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After Auschwitz: Radical Theology and Contemporary Judaism

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Richard Rubenstein's AFTER AUSCHWITZ is out of print though not forgotten. As a college senior in an elective religious studies course thirty years ago at a southeastern state university in the "Bible Belt," this book changed my perceptions of reality. I finally graduated with a bachelor of science degree, majoring in political science and minoring in philosophy. Of the various & sundry writings I was exposed to in the formal curriculum of the liberal arts college, Rubsenstein's probably has had the most impact. I have taken courses in political theory and in general philosophy, including the metaphysics of Plato, Kant, and Lord Barkeley (sp?). I read more than a couple of newspapers & magazines of a multitude of perspectives & slants & political-economic-theological nuances: COMMENTARY vs. THE NEW REPUBLIC vs. THE NATION vs THE WEEKLY STANDARD vs. SLATE vs. SALOON vs THE NATIONAL ENQUIRER <g> vs Anything & Everyt Darn Thing That I Can Stomach. It may be alleged that I have perused the NY TIMES daily & Sunday book reviews and that I actually enjoy some C-SPAN book discussions. Well, let me tell ya: Richard Rubenstein's AFTER AUSCHWITZ remains for me that one book which I tout to y'all who have meandered into my obscure place here in the Amazon stuff jungle. He covers some of the waterfront (Amazonesque riverfront) of religion-related ideas particularly regarding Judaism and anti-Judaism. He is complex, gutsy & brilliant. Imho: His theology (non-theology) is more important to young people than enjoying the relative mind candies of Philip Roth & J.D. Salinger. If you are Jewish or want to know what a youngish radical rabbi in the 1960's candidly confesses, please try to retrieve a copy from a library or used book store. Skim through any too complicated boring stuff as I did, while also understanding you are holding in your hand something so true & insightful that you cannot slough him off. He is considdred, I suppose, to be a religion existentialist, a religious ceremony upholding atheist, "G-d is supreme nothingness." He is part anthropologist, I suppose, in comparing the structural-functionalism (or is that functional-structuralism) of the Roman Catholic's emotional liturgy with our Orthodox-Conservative shul serrvice. He claims the non-holy-roller establishmentarian Protestant's service is too dry & thus not emotional outletting enough in comparison. His take on "chosen people" is that the gentiles have consequently duly perceived us as JESUS and/or JUDAS, rather than as human. We Jews are their messianic angels and/or their sub-human devils. I can't do justice for AFTER AUSCHWITZ. I am trivializing a philosopher-theologian's masterful work. Am I failing to motivate you to obtain the book? The Protestant professor who assigned me to read the book was arrested for anti-Vietnam war demonstrating at a Billy Graham Rally in which President Nixon was speaking. I was (near) there (grass outer-fringe of the football stadium) but not an existentialistic demonstrator. (I am still too conflicted.) Such was the mid-late 1960's approximately 20-25 years after Auschwitz.

Richard L. Rubenstein (born 1924) is an educator in religion and a major writer in the American Jewish community, noted particularly for his contributions to Holocaust theology. In the mid-60's, he was considered one of the founders of the 'God is Dead Theology.'

He wrote in the Preface to this 1966 book, "A religious community has some semblance to a living organism. It is impossible savagely to rip out half of its substance without drastically affecting the surviving remnant. The first reaction to such a wounding must be shock and numbness. I do not believe the period of shock has entirely spent itself. It is only now that a tentative attempt can be made to assess the religious meaning of the events. This book represents one such attempt."

Here are some additional quotations from the book:

"Although Jewish history is replete with disaster, none has been so radical in its total import as the holocaust. Our images of God, man, and the moral order have been permanently impaired. No Jewish theology will possess even a remote degree of relevance to contemporary Jewish life if it ignores the question of God and the death camps." (Pg. x)
"When I wrote this paper, I saw Israel's rebirth as 'the beginning of redemption.' I no longer so regard it." (Pg. 130)
"I do not believe that a Divine-human encounter took place at Sinai nor do I believe that the norms of Jewish religious life possess any superordinate validation." (Pg. 145)
"How can Jews believe in an omnipotent, beneficient God after Auschwitz?" (Pg. 153)
"The revelation of the death camps caused me to reject the whole optimistic theology of liberal religion... The death camps spelled the end of my optimism concerning the human condition." (Pg. 216)

Professor Rubenstein was my most fascinating and challenging professor at FSU during the 1970s. His range of intellectual inquiry makes him a "Renaissance" man. He has written numerous provocative and important books.

And I am re-reading the books thirty plus years later.