Notes for Religious Studies 369:

Introduction to Judaism

Religious Responses to the Holocaust

Significance of Terminology:

• Holocaust
• Shoah
• Hurban

The slowness of the religious response:

General silence until 1966-67

• American Jewry's lack of confidence in raising "parochial" concerns.
• None is Too Many, While Six Million Died, "Hollywoodism" phenomenon.
  Systemic Antisemitism in Western society, tried to suppress knowledge [including Middle-East-related reasons].
• American Jews' disconnection and ignorance of Judaism and Jewish affairs.
• Publication of Rubinstein's After Auschwitz; Fackenheim, Quest for Past and Future (cf. E. Wiesel: Night)

Revived awareness of Holocaust

• Six-Day War 1967.
• Yom Kippur War 1973.
• "Holocaust" Êtelevision miniseries (1978)
• "Schindler's List" (1993).
• Transformation of Holocaust into central consensus of American Jewish identity. Problems with this situation.

The question of ritual commemoration of the Holocaust

• Related to questions of uniqueness within Jewish perspective. Is this just another (albeit more serious) pogrom, or something unprecedented.
• Yom Ha-Shoah and relationship to Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
• "Ultra-Orthodox" [Haredi] refusal to observe Yom Hashoah [replaced by 10th of Tevet; day to recite Kaddish for the unknown victims].
• Israeli tendency to identify with partisans, but not with victims [Change of attitude in 1973].
• Eschatological implicaitons of sequence of modern commemorative dates
  1. Yom Ha-Shoah.
  2. --> Independence Day.
  3. --> Jerusalem Liberation Day.
  Eschatological implications of Holocaust as "birthpangs of Messiah."

Leo Baeck

Leo Baeck (1873-1956)

• Prominent Berlin Reform rabbi and theologian
• Deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1943, where he was distinguished for the spiritual guidance and inspiration he gave to the inmates.
• Pre-Holocaust work The Essence of Judaism presents a "conventional" interpretaiton of Judaism as ethical monotheism. Strongly influenced by Hermann Cohen.
• His post-Holocaust work This People Israel focuses on the miraculous dimensions of the survival of Judaism as a voice of rational morality in an irrational world.

Eli Wiesel

Elie Wiesel (1928-)

• From strict Hasidic background in Romania, deprted to Auschwitz at age 15.
• Novels describe bleak, unspeakable evil of Auschwitz.
• Later in his life he focuses increasingly on vital richness of Jewish tradition, especially Hasidism.
• Practical lessons of Holocaust:
• Support for Israel and oppressed Jewish communities ("Jews of Silence" in Soviet Union)
• Advocacy of Human Rights causes.

Eliezer Berkovits (1908-82)

• Traditionalist interpretation of Holocaust.
• Occasion for heroic martydom, in line with previous responses to persecutions in Jewish history. The spiritual attitude with which a Jew faces death can be a religious act.
• Although the Holocaust was the greatest catastrophe in its proportions, it was not unique in its quality.
• Contrary to the traditional Jewish response to catastrophes, the Holocaust should be ascribed to Jewish sins. It is a profound mystery, a "hiding of God's countenance."
• God's failure to interfere with human evil is a condition of human free will.
• The correct response to the Holocaust is to reaffirm the vitality of traditional Judaism and Zionism.

Emil Fackenheim

Emil Fackenheim (1916-2003)

• Was distinguished German philosopher before the War, authority on Hegel. Devoted most of his work after the Holocaust to Jewish issues.
• Spoke of the uniqueness (or unprecedentedness) of the Holocaust.
• The 614^th commanemdment: Not to give Hitler a posthumous victory by allowing Judaism to die. The survival of Jews and Judaism are a central religious imperative.
  --> Support for the state of Israel is a necessary response to the Holocaust.

Richard Rubenstein

• Argued that Holocaust shattered the main beliefs of traditional Judaism.
• It is no longer possible to believe in an all-powerful, benevolent God who guides history.
• It is no longer possible to believe in the covenant between God and the Jewish people.
• Argued for less emphasis on historical dimentions of Jewish theology, and rediscovery of God in nature.
• Jews must learn to utilize power in order to survive.

Current Developments in Judaism

Israel

• The pre-state roots of religious and religious-secular tension: The old and the new Yeshuvs; religious anti-Zionism.
• Religious Zionism: Alkalai, Kalischer Reines, Mohilever, Kook, the Mizrachi movement.
• The place of religion in the secular state:
  • the "status quo"
  • religious legislation.
  • the "Who is a Jew?" controversies.
  • religious parameters of the Israel Defense Force.
  • Judaism and Israeli civil religion.
• The evolution of Haredi Judaism in Israel: Hasidism, Yeshivah culture, Aguddat Israel.
• Gush Emunim: messianic nationalism; the settler movement. Responses to Rabin assassination, Oslo, Gaza disengagement.
• The religious left: Happoel Hamizrachi; from Brit Shalom to Netivot Shalom / Meimad.
• The "Orthodox establishment" and liberal streams of Judaism; Israeli Judaism and the diaspora.
• Religion as an instrument of ethnic and social protest: The rise of Sepharadic ultra-orthodoxy (the Shas party and its constituency).

America

• Polarization between extreme traditionalists and liberals-- decline of "classical" Conservative Judaism.
• Decline in Jewish population-- infertility, intermarriage.
• Rise of Jewish Renewal movement.
• Crises in Jewish education.

Differing trajectories betweeen Judaism in America and Israel.