Holocaust theology

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The term Holocaust theology refers to a complex of theological and philosophical debate and analysis that explores the role of God and evil in the world in light of the historical experience of the Holocaust in which six million Jews were genocide . The Holocaust theology is also referred to as the theology after Auschwitz with reference to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp as the epitome of the Holocaust.

Judaism , Christianity and Islam traditionally teach that God is omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing) and omnibenevolent (all-good). These claims are contrasted with the fact that there is much evil in the world. One question monotheists face is to what extent the existence of God can be considered compatible with the problem of evil . In all monotheistic faiths there are attempts to solve this question (→ theodicy ). In view of the extent of the evil that became visible in the Holocaust, many theologians and philosophers have re-examined the classical views of this problem and asked for a concept of God after Auschwitz.

Jewish answers

Here are some of the key answers that have been given in Jewish thought to the Holocaust:

  1. A new answer is not necessary. The Holocaust is like any other terrible tragedy. This event only urges us to ask the question again why bad things sometimes happen to good people.
  2. The Rabbinic Judaism has a doctrine from the books of the prophets ( Tanakh ), called mi-penei hataeinu , "because of our sins we were punished." In biblical times, when evils fell upon the Jewish people, the prophets emphasized that suffering is the natural result of not obeying God's commandments, just as prosperity, peace, and health are the natural consequences of obeying God's commandments. This is why some representatives of the Orthodox community have taught that many Jewish people in Europe were deeply sinful. From this point of view, the Holocaust is a just punishment from God.
  3. The Holocaust is an example of the temporary divine eclipse. There are times when God is inexplicably absent in world history.
  4. If there was a god, he would have prevented the Holocaust. Since God did not prevent it, God never existed at all.
  5. “ God is dead. ” If God existed, he would have prevented the Holocaust. Since God did not prevent it, God has turned away from the world for some reason and left us to ourselves forever.
  6. Horrible events like the Holocaust are the price we have to pay for free will . According to this view, God cannot and does not want to interfere in history, otherwise our free will would in a sense cease to exist. The Holocaust only throws a bad light on humanity, not on God.
  7. The Holocaust is perhaps in some ways a revelation from God. This event represents a call to Jewish reassurance to survive.
  8. The Holocaust is a mystery beyond our understanding. It may have a meaning or a purpose, but when it does, that meaning is beyond human comprehension.
  9. Indeed, the Jewish people have become the "suffering servant" of Isaiah . The Jewish people collectively suffer for the sins of the world. The reformist rabbi Ignaz Maybaum suggested seeing the Holocaust as the ultimate form of vicarious reconciliation.
  10. God exists, but God is not all powerful. This corresponds to Open Theism . All of the above arguments are based on the premise that God is almighty and could have prevented the Holocaust. What if this is not the case? Even from this point of view, the Holocaust only throws a bad light on humanity, since it has not fulfilled its moral responsibility for fellow human beings, but not on God, who could not help. Thus God is practically acquitted regarding the theodicy question regarding the genocide of the Jews. Many representatives of liberal Judaism take this view, including Rabbi Harold Kushner and the Jewish philosopher Hans Jonas .
  11. Elie Wiesel speaks of silence, horror and the disenfranchisement of God. And then: "To be a Jew means to have all the reasons in the world for not having faith (...) in God; but to keep telling the story (...) and to have my own silent prayers and mine Confrontations with God. "

Answers from Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox Judaism

Many followers of ultra-Orthodox Judaism see the blame for the Holocaust in the fact that numerous European Jews had given up Jewish traditions and instead adopted ideologies such as socialism , Zionism or other non-Orthodox Jewish currents. Others claim that God sent the Nazis to murder the Jews because Orthodox European Jews did not do enough to fight these trends or because they did not support Zionism. According to this ultra-orthodox theodicy, the Jews of Europe were sinners who deserved to die, and God, who allowed them to do so, acted rightly and justly.

Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum (leader of the Satmar movement) wrote:

“Because of our sinfulness we have suffered badly, suffering as bitter as wormwood, worse than anything Israel has known since it was a people… In earlier times, whenever evil befell Jacob, the matter was pondered and reasons sought - which ones Sin created these evils - so that we could reform ourselves and return to the Lord, bless his name ... But in our generation we don't have to search long for the sin that is responsible for our misery ... Heretics in every possible way have Broken oaths to ascend by force and gain sovereignty and freedom by oneself before the appointed time ... (They) have lured the majority of the Jewish people into pernicious heresy such as has never been seen since the creation of the world ... And so it is no wonder the Lord dealt a blow in anger ... And there were also righteous people who perished because of the iniquities of sinners and seducers, so great w ar the (divine) anger. "

But there is also the opposite view: The Religious Zionists understand the Holocaust as a collective punishment for the continued Jewish infidelity to the Land of Israel . Rabbi Mordecai Atiyah was a leading proponent of this idea. Zwi Jehuda Kook and his students avoided this harsh position for themselves, but they too connect the Holocaust with the recognition of Zion. Kook writes: "When the end comes and Israel does not recognize it, a cruel divine act will take place through which the Jewish people will be removed from their exile." Here, too, the Holocaust is embedded in an eschatologically necessary sequence of events.

Chaim Ozer Grodzinski claimed in 1939 that the persecution of the Jews by the National Socialists was based on the mistakes of the non-Orthodox Jews.

Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler had similar views, which are also discussed in Landau's book.

Some ultra-Orthodox rabbis today warn that if one does not follow the Orthodox interpretation of Jewish law, God would send a new Holocaust. Elasar Menachem Schach , head of a Lithuanian Orthodox yeshiva in Israel until his death in 2001 , issued this warning on the eve of the 1991 Gulf War . He claimed there would be a new Holocaust as punishment for neglecting religion and “desecrating” the Sabbath in Israel.

Modern Orthodox Jewish Views

Most modern Orthodox Jews reject the idea that the Holocaust was God's fault. Modern Orthodox rabbis such as Joseph Ber Soloveitchik , Norman Lamm, Abraham Besdin, Emanuel Rackman, Eliezer Berkovits and others have written on this subject, many of their texts being collected in the volume Theological and Halakhic Reflections on the Holocaust, edited by the Rabbinical Council of America (ed . by Bernhard H. Rosenberg and Fred Heuman, Ktav / RCA, 1992).

Works by important Jewish thinkers

Richard Rubenstein

Richard Rubenstein's original work on the subject, After Auschwitz , postulated that the only honest intellectual response to the Holocaust was to reject God and to recognize that all existence was utterly pointless. There is no divine plan or purpose, no God revealing His will to humanity, and God does not care about the world. Man has to create and maintain the value of his life himself. This view was rejected by Jews of all religious backgrounds, but Rubenstein's books were widely read in the Jewish communities of the 1970s.

Since then Rubenstein has begun to shift from his original position; his later works support a form of deism according to which one can believe that God exists as the basis for reality. These later works include cabalistic ideas about the nature of God.

Emil Fackenheim

Emil Fackenheim is known for his cautious approach to the Holocaust, in which he believes he can find a new revelation from God. For Fackenheim, the Holocaust is an "epoch-making event". Contrary to Richard Rubenstein's well-known views, Fackenheim says people need to continue reaffirming their belief in God and God's continued role in the world. Fackenheim thinks that the Holocaust reveals a new biblical commandment: "You shouldn't leave Hitler with posthumous victories!"

Ignaz Maybaum

Ignaz Maybaum takes a view that has found little support in the Jewish and Christian communities : the Holocaust is the ultimate form of vicarious reconciliation. The Jewish people have actually become Isaiah's “suffering servant”, they suffer for the sins of the world. Maybaum writes: “In Auschwitz, the Jews suffered on behalf of the sins of humanity.” Note: According to traditional Christian understanding, Jesus Christ already did this through his death on the cross . It is therefore understandable that quite a few believing Christians, as mentioned above, are rather hostile to this view. Others - such as B. the Berlin theologian Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt (1928–2002) - see this as confirmation of the bond between Jesus and his people in the service of humanity.

Eliezer Berkovits

Eliezer Berkovits (1908–1992) believed that human free will depends on God keeping his decisions hidden. If God revealed himself in history and withheld the hand of tyrants, human free will would be virtually nonexistent.

Harold Kushner, William Kaufman and Milton Steinberg

Rabbis Harold Kushner , William E. Kaufman, and Milton Steinberg believe that God is not all powerful and therefore is not responsible when people abuse their free will. There is, therefore, no contradiction between the existence of God and the practice of evil deeds by parts of humanity. The advocates of this view also refer to classical Jewish authorities such as Abraham ibn Daud , Abraham ibn Ezra and Gersonides .

Irving Greenberg

Irving Greenberg is a modern day Orthodox rabbi who has written extensively on how the Holocaust should affect Jewish theology. Greenberg has an orthodox understanding of God. Like many other Orthodox Jews, he does not believe that God forces people to obey Jewish law; rather, he believes that Jewish law is God's legacy to the Jewish people and that Jews should follow Jewish law as the norm.

Greenberg's break with orthodox theology goes hand in hand with his analysis of the implications of the Holocaust. He writes that the worst thing God could do to the Jewish people for not obeying His commandments was a Holocaust-like catastrophe - but that is exactly what happened. Greenberg is not saying that God actually used the Holocaust to punish the Jews - he is just saying that if God decided to do so, it would be the worst possible event. Indeed, it is hard to imagine anything worse than the Holocaust. Therefore, because God cannot punish us with anything worse than what has actually happened, and because God does not force Jews to obey Jewish law, we cannot claim that those laws are enforceable. Consequently, Greenberg argues, the covenant between God and the Jewish people has broken and is no longer binding.

Greenberg notes that there have been various horrific disasters in Jewish history, and each of them had the effect of further distancing the Jewish people from God. According to rabbinical literature, after the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem and the mass murder of Jerusalem's Jews, the Jews no longer received direct prophecy. After the destruction of the second temple and the mass murder that went with it, the Jews could no longer make sacrifices in the temple. This way to God was now blocked. Greenberg suspects that after the Holocaust, God no longer answers the prayers of Jews.

So God has unilaterally terminated his covenant with the Jewish people. In this view, God no longer has the moral authority to require that people obey His will. But Greenberg does not conclude from this that the Jews and God should henceforth go their separate ways; rather, he suggests that we should heal the covenant between the Jews and God, and that the Jewish people should voluntarily adopt Jewish law.

Greenberg's views have drawn harsh criticism from within Orthodox Judaism.

Menachem Mendel Schneerson

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Menachem Mendel Schneerson rejected all these explanations for the Holocaust, writing:

“What greater imagination and what greater heartlessness can there be than the belief that you have an 'explanation' for the death and torment of millions of innocent men, women and children? Can we really suppose that an explanation small enough to fit into the limited human mind could explain a horror of such magnitude? We can only admit that there are things that are beyond the limits of the human mind. It is not my job to justify G ‑ d here. Only G ‐ d himself can answer why he makes something happen. And the only answer we will accept is immediate and complete salvation, which will forever banish evil from the face of the earth and bring to light the inner goodness and perfection of Gd's creation. "

For those who argue that the Holocaust refutes the existence of God or divine care for people, the rabbi says:

“On the contrary - the Holocaust has resolutely refuted any belief in human morality. In pre-war Europe, it was the German people who embodied culture, scientific progress and philosophical morality. And these same people committed the worst known atrocities in human history! The Holocaust at the latest has taught us that a moral and civilized existence is only possible through belief in divine power. Our outrage, our relentless questioning of God over events - this is itself a powerful testimony of our faith and our trust in his goodness. For if we did not have this belief in our core, what should we be upset about? About the blind work of fate? The random arrangement of quarks that make up the universe? Only because we believe in God, only because we are convinced that there is right and wrong, and that the right must and will triumph in the end, only because of this do we cry out like Moses: 'Why, my G ‐ d, you have your people Done bad ?! '"

Strongly rejecting the view that the Holocaust is a punishment for the sins of this generation, he says:

“The extermination of six million Jews in this horrific manner, which surpasses the atrocities of all previous generations, cannot possibly be a punishment for sin. Even Satan himself could not find a sufficient number of sins for such genocide to be appropriate! There is absolutely no rational explanation for the Holocaust other than that it was a divine ordinance - why this happened is beyond the human mind - but clearly not as a punishment for sin. On the contrary: all those who were murdered in the Holocaust are called 'kedoshim' - saints - because they were murdered for the sanctification of the name of G ‑ d. Because they were Jews, only G ‐ d will atone for their blood. As we say on the Sabbath in the Av-Harachamim prayer: 'The holy churches that gave their lives for the sanctification of the divine name ... and vengeance for the shed blood of your servants, as it is written in the Torah of Moses ... for it will to avenge the shed blood of his servants ... and in the scriptures it is said ... let vengeance for the shed blood of your servants be made known among the Gentiles before our eyes! ' God describes those who are sanctified as his servants, and he promises to avenge their blood. The kedoshim are so high that the rabbis say of them: 'No creation can stand in their place'. This is even more true of those who were killed in the Holocaust, including many of Europe's greatest Torah scholars and devout Jews. It is inconceivable to portray the Holocaust as a punishment for sin, especially when it comes to this generation previously mentioned as 'a torch ripped from the fire of the Holocaust.' "

Christian theology

Orthodoxy theology

The common view in Christian Orthodox theology is that God punishes all peoples and nations who consider themselves God's beloved Israel. In accordance with the teaching of the Church Fathers , the Church (i.e. the Orthodox Church ) is seen as the "New Israel". With the expansion of the covenant offered by God to all peoples and nations, Jesus Christ “broke off” the “fence” between Jews and Gentiles ( Eph 2.14  EU ) and thus opened up the possibility of general peace. Analogous to the post-Auschwitz theology discussed in the churches of the West, a “post- Gulag theology ” is being discussed in the Russian Orthodox Church .

Evang./Kath. theology

The fundamental reliance of Christian theology on Judaism and on the Jews after Auschwitz was described by Berthold Klappert (Protestant). This concerns a) Judaism as a witness to memory. Against the constant displacement process of Christians and other people. b) The messianic hope that Jews and Christians have in common in the coming reign of God and Son of man, c) The experience of God and the speaking of God. Theodor W. Adorno asked whether one could still write poetry after Auschwitz. Milan Machovec asked if one could still pray after Auschwitz. Johann Baptist Metz replied: "We can pray after Auschwitz because there was prayer in Auschwitz too." Metz refers to authentic descriptions. d) Israel as God's people-like community and the Church as the ecumenical people of God are the two figures of the one people of God. According to its destiny, the church is a witness to the anticipation of the coming kingdom in Jesus and must therefore allow Israel to ask whether it is "gripped by the passion for the rule of God on earth, which does not come to terms with pious feelings and thoughts can, but which takes on the struggle for the designed, physical life up to the struggle for the right institutions of fair wages, the care for the weak, the disempowerment of the great power of money. " e) The determination of the mandate of Christian theology has become urgent, as messianic hope urges us to serve suffering humanity.

The problem of "processing" Auschwitz

In the theological drafts that refer to Auschwitz, Norbert Reck notes, the cipher "Auschwitz" easily slips into a symbolic use (as an example for evil, as a signal word that indicates a paradigm shift, as a "station" in history violence, as the culmination of a "series of victims"). In such terms, nothing of the self-confidence of those directly affected and nothing of their experience becomes visible. Those affected are in danger of being seen very summarily, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, at least tending to be fixated on victim status.

The theological considerations are in danger of losing their response character and turning Auschwitz into a theological principle to bring Auschwitz to the point. On the other hand, before any theological reflection, one must listen to the voices of the victims of the Shoah. These voices can be found in diaries, chronicles, letters, and cash registers (among others, there are: Chaim Kaplan, Eugène Heimler, Robert Antelme, Elie Wiesel). These voices must be the starting point of all reflection.

Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt locates the problem of the questionable speech of God in the difference between systematics and dogmatics. Systematic thinking takes place in abstractions, principles and the resulting derivations. In contrast, dogmatics knows the hoping "Amen" shown here. Dogmatic thinking remains open to the irritations and questioning of history. Unlike by telling our story ante and post Auschwitz, we will no longer come to any true knowledge of God.

Johann Baptist Metz (Roman Catholic) formulated a simple standard for a Christian theology after Auschwitz: I give my students an apparently very simple, but actually highly demanding criterion for assessing the theological scene: Ask yourself whether the theology you are getting to know is such that it could actually be the same before and after Auschwitz. If so, then be on your guard! ”“ I consider every Christian theodicy (i.e. every attempt at the so-called “justification of God”) and every talk of “meaning” in the face of Auschwitz that begins outside or above this catastrophe as blasphemy. There is only meaning for us to invoke, even divine, insofar as it was not disclosed in Auschwitz itself, but that means that we Christians are now dependent on the victims of Auschwitz for our own sake - in a downright salvation history Alliance, if the word "history" in the Christian word "salvation history" should retain a certain meaning and not only act as a pretext for a triumphalistic salvation metaphysics that never learns from catastrophes, never turns into catastrophes because for them such catastrophes actually exist doesn't exist at all. "

In a particularly explicit way - among others - these theologians have also referred to Auschwitz:

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Face of God After Auschwitz . P. 35f.
  2. ^ Robert McAfee Brown: The mass extermination as a theological problem . In: In: God after Auschwitz. Dimensions of the mass murder of the Jewish people . Herder, Freiburg i.Br./Basel/Wien 1979, p. 87–118, citation p. 117 .
  3. ↑ Aviezer Ravitzky, Messianism, Zionism and Jewish Religious Radicalism (1996 by The University of Chicago), S. 124th
  4. ^ Messianism, Zionism and Jewish Religious Radicalism (1996 by The University of Chicago), p. 128.
  5. ↑ s. Achiezer, Volume III, Vilna 1939, in the introduction
  6. ↑ This is discussed in the book Piety & Power: The World of Jewish Fundamentalism by the orthodox author David Landau (1993, Hill & Wang)
  7. ^ Richard L. Rubenstein: Some Perspectives from Religious Faith After Auschwitz . In: FHLittell, HGLocke (Ed.): The German Church Struggle and the Holocaust . Detroit 1974, p. 256-268 .
  8. ↑ Yanki Tauber: What the Rebbe Said (and Did not Say) About the Holocaust. In: Chabad-Lubavitch Media Center. Retrieved May 19, 2009 .
  9. ^ Nissan Dovid Dubov: Belief After the Holocaust. In: FAQ of the Chabad-Lubavitch Media Center. Retrieved May 19, 2009 .
  10. ↑ Gregor Benewitsch: The Jewish Question In The Russian Orthodox Church (in English The Jewish Question In The Russian Orthodox Church , in German Chapter 1 , Chapter 2 , Chapter 3 , Conclusion )
  11. ↑ Berthold Klappert: The Jews in a Christian theology after Auschwitz . In: Günther Bernd Ginzel (Ed.): Auschwitz as a challenge for Jews and Christians . 2nd Edition. Lambert Schneider, Gerlingen 1993, ISBN 3-7953-0880-1 , p. 481-512 .
  12. ↑ Berthold Klappert: The Jews in a Christian theology after Auschwitz . In: Günther Bernd Ginzel (Ed.): Auschwitz as a challenge for Jews and Christians . 2nd Edition. Lambert Schneider, Gerlingen 1993, ISBN 3-7953-0880-1 , p. 501 .
  13. ↑ Elie Wiesel : The mass extermination as literary inspiration . In: In: God after Auschwitz. Dimensions of the mass murder of the Jewish people . Herder, Freiburg i. Br./Basel/Wien 1979, p. 21-50 .
  14. ↑ Walter Zimmerli: Israel and the Christians . Neukirchen 1964, p. 16 .
  15. ↑ Hans G. Adler u. a .: Auschwitz. Certificates and reports . 6th edition. European Publishing House, Frankfurt a. M. 1995, ISBN 978-3-434-46223-1 .
  16. ↑ Norbert Reck: "Learn to read: they are sacred texts". The theology after Auschwitz and the witnesses. In: Manfred Görg, Michael Langer (Ed.): When God wept. Theology after Auschwitz . Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg 1997, ISBN 3-7917-1567-4 , pp. 129-141 .
  17. ^ Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt: "Rabbinical" and "dogmatic" structure of theological statement . In: Martin Stöhr (Ed.): Jewish existence and the renewal of Christian theology. Attempt to balance the Christian-Jewish dialogue for systematic theology . Chr. Kaiser, Munich 1981, ISBN 978-3-459-01376-0 , p. 163-181, here 168 f .
  18. ^ Johann Baptist Metz: Ecumenism after Auschwitz. On the relationship between Christians and Jews in Germany . Ed .: In: Gott nach Auschwitz. Dimensions of the mass murder of the Jewish people. Herder, Freiburg i. Br./Basel/Wien 1979, ISBN 3-451-18321-8 , pp. 121-144, citation p. 124 .
  19. ↑ Johann Baptist Metz: Beyond civil religion. Talk about the future of Christianity . Chr. Kaiser Verlag, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-459-01307-9 , p. 32 .
  20. ↑ Hans-Joachim Iwand: The Church and the Jews . In: Young Church . No. 12 , 1951, pp. 105 ff .
  21. ↑ Walther Zimmerli: Israel and the Christians, hearing and questions . Neukirchen 1964.