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Faith After the Holocaust

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The Holocaust is the most searing wound the modern Jew, both Orthodox/religious or non-religious has to deal with. Of course, catastophes of this sort have occurred in previous generations, the destruction of the First and Second Temples, the Crusades, the Black Death Massacres, the Chmielnicki Pogroms, the Expulsion from Spain and others too numerous to mention. Yet, the Jewish people held on and recovered from them. However, each generation that has to confront these horrors has to deal with them in a different way than in the past. Rabbi Dr. Eliezer Berkovits, having lived in Nazi Germany and also having the scholarly erudition, both in Torah and in general Philosophy, and being aware of modern movements to abandon religious belief altogether which may not have existed in those earlier generations, is one of the few who can elucidate the questions and dilemmas posed by this most recent horror to the modern Jew.

For the Jew, a catastrophe like the Holocaust poses two separate questions : (1) Why do particular individuals have to suffer when it seem most unmerited? (what I meant by "the ultimate question", and (2) How can the Jewish people, who were chosen by G-d to receive the Torah, be subjected to such unparalled debasement and humiliation?

Although some religious thinkers have spouted platitudes about the Holocaust being a "punishment" for a large part of Jewry abandoning religious observance, even a child can point out the fallacy of that line of reasoning...the communities that suffered the greatest destruction were the most traditionalist and observant in Eastern Europe, whereas American Jewry which had a very low level of observance was spared. Others claim it was a punishment for "Zionism" even though Eretz Israel was spared and in fact became the Torah center of the world after the Holocaust. Berkovits vehemently rejects the idea that the Holocaust was a "punishment".

So how does he deal with the idea of evil things happening to good people? The answer is - this is the price we must pay for man having freedom. If man was a robot and could only do good, he would not be free. In fact, if everything was "good", then nothing would be "good" because "good" exists only in counterpoint to "evil". Berkovits brilliantly develops this idea.

Berkovits also points out how people, facing this ultimate horror reached the highest peaks of spiritual greatness, comparing it to the well-known story in the Talmud of Rabbi Akiva's saying the Shema Yisrael while his skin was being ripped off him. He shows how an individual who suffers can have his soul purified and false values that existed before can be rejected. Of course, as I indicated in the first question, there is no answer as to why one suffers and another doesn't, but these are not new questions and Jews have, one way or another, found their answers, including those who went through this hell and yet maintained their religious faith.

Regarding the second question I pointed out, Berkovits points out the Jewish people's role as the bearer of G-d's message to the world. The Biblical Prophets already grappled with these questions and pointed out that the Jews serve as a witness to G-d's presence and their suffering is a clear message to the rest of the world to reject their false ideologies because when the Jews suffer, so does the rest of the world (note how the ultimate weapon of mass destruction, the Atomic Bomb, was developed at precisely the same moment as the destruction of European Jewry). As I said above, previous generations of Jews had to deal with what seemed to be G-d's indifference to the Jewish people's anguish. Our generation has had the advantage of the revival of Jewish nationhood in Eretz Israel, in keeping with G-d's promise to the Jewish people as revealed in the Biblical prophecies. There is no doubt that the amazing resergence of Jewish religious live in the last 60 years, after such a giant catastrophe which culminated 200 years of secularization and abandonment of Jewish religiuos observance is a healthy reaction to seeing the Biblical promise fulfilled (I include the non-Zionist and anti-Zionist groups in this, even though they may outwardly deny it).

Berkovitz is one of the most refreshing modern Jewish thinkers I have ecnountered and his style of writing is directed to the thinking layman, both those with and without background in traditional Jewish and Rabbinic literature. I heartily recommend all his books, which are now being reissued by the Shalem Center in Jerusalem which has recognized the importance of his thinking.

Eliezer Berkovits (1908-1992) was a rabbi, theologian, and educator in the tradition of Orthodox Judaism. He was also the author of books such as God, Man and History, Essential Essays on Judaism, Not in Heaven: The Nature and Function of Jewish Law (Contemporary Jewish Thought), Jewish Women in Time and Torah, etc.

He wrote in the Foreword to this 1973 book, "The main thesis of this volume was worked out during the critical weeks that led up to the Six-Day War between Israel and the Arab nations, and was completed during those drama-filled six days... carried along by one's faith in the immortality of Judaism and the Jewish people, it was possible to write... Since those days, the main thesis, which was meant to be essentially a confrontation with the holocaust of European Jewry, evolved into an examination of the Jewish experience in a holocaust world and of a world history of the holocaust spirit."

Here are some quotations from the book:

"By its attitude toward the fate of the Jewish people, the Vatican, as also the other churches, lost all claim to moral and spiritual leadership in the world." (Pg. 16)

"Either something new will emerge from the ashes, or mankind is approaching its ultimate catacalysm. Auschwitz is like a final warning to the human race." (Pg. 36)

"It is not our intention to justify God's ways with Israel. Our concern is with the question of whether the affirmations of faith may be made meaningfully notwithstanding God's terrible silence during the holocaust." (Pg. 85)

"In biblical terminology, we speak of 'Hester Panim,' the Hiding of the Face, God's hiding of his countenance from the sufferer. Man seeks God in his tribulation but cannot find him." (Pg. 94)

"Through Israel God tested Western nam and found him wanting. This gruesome failure of Christianity has led the Western world to the greatest moral debacle of any civilization---the holocaust." (Pg. 127)

Dr. Berkovits' work is a wonderful answer to skeptics who use the example of Holocoast as an excuse to criticize Judaism. The queston of G-d's place in human history is as old as human history. Berkovits shows masterfully how the main thesis of Judaism has been challenged by people during the Biblical and Talmudic times. Contrasting the questions of old against modern philosophies, such as existentialism, he also shows how little the phraseology of the same old criticism has changed.

Excellent book. Too bad no longer published forcing me to buy a quality used product

The gist of Rabbi Berkovits' thesis is that while it is understandable that some survivors of the Holocaust lost faith in G-d because of their experiences, it is insult to those who survived the camps and maintained their faith for one to use the Holocaust as an excuse for apostacy. An important point we should all remember.

Also important is his opening chapter which is a scathing attack on ecumenicalism.