Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T12:05:53.236Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Jewish Faith and the Holocaust

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Dan Cohn-Sherbok
Affiliation:
University of Kent, Canterbury, England

Extract

Throughout their long history suffering has been the hallmark of the Jewish people. Driven from their homeland, buffeted from country to country and plagued by persecutions, Jews have been rejected, despised and led as a lamb to the slaughter. The Holocaust is the most recent chapter in this tragic record of events. The Third Reich's system of murder squads, concentration camps and killing centres eliminated nearly 6 million Jews; though Jewish communities had previously been decimated, such large scale devastation profoundly affected the Jewish religious consciousness. For many Jews it has seemed impossible to reconcile the concept of a loving, compassionate and merciful God with the terrible events of the Nazi regime. A number of important Jewish thinkers have grappled with traditional beliefs about God in the light of such suffering, but in various ways their responses are inadequate. If the Jewish faith is to survive, Holocaust theology will need to incorporate a belief in the Afterlife in which the righteous of Israel who died in the death camps will receive their due reward.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Wiesel, E., Nights (Bantam Books, 1982).Google Scholar As quoted by Rubenstein, R. and Roth, J.Approaches to Auschwitz (SCM Press, 1987), p. 283.Google Scholar

2 Ibid. p. 285.

3 Wiesel, E., The Trial of God (Random House, 1979), p. 129.Google Scholar

4 Ibid. p. 133.

5 Rubenstein, R. and Roth, J., op. cit. p. 287.Google Scholar

6 Wiesel, E., A Jew Today (Random House, 1978), p. 136.Google Scholar

7 Ibid. p. 164.

8 Rubenstein, R., After Auschwitz (Bobbs Merrill, 1966), p. 153.Google Scholar

9 Rubenstein, R. and Roth, J., Approaches to Auschwitz (SCM Press, 1987).Google Scholar

10 Rubenstein, R.After Auschwitz as quoted by R. Rubenstein and J. Roth op. cit. pp. 312–13.Google Scholar

11 Ibid. p. 315.

12 Cohen, A., Tremendum (Crossroad Publishing Company, 1981) as quoted by R. Rubenstein and J. Roth, op. cit. p. 330.Google Scholar

13 Ibid. p. 331.

14 Ibid. p. 332.

15 Ibid. p. 333.

16 Berkovits, E., Faith After the Holocaust (Ktav Publishing House Inc., 1973) pp. 56.Google Scholar

17 Ibid. p. 70.

18 Maybaum, I., The Face of God After the Auschwitz (Polak and Van Gennep, 1965), p. 36.Google Scholar

19 Ibid. p. 84.

20 Fackenheim, E., Judaism XVI (1967), 272–3.Google Scholar

21 Fackenheim, E., To Mend the World (Schoken Books, 1982).Google Scholar

22 Ibid. p. 250.