God and the Holocaust

The Holocaust poses particular challenges when it comes to theology. For this week’s guest author, Rabbi Phil Cohen, these questions have been on his mind for a long time. – editor Ruth Abusch-Magder

Back in my days in the New York school I gave a presentation on the subject of post-Holocaust theology in Eugene Borowitz’s Jewish thought class.  It was 1980, and the subject had been on the table for perhaps a bit more than a decade and a half, with many serious voices weighing in on the subject of God and the Six Million.

My study of the topic brought me to the provisional conclusion that the Shoah was caused by people, that the evil perpetrated by the Nazis and their many fellow travelers in both East and West Europe was just that, evil perpetrated by human beings.  My theology, I thought, did not include the question of God’s failure to intervene in the violence, because my image of God did not allow for God to intervene into our affairs at all.  God “does” other things, but not that.

Author: Rabbi Phil Cohen

But in a low level way the subject persisted to enter my thinking from time to time.  Then I read an essay by Michael Wyschogrod in which he said, “There has crept into our consciousness a profound anger at God, and this  anger is shared by all Jews even those who will not permit this anger to become  conscious.”  (Contemporary Jewish Theology: a reader, p.247)  I took this anger as being related to the Shoah.  So I called Prof. Wyschogrod and inquired of him if a) the statement was directed at the Holocaust, and b) if he still held to the statement.  The answer to both was “yes”.  “How could a Jew think about the Holocaust and not wonder why the Kodosh Baruch hu didn’t do something?”

His statement and our brief conversation prodded me to think anew about what is at stake with the dilemma of God and the Shoah.  If we are to deny God’s ability to redeem in Auschwitz, then the liberation paradigm of the rescue at the Sea, which informs so much of our Jewish religious culture, loses meaning. We lose the dynamism of covenant, which, however interpreted, always entails a mutuality of relationship between God and the Jewish people.   We lose chosenness, a idea partnered with covenant, the belief that, somehow, the Jews and God have historically had, one might say, a privileged relationship. But perhaps most was encased in the sentiment voiced by Michael Wyschogrod, that asks how God could have not stopped the brutality.

Now, this is not to say that these historic features of Jewish belief about God ought to be maintained at all costs simply because they have a role in Jewish thought. Indeed, Richard Rubenstein, who is to be credited with bringing this topic to public discussion in 1966 with his famous work After Auschwitz, loudly declared the death of the God of history.  On the other hand, the continuity of Jewish theology could be maintained by Yoel Teitelbaum, the Satmar Rebbe, who blamed Liberal Judaism and Zionism for bringing God’s wrath upon the Jewish People.  Similarly, the English Reform Rabbi, Ignaz Maybaum, saw in the Shoah God’s hand bringing the entire world into a new and better phase of human existence through the suffering of the Jews.

I find myself caught on the horns of this dilemma.  I cannot for various reasons accept Rubenstein’s blanket declaration, nor can I see a divine purpose, punitive (Teitelbaum) or otherwise (Maybaum), in the Shoah.  However, I do like Irving Greenberg’s dialectical thinking that post-Holocaust Jewry’s consciousness sways between two poles.  On the one pole rests absolute evil and through it we viscerally experience the absence of the divine.  On the other side lies the state of Israel, no compensation for the events of 1933-45, nonetheless an experience of deep meaning for Jewish existence, in which religious people see God’s presence.  Negativity and positivity with the Jewish people swinging back and forth between them, occasionally perilously.

And then there’s Wyschogrod’s statement that all Jews bear an anger toward God.  I’m less interested in whether the statement is true than that is carries in it some truth: many people knowingly or unknowingly bear an animus toward God.  That’s important and interesting enough.

I have no satisfactory conclusion here except to say that just as the Shoah hangs over us in so many other ways, the predicament of God and Auschwitz, for me, will likely never be resolved.

For the day after Yom ha-Shoah v’hag’vurah – Holocaust Rememberance Day

by Ruth Abusch-Magder

In the normal course of things, stuff happens, good stuff, bad stuff, fun stuff, difficult stuff. Then it passes and we forget most of it. We remember what is meaningful, or useful, or hard to let go of. Those memories inform our actions, which in turn create new stuff, good stuff, bad stuff, fun stuff, difficult stuff.

But when something catastrophic happens, when the stuff is beyond words, imagination, or of a scope that cannot be imagined, this regular chain of stuff, remembering, forgetting and incorporating is disrupted.

Growing up in a family that was, as my mother now calls us, second hand Holocaust survivors, I lived with the effects of catastrophic disruption. No one in the family that went to the camps survived but many did escape. It was not easy, (you can learn about how my family was interned in United States at the Holocaust Museum) and it left long and lasting imprints. Hitler and the Holocaust were ever present and our extended family ever absent.

On my path to figuring out how to cope with this legacy, I became a Jewish historian. My initial goals were purely feminist, but when I settled on the study of German Jews, I had to confront my sense of disruption, memory and family history.

The focus of my graduate work was the period from 1848-1914. I looked at the rythms and flow of domestic life. As I read diaries, letters, and cookbooks, the mundane elements of daily life came to life. There were joys and frustrations, aspirations and limitations. It was stuff, good stuff, bad stuff, fun stuff, difficult stuff –normal stuff.

Somewhere in between the Anschlus and the liberations of 1945, my namesake, Razel Lowy Brody known as Rufi was murdered. My mother never knew her grandmother. Never got to experience her cooking, her drawing, her singing. She never had a chance to get annoyed with her grandmother, bored that she told the same old stories, or argue with her about the way she dressed. She missed out on all the stuff. She never got to remember, forget and incorporate the way one normally does in the ebb and flow of life.

It goes without saying that we can never forget the brutality of the Nazis and the callousness of the millions of bystanders. That is what Holocaust Remembrance day is for.

But if we only remember that, we are in danger of handing Hitler a posthumous victory. Reducing the memories of those who perished to their final helpless moments robs them of the complex legacies they would have passed on if the richness of their lives had been lived out in the proper order of things.

When the candles go out at the end of Holocaust Remembrance day, take some time to engage with the past. Learn about Jewish life in Greece, the complexities of ethic Jewish identity in Yugoslavia, or domesticity in Germany. Take some time to get to know the people who did not live to share their stuff.

Memory and the Nazi Legacy: Modern Germany from a Jewish Perspective

Memorial to Jews in Center of Berlin

For Jews, German history casts a long shadow over modern Germany. It can be a challenge to know how to make sense of this legacy as we go about building a vision for the Jewish world. In recent years several groups of HUC-JIR students from across the programs and campuses, have traveled to Germany Up Close. This week, Andi Milens, Vice President at the Jewish Council for Public Affairs reflects on what she has learned from her experiences with the program. This January, a select group will initiate the first HUC-JIR alumni travel program with Germany Up Close. Applications for the program can be found by clicking on this link.

It’s amazing how something as mundane as a bus stop can change your whole perspective on something. I guess the fact that the bus stop was in the heart of Berlin rather than in Manhattan, where I live, might have made a difference.

It was October 2004, my first visit to Berlin, although not my first trip to Germany. I was a participant in a trip called Bridge of Understanding, a precursor to the Germany Close Up program. Walking rather absentmindedly down the street, out of the corner of my eye I caught the outside of a bus stop. I almost passed it up, but then I realized that it was an explanation of the role the building opposite the bus stop had played during the Third Reich. A few paragraphs into reading it, I realized that the explanation was entirely in English. That struck me as odd until it occurred to me to walk around to the inside of the bus stop. There was the same explanation, in German.

Andi Milens

In that moment, I began to understand something about German society. They get it. They know how to do memory. They have accepted their history and figured out how to collectively remember and memorialize it. There wasn’t any German on the outside of the bus stop because Germans won’t stop to read it while they’re hurrying along their way. The German explanation is on the inside of the bus stop because that’s where Germans will read it.

This thoughtful addressing of both the past and the present struck me in sharp contrast to my visit to Poland two months prior. In all fairness, I met very few Poles on that trip. But based on observation and hearing only about Poles as victims of the Nazis with no acceptance of responsibility for their actions toward the Jews (and others), it made me appreciate all the more how far Germany has come.

There is any number of examples of how Germany does memory. Shortly after my 2004 visit, the Berlin Holocaust Memorial opened. Beyond the significance of its architecture and its location -in the heart of Berlin, steps from the Brandenburg Gate, is its name: The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The name is important and powerful, a constant reminder that the Jews of Europe were murdered by Hitler and the Nazis and all those who participated or stood idly by. A memorial to homosexual victims was opened in 2008, across from the Jewish memorial, in Berlin’s equivalent to Central Park. Brass plaques on Berlin street corners bear the names of the Jews from that street who were taken away (granted, a controversial installation). There is no hiding the past; reminders are everywhere and occupy the time and space of everyday life.

What struck me most, though, was our visit to the Reichstag, the home of the German Parliament. From the outside, it looks like the old Reichstag – Gothic, imposing, and intimidating. Much of the building’s interior is made of plexiglass (or some other like material). As you look through a floor to ceiling window on a memorial to those who died trying to escape over the Berlin Wall, you understand the architect’s vision. The purpose of the architecture is to serve as a constant reminder of the importance of the transparency of democracy.

That’s a powerful thought. There are people who look at any German over a certain age and wonder what they were doing during the Holocaust. Now I look at that same person and consider that here is a person who understands what it’s like to live without democracy. I’m 41 years old, born in America. No matter how angry I am about our civil liberties that have been taken away since 9/11 or that are still denied to segments of our society, I have never known what it’s like to live without democracy.

In a small town outside Bad Arolsen, where the International Committee of the Red Cross maintains an archive of 50 million original Holocaust records, I visited a tiny Jewish cemetery that has been restored by volunteers. When they restored the low cemetery wall, they inserted plaques with the names of the Jews who were taken away. And they left empty spaces representing the absence the community feels. In the next town they’ve restored the synagogue, and schoolchildren visit as part of their curriculum. In the next town volunteers have turned a house into a museum remembering the Jews that were lost.

I learned a new piece of history when I was in Bad Arolsen: the week before Kristallnacht, the Nazis did a trial run to see what the reaction would be. If there was no huge outcry, they’d do it on a larger scale. So there was a pogrom in Bad Arolsen. And there was no outcry. Why not? Maybe the Germans didn’t care about their Jewish friends and neighbors; maybe they agreed with what the Nazis were doing. And yet again, maybe they were confused and terrified. Maybe they were afraid that if they raised an objection, their home, too, would be burned, or worse.

Our guide did not have a definitive answer. I think he wanted to believe the fear theory. Many in the American Jewish community, including those who chastised my parents for letting me travel to Germany when I was 17, would probably choose to believe that none of the Germans in Bad Arolsen objected to the pogrom. I don’t know the answer.

I have now been to Germany 4 times — to Berlin twice, to Frankfurt, Weimar and Dresden, and to a surprising number of small towns. I’ve been to Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen. My experiences in Germany have shown me that as a society, Germany deals with its past. It isn’t easy; it is painful and sometimes overwhelming and unrelenting, perhaps to a fault. They deal in different ways, but they deal with it. We could all learn something from the German experience.

Most importantly, for me, is this. Germany makes me think. It makes me rethink my view of history. It makes me ask questions. It challenges me to form my own opinion, even if it’s not very popular in some circles. It makes me appreciate the choices individuals and societies wrestle with. It makes me think about the past and the present and the future. I have been forever changed by my experiences in Germany, none of them easy – and for that I am grateful.

Prayers for 9-11

Liturgy is an essential element for clergy planning memorial tributes, but in looking ahead towards the 10th anniversary of 9-11, several rabbis noted that the complexity and immediacy of the events might not be addressed by the traditional Jewish liturgy. In looking to fill this void I turned to Alden Solovy. A member Temple Beth Emet-The Free Synagogue in Evanston IL, Solovy has been blogging meditations and tefillot with contemporary themes and traditional resonances on his blog To Bend Light. He took up the challenge of creating liturgy for our communal needs at this time and writes in this second in a series on 9-11 of the challenges and possibilities that emerge.  Please let us know if you choose to use any of these prayers or offerings. And as always you are encouraged to send ideas and materials to add to the conversation.

-Ruth Abusch-Magder

In the past two years I’ve written more than 150 new t’fillot, meditations and liturgical poems. Some take classic themes and put them in a modern voice (for example, “Israel: A Meditation”) and others take modern themes and give them a classic voice (for example, “In Memory of an Organ Donor”). Others take a new look at specific spiritual triumphs and challenges.

Alden Solovy

Writing prayers to commemorate 9-11 raised a variety of questions, among them:

• Whether or not to use particularly charged words, like hero, victim or terrorist?
• What voice to use, first person or third person, the voice of the witness or the survivor?
• Whether or not to make distinctions – among others – between those who were on planes, those who were in targeted buildings, those who were in target zones, first responders, family members and those of us who witnessed from across the nation?
• How or if to relate to the terrorist in prayer?

For the most part, these prayers illustrate my answers. Two of these offerings are Yizkor prayers. The intent of creating Yizkor prayers is to provide family and friends with an ongoing liturgical response to their losses. Note that the Yizkor prayer for first responders has an intentionally broader focus than 9-11.

G-d of the survivor,

G-d of the mourner and the witness,

Grant solace and peace to those still held by physical, emotional and spiritual distress from the attacks of 9-11. Release them from visions of death and destruction, from guilt or shame, from fear or anger. Bind their wounds with Your steadfast love. Lift them on Your wings of kindness and grace.

Blessed are those who have found peace.

Blessed are those without tranquility.

Blessed are those who speak.

Blessed are those who stay silent.

Blessed are those who have healed.

Blessed are those who suffer.

Blessed are those who forgive.

Blessed are those who cannot forgive.

Blessed are You, Adonai our G-d, Source of strength for survivors of violence and tragedy in every land and in every age. Blessed are You, Rock of Israel, Source of hope and comfort.

To the Terrorist

You who would hold the sky captive,

The sea prisoner,

The land in chains…

You who hide in caves,

Retreat to the wilderness,

Disappear behind false names and forged papers…

You who smuggle guns and arms,

Hide rockets in cities and bombs in homes,

Build weapons against the innocent and the bystander…

You whose designs are destruction,

Whose plans are fear,

Whose joy is hate…

You who harden your hearts

And wrap yourselves in death…

What evil has robbed you of your love,

Your compassion,

Your goodness,

Your humanity?

What lies have invaded your minds

So that you choose to die in order to kill?

We who love our lives and liberty

Stand firm and strong against terror.

We will defend our nation and our people.

We will protect our land and our homes.

And we pray for you to find hope and comfort

In lives of peace.

At the Hand of Terror: A 9-11 Yizkor Prayer

Creator of all,

Source and shelter,

Grant a perfect rest under your tabernacle of peace

To ______________________ (name in Hebrew or your native tongue),

My [ father / mother / sister / brother / child / wife / dear one/ friend ]

Who died [ in / during / because of ]

The 9/11 attacks on the United States.

Remember the works of his/her hands

And the message of his/her heart

Remember all those who were lost in the terror of that day.

Grant their families peace and comfort for Your name’s sake

And for the sake of those who perished.

Bring an end to violence and terror,

Speedily, in our days.

May the memory of _____________________ be sanctified with joy and love.

May his/her soul be bound up in the bond of life,

A living blessing in our midst.

Yizkor for First Responders

G-d of the selfless,

G-d of the strong and the brave,

Grant a perfect rest among the souls of the righteous

To ______________________ (name in Hebrew or your native tongue),

My [ father / mother / sister / brother / child / wife / dear one/ friend ]

Who died in service to others [ in / during / because of ]

_________________________________________________ [name of event such as:

[the 9/11 attacks on the Unites States, the Mount Carmel forest fire, etc.].

May his/her  dedication to protecting life serve as a shining lamp of  love

And the works of his/her  hands bring us all merit in heaven.

Bless the souls of all who have died to save others,

Civilians and professionals,

The trained and the untrained,

In every age and in every land,

Men and women who answered the call of honor, duty and service.

May the memory of _____________________ be sanctified with joy and love.

May his/her soul be bound up in the bond of life,

A living blessing in our midst.

Other prayers that may be useful in developing a 9-11 commemoration are:

• “Against Tyranny” – A prayer against oppressive regimes
• “At the Hand of Violence: A Yizkor Prayer” – For those who died by violence
• “For Bereaved Children” – A prayer of mourning and hope for children who’ve lost parents
• “For the Bereaved” – A prayer of mourning for all
• “After Shiva” – When the shiva is over, what next?

All of these works are © 2011 Alden Solovy and www.tobendlight.com. All rights reserved. Please see “Share the Prayer!” for permission instructions.