervened in human history when He parted the Red Sea. With humans’ increased sense of

agency and power over their own fate also comes an increased responsibility in the world.

According to Greenberg, this increased responsibility signals a new era of the divine-human

covenant, which he calls the era of “voluntary covenant.” After the Holocaust, God’s covenant

with the Jewish people was broken. In the new era, humans voluntarily choose to renew the

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covenant with God; God further limits his power (becomes increasingly hidden) in order to allow

human creation to mature and realize a higher sense of freedom.

As part of this higher sense of human freedom and responsibility, Greenberg argues that

religious sects can no longer afford to work against each other by using a privileged image of

God that alienates others. The challenges of modernity are too great. Religions must find ways

to work together, to inform each other and restore an image of God that embodies reverence for

all creation and cultivates inclusionary rather than exclusionary principles. No matter what our

individual beliefs, we are all challenged in the age of “voluntary covenant” to restore God’s

image in the “other.” The “other” is God’s creation, just as much as “I” am. Greenberg states:

Whoever joins in the work of creation and rehabilitation of the image of God is . . . participating in

“restoring to God his scepter and crown.” Whoever does not support—or opposes―this process is seeking

to complete the attack on God’s presence in the world.67

When we face the reality of the horrors that took place, for instance children being

burned alive at Auschwitz in order to save two-fifths of a cent on gas,68

the question of how we

would have acted in such a situation inevitably arises. Would we risk our own life or our loved

ones’ lives in order to save a stranger―a Jew? Would we obey orders to murder innocent

children? Would we stand up for the “other”? History teaches us that many “good people,”

people of faith, in fact, did not stand up for human life and God’s image in the “other.” Father

Manfred Deselaers for the Center for Dialogue and Prayer at Auschwitz writes: “For wherever I

have rejected a human being, I have killed him: he should not be there in my world. In doing so,

I have, in a manner of speaking, killed God who spoke to me through him: he should not be there

in my world.”69

The official Catholic Church, whole congregations and secular ethics all failed

this test. This is a failure we must take responsibility for and we all must seek to correct.

The Nazis succeeded in turning morality upside down and in denigrating God’s image in

the “other.” Murderers of Jews were praised. It became a crime to preserve human life by hiding

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Jews. Jews, themselves, were pitted against one another in the camps, encouraged to lie, steal

and cheat for an extra crust of bread. Children and parents were forced to work in the

crematoriums and gas chambers and assist in the extermination of their own families and loved

ones. It is easy to say that we would have acted heroically in such a situation, but we were never

subjected to such a test.70

So if we answer this question honestly, we must be willing to accept

that we, ourselves, most likely also would have failed to recognize God’s image in the “other” in

this situation. What doing theology in the presence of the burning children teaches us is the

absolute necessity that we work to restore God’s image and presence in the “other.”

Greenberg states that anyone who does not feel guilt or tension when confronting the evil

of the Holocaust, Jew or Christian, shows the signs of “death of the soul.”71

This is because that

person who feels no guilt does not fully give him/herself over to the experience, and allow

him/herself an honest reaction. It reflects a lack of love for the “other” and a hardness of heart.

Therefore, it is of the utmost importance that modern religions challenge every aspect of their

traditions that overtly or covertly degrade God’s image in the “other” or nurture hatred towards

one’s fellow man.72

The religious enterprise after this event [the Holocaust] must see itself as a desperate attempt to create,

save, and heal the image of God wherever it still exists—lest further evidence of meaninglessness finally

tilt the scale irreversibly.73

Theologians are thus faced with the task of restoring God’s image in the modern world.

Respecting the “other” means taking the real loss of faith some have experienced after the

Holocaust seriously and addressing it with compassion and not disdain.

Going Back to the Bible

If we look to the Hebrew Scriptures in retrieving a viable image of God, we do not find

an unchanging and predictable personality, but rather a quite complex portrait. For instance, in

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Deuteronomy God is loving and just; Job shows God as someone who tests the faithful while

keeping Himself hidden; Isaiah 52:13-53 reveals God’s love for those who silently suffer for the

sins of others; Lamentations 3 shows God as punishing and severe; Hosea shows a God who

remains faithful to a faithless people; Amos shows a God of wrath but who is ultimately just.

Through the stories in the bible, we can see that God mediates between action and inaction,

revealing and withdrawing himself from human view. God’s love for his people is not a

sentimental kind love, but a demanding kind of love, a love that is sometimes obscure to human

comprehension. God’s relationship with His people is dynamic and changes to address particular

historical situations, and it evolves over time.

In Deuteronomy, God is much like the early biblical covenant model that Greenberg

associates with the parting of the Red Sea in Exodus. God is the senior covenantal partner and

disciplines His people like a parent might. He intervenes on their behalf as He did when He

brought his chosen people out of Egypt, driving down forces mightier than they. God is a model

for justice, and humans are commanded to emulate Him: “Justice, only justice you shall pursue”

(Deut 16:20). God promises never to abandon his people as long as they obey His

commandments (Deut 30:1-3). God is also threatening. If the people fail to love and obey Him,

He promises to destroy and dispossess them of their land. Obeying and loving God is associated

with choosing life (Deut 30:19). Disobeying and not loving God is associated with death and

destruction (Deut 30:17-18).

Greenberg suggests that Suffering Servant in Isaiah 52:13-53 reads like a page right out

of Holocaust literature and points to Israel’s role as the suffering servant of humankind’s

pathologies and misbehavior. Isaiah’s Suffering Servant passage shows God’s favor for those

who silently suffer injustice—the oppressed (Isa 53:7-8). The suffering servant suffers for the

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sins of all men (Isa 53:6) and leads many to righteousness by example (Isa 53:11). His bruises

and afflictions serve to heal those who oppress him. “He was despised and rejected by others”

(Isa 53: 3). We can learn from Isaiah’s Suffering Servant that God always sides with those who

suffer injustice and “will allot [them] a portion with the great” (Isa 53:12-13).

Greenberg notes that the Suffering Servant chapter in Isaiah is often overlooked by Jews

because of the centrality it plays in Christian theology. However, this, Greenberg argues, makes

it all the more important for Jews to retrieve an image of a God who suffers with His people.

“Where was God during the holocaust? . . . God was with God’s people (‘I will be with him in

distress’ (Ps 91:15)—being tortured, degraded, humiliated, murdered. Where else would God be

when God’s loved ones were being hounded and destroyed?”74

Reading Isaiah’s Suffering

Servant also causes us to reflect upon whether we accept the suffering of others in our place.75

The theme of Lamentations 3 shows God as severe and punishing. “I am one who has

seen affliction under the rod of God’s wrath; he has driven and brought me into darkness without

any light; against me alone he turns his hand, again and again, all day long. He has made my

flesh and my skin waste away, and broken my bones” (Lamentations 3:1-4). “Though I call and

cry for help, he shuts out my prayer” (Lamentations 3:8). There is no note in this chapter of

sinfulness of those who are being punished. Greenberg points out that Lamentations 3 is the

dominant theme in the writings of Holocaust survivor, Elie Weisel. As a result of the

incomprehensible suffering, the voice in Lamentations (and also in Weisel) expresses its anger at

God, but intermixed with this anger is also prayer (see Lamentations 3:21-24). Similar to the

voice in Lamentations, Weisel cries out in anger at God about those who still pray at Auschwitz:

“Look at these men whom You have betrayed, allowing them to be tortured, slaughtered, gassed,

and burned, what do they do? They pray before You! They praise Your name!”76

Greenberg

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suggests that the very anger and controversy Weisel is expressing here represents the first stage

of a new relationship, perhaps the only kind of relationship possible with God at this point in

history. He asks whether our prayers for the Holocaust ought to express more anger at God, like

Lamentations 3. Greenberg sees anger as more compatible with love than pleasant niceties and

compliments. Any authentic relationship involves trials and tribulations.77

The tests to which

God subjects His people are not meant to be an easy affair. In fact, the bible teaches that God’s

tests are terribly difficult, incomprehensible, unbearable, and are meant to bring us over the very

edge of our existence. Lamentations 3 reminds us that a religion that doesn’t recognize anger as

an authentic response to God’s punishment lacks a true commitment to faith in God.

In Hosea, God’s people, Israel, have turned away from Him to worship idols and seek

pleasure. The prophet Hosea is a symbol of God’s personal love of his people. God remains

faithful even in the face of their gross failings:

My people are bent on turning away from me. . . . How can I give you up? . . . How can I hand you over O

Israel? . . . My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my

fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and

I will not come in wrath (Hos 11:7-9).

Hosea shows that God, in His ultimate wisdom, knows that, in this case, only forgiveness and

pure love (not harsh punishment) is what will cure His people of their infidelity and self-

destructive tendencies. Accepting them back after their betrayal is the nourishment they need at

this point to help their faith to grow. Hosea affirms an image of a loving and forgiving God.

In Amos, God is seen as punishing, and exerting his wrath upon the people of Israel

because they have failed in keeping their end of the covenant. “I will not revoke the punishment;

because they sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals” (Amos 2:6-7).

God promises destruction, leaving but a remnant of the people to rebuild. “Thus says the Lord:

As the shepherd rescues from the mouth of the lion two legs, or a piece of an ear, so shall the

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people of Israel who live in Samaria be rescued, with the corner of a couch and part of a bed”

(Amos 3:12). The story of Amos can illuminate that no matter how mad God may be at

humanity, He will leave a remnant to rebuild the community.

It is important to note in the Hebrew Scriptures that God is not static or predictable. His

attitude towards creation adapts to the situation at hand. He acts when He feels necessary and in

ways that are often mysterious to human beings, who do not see the universe from His purview

and thus do not know His overall plan. Faith in God involves a fundamental trust that events that

defy our sense of reason will somehow still lead us to a better place if we survive the destruction.

Bridging the Gap—The Age of Voluntary Covenant

Greenberg understands the Holocaust as a unique and revelatory event that is specifically

addressed to the modern crisis and humanity’s need to realize an increased sense of

responsibility in the world. For this reason, Greenberg does not see either atheism or strict

theism as the appropriate theological response to the Holocaust for modern man. Instead he

proposes a notion of faith, which can mediate between faith and doubt—what he calls moments

faith. This view of faith respects both the individual’s personal journey and his/her voluntary

commitment to God. The essential characteristic of Greenberg’s concept of voluntary covenant

with God is the human commitment to choose life and to revere God’s image in the “other.”

Real faith waivers in its commitment. When God becomes increasingly hidden in the

world, it is natural for humans to feel hurt, abandoned and afraid to be on their own. However, it

is not the certitude of belief, but the frequency of moments of honest commitment to life that, for

Greenberg, separate the real “believers” from the “non-believers.” In fact, Greenberg views

certainty of faith as a weakness in terms of being easily transformed into a source of hatred,

superiority or intolerance for the “other.” The fluctuation between certainty and uncertainty

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keeps our faith in check and in a constant state of renewal and growth. In real life, there are

“moments when Redeemer and vision of redemption are present, interspersed with times when

the flames and smoke of the burning children blot out faith—though it flickers again.” Faith “is

a life response of the whole person to the Presence in life and history. Like life, this response

ebbs and flows.”78

There are moments when faith is true and moments when it is not true for

each of us. We must acknowledge that repudiation of God is an honest and reasonable reaction

to the destruction of the Holocaust. However, even in the moment of repudiation, faith does not

completely disappear. For the person, who has repudiated God, there always remains the

possibility of subsequent moments of belief.79

Greenberg’s moments faith respects the right of

each person to go through his/her own struggle to maintain an authentic faith and to reach his/her

own conclusions in the process. Moments faith implicitly requires an attitude of religious

pluralism (both within and outside Judaism) because it does not force its beliefs on any one else.

For Greenberg, the only statement about God one can make in the presence of the

burning children is for human life itself:

Burning children speak of the absence of all value—human and divine; the rehabilitation of one and half

million Holocaust survivors in Israel speaks of the reclamation of tremendous human dignity and value.80

Greenberg makes no distinction between affirming life and affirming God, even if the believer

denies such a connection. Choosing life, for Greenberg, is the real line between an authentic

believer in God’s image and a non-believer. He argues there are atheists, who choose life but

deny it is because they believe in God. These atheists, according to Greenberg, are part of the

hidden righteous, whom Jewish tradition asserts to be the most righteous. Likewise, the so-called

person of faith who chooses against life in his/her actions reveal his/her own hypocrisy.

Bringing a child into the world, for Greenberg, holds a special significance for Jews, as the

highest expression of choosing life. “It takes enormous faith in ultimate redemption and

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meaningfulness to choose to create or even enhance life again. . . . One must silently assume

redemption in order to have the child.”81

This is especially true for Israeli Jews who do choose

to procreate, knowing the precarious state of Israel’s security amidst neighboring nations.

Therefore, Secular Jews, who choose to raise children, in Greenberg’s view, are renewing the

image of God as much as Orthodox Jews in their actions, even if not in their words.

For Greenberg, authentic belief in God is not simply a confession that remains unaffected

by history and the trials it brings forth. Real faith goes through a process of being refuted and

reaffirmed by real events in history. Thus faith is both of this world and points to something

beyond itself. It travels the vicissitudes of life, vulnerable to earth-shattering events such as the

Holocaust and yet resilient enough to repair itself in the aftermath. Faith can (and often does)

suffer set backs before it can deepen, and faith by its nature always remains a wager. We feel

secure in the belief that we “know” something; however, faith is the surrender in trust to

something we cannot possibly know and the ability to feel safe in that insecure state of no

knowing. Greenberg explains, this does not mean that theological statements cannot be made

post-Holocaust; rather that theological statements can only be made after working through real

experience—in other words, after passing through the flames of the crematorium and surviving

moments of doubt.

The Holocaust reveals, according to Greenberg, that modern men and women personally

choose to renew the covenant with God. As society becomes more and more secularized, God’s

presence becomes more and more hidden, and humans fulfill their end of the covenant by a

living practice of kindness that combats death and evil through the celebration of God’s image in

all of creation. This modern phenomenon is what Greenberg calls “Holy Secularism.” As human

responsibility increases, the role of ritualized religion will continue to decline and secularism

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will continue to grow. Greenberg sees religion as moving out of institutional life and into a more

private space. Evidence of this trend can be observed after the destruction of the Second Temple

when the priestly function diminished and the rabbinical age ensued.

Many within the Jewish orthodoxy have sought to draw a line between the righteous

practitioners of halakhah and all other varieties and streams of Judaism, which they regard as

illegitimate. Greenberg argues against this kind of Jewish orthodoxy that withdraws and isolates

itself from mainstream society and argues in favor of a Judaism that can separate the religious

core of Judaism from its old cultural style and seek to restore “the Torah in the new emergent

culture.”82

Greenberg’s acknowledgement of the role of personal freedom within the halakhic

process is a serious diversion from standard Jewish orthodox thinking and is also linked to his

argument that the Holocaust presents new revelation for the modern era:

There is an alternative for those whose faith can pass through the demonic, consuming flames of a

crematorium: it is the willingness and ability to hear further revelation and reorient themselves. That is the

way to wholeness.83

Greenberg believes that “a renewal of the commitment to respect and realize the tzelem elohim

[image of God] of men and women, of observant and non-observant, of Jew and gentiles alike is

the key to revitalization of Judaism and Jewry.”84

Respect for other, non-halakhic, varieties of

Judaism has led Greenberg to listen seriously and to propose creative ways for them to

participate in the Jewish tradition on their own terms, voluntarily.85

He believes in educating

Jews to accept the mitzvoth freely. “Clearly people identify most strongly with laws which they

feel they have voluntarily accepted.”86

With voluntary covenant, Greenberg retrieves a tradition within Judaism that understands

God’s covenant as evolving with the times. After the destruction of the second temple, the

Rabbis came to the conclusion that God no longer directly intervenes in history as He did during

the biblical era of Exodus. Greenberg believes that God’s ultimate plan involves humans’ ability

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to voluntarily choose good over evil rather than simply being coerced into doing so. It is only in

this way, that humanity can mature and develop a capacity for true goodness and realize its true

purpose as co-partner with God in the process of redemption or tikkun olam.

Greenberg links God’s increasing hiddenness to the growing secularization of the

modern world. In such a world, it becomes necessary for human beings to take a more active

role in history, to fill the gap left by the absenting God. After Auschwitz, Jews have done this by

collectively building a Jewish State, Israel, the ultimate symbol of Jewish continuity and

commitment to life. The creation of this state was a conscious and free choice of the Jewish

people. For Greenberg, in the modern age of autonomy, rather than in the earlier covenantal

eras, the covenant is no longer interpreted in the old way (i.e. halakhah―Jewish religious laws).

Therefore, Jewish pluralism must recognize there are many ways to live a Jewish life—Orthodox

observance, Reformed, Conservative and Secular practices are all acceptable—no one

interpretation of Judaism can claim absolute authority in the contemporary Jewish world.87

This

is not to say that Greenberg does not personally hold an appreciation for the Torah and the

halakhic life. In fact, in his own personal life, he finds it “almost impossible—to conceive that

the Jews can live without the richness of Torah and halakhic observance.”88

However, this being

said, he still respects the right of individual Jews to practice Judaism in their own way as long as

there is a commitment to choosing life and a lived reverence for the image of God in the “other.”

Beyond the Judaic covenant, Greenberg also accepts that other religious traditions can form their

own separate covenants with God in what he terms “Covenantal Pluralism.”

Conclusion

If the Holocaust constitutes a new revelation issuing in a new age of voluntary

covenant with God in that God is increasingly hidden and humanity must live up to increased

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responsibility, we must ask how this new revelation changes the way we understand both

ourselves in relation to each other and to God. Faith and survival intersect in the death camps of

Nazi Germany. Faith involves surrender, whereas the struggle for life in the face of radical evil

requires a tight grip on life.

Primo Levi explains that those who came to Auschwitz and remained attached to their old

lives had no chance of survival: “One knows that they are only here on a visit, that in a few

weeks nothing will remain of them but a handful of ashes in some near-by field and a crossed-

out number on a register.” 89

By refusing to surrender to the new situation, they lost all ability to

adapt. Those who lost faith in life became known as mussulmen—“the walking dead,” “the

drowned,” “the divine spark dead within them.”90

Levi further writes, “If the drowned have no

story, and single and broad is the path to perdition, the paths to salvation are many, difficult and

improbable.”91

In Auschwitz, Levi attests it was hard enough to hang onto one’s name and not

submit to merely becoming a number, let alone retain a sense of self or a faith in God. The daily

life or death struggle took precedence over all else in Auschwitz.

God commands us to “choose life, so that you and your children may live” (Deut 30:19).

The ability to “choose life” in the Nazi death campsnot knowing whether it was even a

possibility worth attempting and what might happen even if one did manage to survive another

day of lifeif nothing else, required a leap of faith into the unknown, a profound surrender to the

uncertainty of one’s own existence. The new revelation that the Holocaust brings is that before

we can restore the image of God in the “other,” we must first restore God’s image within our

own selves, that is to respect the gift of life that God grants us by allowing us yet another day,

another breath. Only when we cultivate love and respect for the self, can we recognize that same

love reflected in the face of the “other.” If we hate ourselves, how can we possibly love the

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“other.” In this way, by “choosing life,” we make the first step in restoring God’s image in the

world. Primo Levi describes the preservation of humanity within Auschwitz as beginning with

the preservation of dignity in one’s very own physical body:

Even in this place one can survive, bear witness; and that to survive we must force ourselves to save at least

the skeleton, the scaffolding, the form of civilization. We are slaves, deprived of every right, exposed to

every insult, condemned to certain death, but we still possess one power, and we must defend it with all our

strength for it is the last—the power to refuse our consent. So we must certainly wash our faces without

soap in dirty water and dry ourselves on our jackets. We must polish our shoes, not because the regulation

states it, but for the dignity and propriety. We must walk erect, without dragging our feet, not in homage to

Prussian discipline but to remain alive, not to begin to die.92

There is no doubt that our old concepts about a simplistic commanding God have died

with the Holocaust. However, there still remains a human need for a renewed image of God to

compel humans to love and transcend their own concepts of the self in relation to the “other.”

We are the first generation of humans who hold the power of weapons of mass destruction. The

Holocaust has revealed evidence that when humans recognize no source of judgment above their

own, value-free science and technology wreak havoc and devastation on the earth and all living

things. How can humanity, which has largely turned away from God in favor of science and

technology, rediscover a relationship with God, resist self-destruction in the modern world and

recover value for life over material wealth? Post-Holocaust theology is faced with the challenge

of articulating an understanding of God and religion that speaks to these problems and

effectively restrains human self-interest in wielding this extraordinary power over the fate of

mankind. Not only is faith in God at stake but faith in the survival of the human race.

Whether or not one can still believe in God after the Holocaust is still open for debate.

Elie Weisel reflects that after the Holocaust, “There is no good reason to go on living, but you

must go on living. There is no good reason to bring a child into this world but you must have

children to give the world a new innocence, a new reason to aspire toward innocence.”93

We can

go on living, and by going on living, we keep at least the embers of faith alive. If nothing else,

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we have chosen life over death and, thus, have chosen to live another day, to sew another patch,

to do another mitzvoth. This is what it means to partner in the work of tikkun olam. In time, who

knows, with patience, more may be revealed, and one day we might recognize that we are living

in a transformed reality, where humans live up to their responsibilities and God’s hidden

presence manifest is within and among us.

1 Martin Buber, “The Dialogue between Heaven and Earth,” in A Holocaust Reader: Responses to Nazi

Extermination, ed. Michael L. Morgan (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 66. 2 Irving Greenberg, “Cloud of Smoke, Pillar of Fire,” in Holocaust: Religious and Philosophical

Implications, eds. John K. Roth and Michael Berenbaum (St. Paul: Paragon House, 1989), 306. 3 Robert Franciosi, Elie Weisel: Conversations (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2002), 105.

David Weiss Halivni is a scholar and adjunct professor at Columbia University. 4 Irving Greenberg, The Jewish Way: Living the Holidays (New York: Summit Books, 1988), 253.

5 John Baptiste Metz, “Christians and Jews After Auschwitz,” in A Holocaust Reader: Responses to the

Nazi Extermination, ed. Michael L. Morgan (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001),

240. 6 Metz,“ Christians and Jews,” 239.

7 Quote is from Elie Weisel in Franciosi, Elie Weisel, 7.

8 Emil Fackenheim, “To Mend the World,” in Contemporary Jewish Theology: A Reader, eds. Elliot N.

Dorff and Louis E. Newman (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press: 1999), 389. 9 Irving Greenberg, For the Sake of Heaven and Earth: A New Encounter between Judaism and

Christianity (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2004), 39. 10

Greenberg, Heaven and Earth, 38. 11

Greenberg, “Cloud of Smoke,” 316. 12

Greenberg, “Cloud of Smoke,” 317. 13

Irving Greenberg, The Jewish Way, 18. 14

Greenberg, Heaven and Earth, 43. 15

Michael Oppenheim, Encounters of Consequence: Jewish Philosophy in the Twentieth Century and

Beyond (Brighton, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2009), 319. 16

See Joel 2:28 from Greenberg, Irving, “Religious Values After the Holocaust: A Jewish View,” in

Jews and Christians After the Holocaust, ed. Abraham J. Peck (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982),

64. 17

Greenberg, “Cloud of Smoke,” 305. 18

Greenberg, Heaven and Earth, 43. 19

Elie Weisel, Night (New York: Hill and Wang, 2006), 65. 20

Yehuda Bauer, “The Place of the Holocaust in Contemporary History,” in Holocaust: Religious and

Philosophical Implications, ed. John K. Roth and Michael Berenbaum (St. Paul: Paragon House,

1989), 16-17. 21

Bauer, “The Place of the Holocaust,” 17. 22

Bauer, “The Place of the Holocaust,” 17. 23

This is what Hitler called those who didn’t pass selection, and who couldn’t work, so were no longer

worth keeping alive [Lucy S. Dawidowitz, “Thinking about the Six Million: Facts, Figures,

Perspectives,” in Holocaust: Religious and Philosophical Implications, eds. John K. Roth and

Michael Berenbaum (St Paul: Paragon House, 1989), 5].

33

24

Greenberg, “Cloud of Smoke,” 311. The prevalence of educated people (professionals, lawyers,

scientists, doctors, PhDs and clergymen) involved with the Nazi campaign also gives witness that it

was not just the unsophisticated, who bought the Nazi propaganda against the Jews, but the

intelligentsia as well. 25

Friedrich, Nietzche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (New York: Simon & Brown, 2012). 26

“We did not at first believe the Resettlement Operation to be what in fact it was, systematic slaughter of

the entire Jewish population. For generations, East European Jews had looked to Berlin as the

symbol of law, order, and culture . . . . We fell victim to our faith in mankind, our belief that

humanity had set limits to the degradation and persecution of one’s fellow man” [Alexander Donat,

The Holocaust Kingdom: A Memoir (New York: Rinehart, 1965), 103, quoted from Greenberg,

“Cloud of Smoke,” 312.] 27

Irving Greenberg, “Religious Values After the Holocaust: A Jewish View,” in Jews and Christians

After the Holocaust, ed. Abraham J. Peck (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982), 76. 28

Anti-Semitic teaching in the Christian Church affected the local populations’ attitudes toward Jews; and

even enabled some Christians to feel they were doing God’s duty in helping kill Jews or by not

stopping it. During the Holocaust, the Church’s protests were mostly on behalf of converted Jews.

And at the end of the war, the Vatican and circles close to it helped thousands of war criminals to

escape, including Franz Stangl, the commandant of Treblinka (Greenberg, “Cloud of Smoke,” 309). 29

Richard Rubenstein, “Homeland and Holocaust,” in The Religious Situation 1968, ed. Donald R. Cutler

(Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), 39-111. 30

Rubenstein, Richard, After Auschwitz (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968), 128-29. 31

One statistic shows 80% of Israelis consider themselves “Secular Jews.” See Anna, R. Morgan, “The

Other Israeli Conflict—The Jewish State Struggles Once Again Over How Jewish It Should Be,” The

Washington Post, July 11, 2009. Accessed online December 5, 2012:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40424-2004Jul10.html. 32

Daniel Septimus, “Must a Jew Believe in God? The Centrality of God in Judaism May Not be as

Straightforward as You Think,” My Jewish Learning. Accessed online December 5, 2012:

http://www.myjewishlearning.com/beliefs/Theology/God/ 33

“What Makes a Jew ‘Jewish’? Based on the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe,” from Chabad.org.

Accessed online at: http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/45132/jewish/What-Makes-a-Jew-

Jewish.htm 34

Richard Rubenstein, “After Auschwitz” in Contemporary Jewish Theology: A Reader, eds. Elliot N.

Dorff and Louis E. Newman (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 381.

Emphasis added. 35

Rubenstein, “After Auschwitz,” 381. 36

Rubenstein, “After Auschwitz,” 383. 37

Emil Fackenheim, “The Jewish Return Into History,” in Contemporary Jewish Theology: A Reader,

eds. Elliot N. Dorff and Louis E. Newman (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999),

387. 38

2 Kings 18:32; Deut 30:19. 39

Emil Fackenheim, “The 614th Commandment,” in Holocaust: Religious and Philosophical

Implications, eds. John K. Roth and Michael Berenbaum (St Paul: Paragon House, 1989), 293. 40

Fackenheim, “The 614th Commandment,” 291.

41 Fackenheim, “The Jewish Return Into History,” 388.

42 Emil Fackenheim, The Jewish Bible after the Holocaust: A Re-Reading (Bloomington and

Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990), xi. 43

Fackenheim, “The 614th Commandment,” 292.

44 Fackenheim, “The 614

th Commandment,” 293.

45 Fackenheim, “The Jewish Return,” 387.

34

46

Pelagia Lewinska, Twenty Months in Auschwitz, 41ff., 50 from Terence Des Pres, The Survivor, 1976

62-63. 47

Emil Fackenheim, To Mend the World, section 9, from Morgan, Michael L., “Fackenheim, the

Holocaust, and Philosophy,” in The Cambridge Companion to Modern Jewish Philosophy, eds.

Michael Morgan and Peter Eli Gordon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 264. 48

Emil Fackenheim, “To Mend the World,” in Contemporary Jewish Theology: A Reader, eds. Elliot N.

Dorff and Louis E. Newman (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 393. 49

Fackenheim, “To Mend the World,” 395. 50

Martin Buber, “God and the World’s Evil,” in Contemporary Jewish Thought, vol. 4, ed. Simon

Noveck (New York: B’nai B’rithDepartment of Adult Jewish Education, 1963), 256. 51

Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. by Ronald Gregor Smith (New York: Charles Scribner and Sons,

1958), 147 from Tamra Wright, “Self, Other, Text, God,” in The Cambridge Companion to Jewish

Philosophy, eds. Morgan, Michael L. and Peter Eli Gordon, (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2007), 102-121, at 110. 52

See: Deut 31:17-18; Isa 45:14, 54:8, 55:6, 57:15, 59:1; Job 23:3, 34:29; 91:1. 53

Emil Fackenheim, “Buber’s Concept of Revelation,” quoted from Wright, Tamra, “Self, Other, Text,

God,” 117. 54

Eliezer Berkovits, Faith after the Holocaust (New York: Ktav, 1973), 105. 55

Deut 31:18. 56

Eliezer Berkovits, Faith After the Holocaust in Contemporary Jewish Theology: A Reader, eds. Elliot

N. Dorff and Louis E. Newman (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 358. 57

Talmud Babli, Hagiga, 15 a. from Berkovits, Faith after the Holocaust, 360. 58

Berkovits, Faith after the Holocaust, 362. 59

Berkovits, Faith after the Holocaust, 363. 60

Berkovits, Faith after the Holocaust, 363. 61

Berkovits, Faith after the Holocaust, 370. 62

Berkovits, Faith after the Holocaust, 365. 63

Weisel, Night, 34. 64

Greenberg, “Cloud of Smoke,” 308. 65

Greenberg, “Cloud of Smoke,” 317. 66

Greenberg, “Religious Values,” 73. 67

Greenberg, “Cloud of Smoke,” 333. 68

This refers to the testimony given by the Polish guard at Auschwitz, S. Szmaglewska, concerning the

burning alive of Jewish infants in order to “economize on gas.” Thus the Jewish child’s life was not

worth the two-fifths of a cent it would have cost to put it to death rather than burn it alive [Morgan,

Michael L., Beyond Auschwitz: Post Holocaust Jewish Thought in America (New York: Oxford

University Press, 2001), 126]. 69

Manfred Desealers, “God and Evil: Anthropological—Philosophical Reflexion,” 13. Accessed

12/11/12: http://cdim.pl/. 70

From B. A. O. Williams and T. Nagel, “Moral Luck,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society,

Supplementary Volumes, vol. 50 (1976), pp.115-135 and 137-151, at 145. 71

Greenberg, “Cloud of Smoke,” 315. 72

Greenberg, “Religious Values,” 76. 73

Greenberg, “Cloud of Smoke,” 332. 74

Steven T. Katz, Historicism, the Holocaust, and Zionism (New York and London: New York

University Press, 1992), 229. 75

One defense of Pope Pius XII’s silence during the Holocaust was that he felt he should not endanger the

church by stopping the genocide. Greenberg points out that if there was anytime that true faith meant

taking up the cross for God, it was the Holocaust. The failure of the church to sacrifice its own self-

interest at this point in history, reflects a shallow faith and corresponding lack of human responsibility

35

[Carlo Falconi, The Silence of Pius XII (Boston: Little Brown, 1970), 119, from Greenberg, “Cloud

of Smoke,” 329-330]. 76

Weisel, Night, 68. 77

Greenberg, “Cloud of Smoke,” 329-330. 78

Greenberg, “Cloud of Smoke,” 319. 79

To illustrate his point, Greenberg refers to a Talmudic interpretation of the destruction of the Temple.

The rabbis say that Daniel and Jeremiah refused to speak of God as awesome or powerful any longer

in light of the destruction of the Temple. C.f. B.T. Yoma 68b, from Greenberg, “Cloud of Smoke,”

324. 80

Greenberg, “Cloud of Smoke,” 323. 81

Greenberg, “Cloud of Smoke,” 332. 82

Arthur Cohen, The Natural and the Supernatural Jew (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1962), 309. 83

Greenberg, “Cloud of Smoke,” 316. 84

Irving Greenberg, Living in the Image of God: Jewish Teachings to Perfect the World (Northvale:

Simon & Schuster, 1998), 113. 85

See Greenberg, The Jewish Way, 175-81. 86

Irving Greenberg, “Change and the Orthodox Community,” Response 10.1 (Spring 1969), 62. 87

Katz, Historicism, The Holocaust and Zionism, 237, see also National Jewish Resource Center, “The

Third Great Cycle in Jewish History” (New York: National Jewish Resource Center, 1981), 37. 88

Greenberg, Living in the Image of God, 60. 89

Primo Levi, Surviving Auschwitz, (New York: Classic House Books, 2008), 83. 90

Levi, Surviving Auschwitz, 83. 91

Levi, Surviving Auschwitz, 83. 92

Levi, Surviving Auschwitz, 31. 93

Franciosi, Elie Weisel, 101-102.

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