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Recently, I was having a conversation with someone who had at one time held very traditional views about God and God’s interaction with humanity. Through the years though, his views began to change. During our chat, he told me how a few days previously he went to visit his friend at the hospital - a wonderful, loving person who was terminally ill. He held him, put his hand on his forehead, and prayed fervently for his recovery. Early the next morning, his friend died. “What use was prayer?” – he asked me. If God was really involved in human affairs, if prayers and righteousness could alter the course of events, why do the innocent continue dying horrible and untimely deaths? He further asked: “if God is all powerful and all loving, how could It have allowed the Holocaust to happen?”
The question of “tzadik v’ra lo”, why do bad things happen to good people, has challenged philosophers and theologians for thousands of years. But, especially in Judaism, no single event has shaken our faith like the Shoah. Where was God all this time? Being that tomorrow is Yom Hashoah, I thought it appropriate to mention some of the ways in which Jewish theologians have sought to come to terms with the Shoah, and at the end we will take a look at this week’s Torah portion to see if it can contribute to our discussion. The first views I will discussed are eloquently portrayed in Dr. Naomi Pasachoff’s book Great Jewish Thinkers.
Once Probst Gruber, a German Protestant cleric who endangered himself to save Jews during the Holocaut, told American-born Richard Rubenstein that the Shoah must have been God’s will. Many have taken a similar approach. A few years ago, former Sephardi Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef caused furore by asserting that Holocaust victims were reincarnations of the souls of sinners, since it was impossible for God to punish the innocent. They were paying in this life for sins committed in previous ones. Rubenstein’s response to Gruber was strong and radical. How could one ever justify God brining such atrocious punishments on humanity? Rubenstein concluded that God as conceptualised in Jewish tradition could never have allowed such things to happen. When faced with the facts, we must acknowledge that such a God is dead.
Notwithstanding God’s inexistence, Rubenstein still recognised the important role religion held for humanity. Using arguments similar to those expressed by classical sociologists like Emile Durkheim, Rubenstein believed that religion helped bind the community and society. Religious observance allowed individuals to share their joys and sorrows and find comfort from solace. It is humans and not God who build their life-path, strive for self-preservation, and imbue their lives with meaning. Jews as a nation are obligated to preserve themselves and protect their own.
Rubenstein did away with the concept of the Chosen People. Such a view held currency only in connection to the God of Abraham and Sarah, a God which was no longer. We would then have to be not the Chosen People, but the Surviving People – survival should replace chosenness as the paradigm of Jewish peoplehood. Israel assumed prime importance because it became the vehicle for Jewish survival. Furthermore, since we are not the Chosen, our ethical standards should be equal to and not higher than those of others – as a nation, we should not be judged by higher moral standards.
The German-born Orthodox Rabbi Eliezer Berkowits took a totally different approach from Rubenstein. The Holocaust must not weaken our belief in the traditional God of Judaism. He sees the problem posed by the Holocaust not as a unique one, perhaps only in its magnitude. For thousands of years our people have tried to come to terms with tragedy, and the same question can be asked for the death of six million or the extinguishing of one soul – how can a just God allow for this? Prophets asked such questions, as did the Psalmist: “My God, my God – why have you forsaken me? “
Berkowits answers that in order to allow for humans to exert free will and have the ability to make moral choices, God must stop intervening in human affairs. If God was a constant force in history, humans would be like pre-programmed robots on auto-pilot. God must therefore use Its power to restrain Itself from getting involved. In the words of Berkowits: “God is mighty for He shackles His Omnipotence and becomes ‘powerless’ so that history may be possible”. God “countenanced the Holocaust” but was not directly involved in the human actions that led to it. It was ultimately humans, and not God, who brought about the Shoah. Nevertheless, even though we cannot come to understand why God has allowed the suffering of the innocent, we are comforted by the traditional view that God will “redeem all suffering” in the future. The fact that as a people we survived the Holocaust proves that good and godliness ultimately triumph over evil. The creation of the State of Israel serves as proof that God continues in his redemptive role of humanity. Furthermore, we must not only focus on the atrocities of the Nazis, but also on the heroism of all those who put their lives at stake to save others during the Shoah. We must therefore not lose hope of humanity’s intrinsic good.
Emil Fackenheim, a German-born survivor and Liberal rabbi, greatly contributed to post-Holocaust theology. In his view, there are “root experiences” in every religion which subsequently influence theology and belief. We as Jews have had two “root experiences”. When we were redeemed from Egypt, we experienced “God’s saving presence”, and when we stood at Mt. Sinai, we experienced “God’s commanding presence”. These are the two ways in which God deals with humanity. During the Holocaust, God’s “commanding presence” was there, but not God’s “saving presence”. We are nonetheless still left struggling to understand why this was the case. However, the most important contribution of Fackenheim lies in his view that after the Shoah God gave us a 614th commandment: “Jews are forbidden to hand Hitler posthumous victories”. When we Jews assimilate or abandon the faith, we are effectively fulfilling Hitler’s plan of ridding the world of the Jews. After Auschwitz, Jewish survival became a sacred task. Nevertheless, this does not imply a duty of strict religious observance. We can still maintain lives of “holy secularity”, by simply surviving and preserving our people, by remaining Jewish.
As Jews, we must also “remember the victims of Auschwitz , lest their memories perish”. Furthermore, we must never lose faith in humanity or in God. Our people are forbidden “to despair of man and his world... lest they cooperate in delivering the world over to the forces of Auschwitz”, and “to despair of the God of Israel, lest Judaism perish”. Finally, the state of Israel’s existence embodies our collective commitment to staying alive. Therefore, he says, “at the heart of every authentic response to the Holocaust... is a commitment to the autonomy and security of the State of Israel”.
So far, we have seen some of the radically different ways in which Jews theologians have tried to come to terms with the Holocaust. Some of these answers perhaps begin to satisfy us, but truthfully – is any answer good enough? I think of the small boy who tried to stop a giant dyke from exploding by sticking his finger in the rupture. Let us now turn to this week’s Torah portion, Shmini (Leviticus 9:11), for an insight.
Shmini describes an exhilarating moment for the Israelites in the desert. For a long period of time, the Israelites had been working hard to build the Tabernacle. On this day, it was finally being consecrated. It was a joy comparable to the one we will experience when, after all the building works, the Metropolitan Line will once again be running. If that day will ever come! Aaron, Moses’ brother, and his sons, the priests, were anointed and the service at the Tabernacle began. The people were blessed, and a huge fire descended from heaven consuming all the offerings. Then, Aaron’s sons, Nadav and Avihu, took their censers, put fire in them and added incense. Nevertheless, what they offered was unauthorized “alien” fire before God, contrary what God had commanded. So therefore a second fire came down from heaven and consumed them, and we are told that “they died BEFORE God” (Lev. 10:2).
Commentators struggled to understand the sin that brought about such harsh heavenly reactions. Some say that Nadav and Avihu made the offerings when they were a bit tipsy from wine, others that they were haughty and ambitious by doing that which was not commanded, or were guilty of excessive religious zeal, innovation, or refusal to marry. In any case, I want to focus on both Moses’ and Aaron’s different responses to the tragedy. Moses approaches Aaron and tells him, "this is what Adonai spoke of when he said: 'Among those who are close to me I will show myself holy; in the sight of all the people I will be honoured' " (Lev. 10:3). Moses is trying to comfort Aaron by saying that it was because of their closeness to God that Nadav and Avihu were chosen as “sacrifices” to make known God’s greatness. We often encounter similar imagery when we hear about the Holocaust in traditional settings: the victims were holy offerings, they died sanctifying God’s name. But Aaron’s reaction is quite different. He doesn’t even respond to Moses. The Torah just tells us “vaydom Aharon” (Lev. 9:3). Aaron remained silent. But vaydom implies more than silence. The same Hebrew root is used traditionally to describe the vegetable kingdom – domem. Aaron was so affected that for a few moments he was in a vegetative state. Whilst Moses jumped to try to find justifications or understandings for severe suffering, Aaron perceived all these to be futile. When faced with real tragedy, no explanation is ever good enough, no answer ever absolute.
From Aaron perhaps we can learn an approach to the Holocaust. A horror of this magnitude can never really be comprehended. Trying to put in or take away God from the picture is futile and irrelevant. A similar approach was taken by survivor Eli Wiesel, who said that with regards to the Holocaust, it may be impossible to even formulate the right questions, let alone answer them. The Shoah simply leaves us with an inner void. A darkness of such degree irrevocably achieves such. Nevertheless, even though we are left without an understanding of the reasons behind the Holocaust, we have emerged with the firmest of understandings about its implications.
It is our duty to rise up in action to prevent such atrocities from repeating themselves in the future.
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