The Resurrection of Hebrew

More than sixty years have passed yet the questions remain the same. “Where was God during the Holocaust? How can you believe in God after the Holocaust? If God is loving and just and righteous how could He allow the Holocaust to happen?”

Unfortunately, countless numbers are all too ready to offer simplistic answers. In the opposite camp, even greater numbers choose to avoid the subject altogether. Many well-meaning but misguided souls protest, “The Holocaust happened so long ago. Why can’t the Jewish people just forget about it? Why can’t they just forgive and move on?”

Rev. John Atkinson responds: “For many Jews the remembrance of the Holocaust is so painful, so beyond description that there is no way to simply forget. For those who lived through it there is the burden of survivor guilt – the guilt for living when so many died. Painful memories are not healed by forgetting them.”

And so, six decades later, both Jewish and Christian theologians are still wrestling with the question of why God allowed the Holocaust to happen. The result to date? Even the best of minds cannot agree on an answer. The various streams of Ultra-Orthodox Judaism mostly regard the Holocaust as divine punishment for the sins of the Jewish people but they disagree on what those sins might be.

At the other extreme are those who claim that God doesn’t exist and that all life is ultimately meaningless. However, the people who hold to this assumption fail to take it to its logical conclusion. If there is no God, we cannot ask “Where was God?” The question then becomes “Where was man?” But instead of pursuing that line of thought, atheists remain illogically angry at a deity whose existence they deny. Even more illogically, they continue to put their faith in flawed human beings.

The Christian connection

Another question that comes to light is “How has the Holocaust affected Judaism?” The short answer is that Jewish practices have remained essentially unchanged. Where Judaism has experienced a significant repositioning is in its relationship to Christianity. By “Judaism” we mean every branch of it from Ultra-Orthodox to Reform. The Holocaust has forever altered the way in which Jews from the second half of the 20th century onwards view the Church.

All forms of racism and persecution are equally abhorrent no matter who the victims might be, but anti-Semitism and the Holocaust are unique because of the Christian connection. It is impossible to discuss the subject apart from this painful factor. Jewish thinkers will tell you that while Christianity didn’t cause the Holocaust, many of its myths and images about Jews helped to justify the Nazis’ slaughter of European Jewry.

As we look back over the centuries, anti-Judaism seemed to reach a peak in medieval times. This was in large part due to ignorance of the Scriptures and the dejudaising of Jesus and of the New Testament. Out of this ignorance, false and hateful images of the Jews developed. These myths and images are understood by many Jewish thinkers to have provided the Nazis with the raw material for dehumanising the Jewish people. Dehumanisation is always the necessary prelude to genocide.

We need to remember that many ordinary Christians and Church leaders endangered themselves in order to protect Jews. There were even many Christians who died at the hands of the Nazis. But many more who called themselves Christian supported and even carried out the Nazis’ plans, and it must be admitted that many did so in the name of Christianity. The rest remained silent.

Dr. Gary Porton comments: “In the wake of the Holocaust, Jewish theologians have challenged Christian thinkers to rework Christianity’s traditional pictures of the Jews, which played a role in the Nazi onslaught and which prevented and still prevent many Christians from responding positively to Jews in dire straits. Until this occurs, many contemporary Jewish thinkers believe it will be impossible for contemporary Jews and Christians to view one another as caring human beings and to respond to one another in appropriate ways.”

To put it another way, the Church - like the religious people in the parable of the Good Samaritan - walked by on the other side while Europe’s Jews were being put to the slaughter. In the light of that, or rather, in the shadow of that, many Jewish people regard the Church as having lost its moral compass, especially on issues relating to Jews.

One prominent example is the Church’s role in the Middle East conflict. At the time of writing, the Presbyterian Church in America is calling for punitive sanctions against Israel but has not uttered a word of condemnation against Palestinian terror. Sadly, such blatant bias is not confined to the Presbyterian denomination and it does nothing to allay Jewish suspicions of the Church.

Emil Fackenheim, a Holocaust survivor who became a noted philosopher and Reform Jewish rabbi, justly posed these questions: “Why did the Christian press remain undisturbed by nineteen years of Jordanian control of the Christian holy places (and desecration of Jewish cemeteries and synagogues), but become greatly agitated by Israeli control? Why does it fill its pages with accounts of the plight of Arab refugees but rarely even mention the nearly as numerous Jewish refugees from Arab countries? Why are there moral equations between Israel’s claim to the right to exist and Arab claims to the right to destroy her?”

Unfortunately, when Emil Fackenheim refers to the “Christian” press that is an inaccurate description. Non-Jewish doesn’t automatically mean Christian. The media today is mostly humanistic and it is as anti-Christian as it is anti-Jewish. But Professor Fackenheim (who died in 2003) touched on some very real issues.

However, it is not only Jewish thinkers who are struggling with the aftermath of the Holocaust and its effects on Christianity. In a thought-provoking and rather moving article, an Asian Christian theologian, Dr Alan Lai, writes to fellow Asian Christians: “If Christianity, which is characterized by the love, mercy and forgiveness of Jesus, can contribute to horrific incidents such as Auschwitz and Birkenau, there is no guarantee that contemporary Asian Christians will not cause other forms of oppression. What I am calling for on the part of Asian Christians, particularly in North America, is a serious re-examination of the relationship with Judaism after the Holocaust. How Asian Christians will relate to their closest siblings and how they will read and reread the pages of the Bible in the 21st century with new eyes is in part a signal of their willingness to confront the legacy of anti-Judaism that has been so deeply rooted in the Christian heritage.”

The human connection

Let us not forget, however, that some of the worst manifestations of antisemitism are to be found in atheistic communist countries. This reveals that antisemitism is not so much rooted in the Christian heritage as in the unrepentant human heart. What it all points to is the real question we should be asking, one we touched on earlier. The real question is not “Where was God?” but “Where was man?” Burundi, Rwanda, Darfur and other genocides show that humankind has learned little from the Holocaust.

If we only look for answers in the social causes and conditions that have contributed to such tragedies, we are doomed to repeat the sins of the past. The answer lies much closer to home. The question “where was man?” challenges each of us to confront our own demons. What is our attitude towards others? Will we stand up when we see similar evil rising in our generation? Or will we remain silent as so many did during World War II and walk by on the other side?

Ex. 23:2 – “You shall not follow the many to do evil.” Behind this commandment lies the realistic assessment that the majority do not follow God’s ways, not even those who claim to belong to him. Even in the pages of the Bible, we find few true heroes of faith. In the same way, contemporary history records only a few ordinary heroes who stood up to the Nazis. The world today is desperately in need of such men and women.

True heroes Unfortunately, we live in an age when so-called heroes are more puff than substance. Movie stars, rock singers, and sporting celebrities claim the headlines while true heroes are overlooked. In America on January 11, the news was dominated by a famous baseball player who confessed that he had been on drugs. He was described as a hero for having the courage to go public. The truth of the matter is that he went public because he had been caught out, but due to his celebrity status few in America noticed that a real hero had died on that same day. Her name was Miep Gies.

By her own account, Miep Gies did nothing extraordinary. All she did was bring food, and books, and news to eight friends who needed them. Even though she risked her life day in and day out to help those friends, to Miep it was nothing dramatic. But one of those friends was a teenage girl called Anne Frank who wrote a diary of those events. It was Miep Gies who gathered up the scattered pages of Anne’s diary on August 4th 1944, when the Nazi SS came to arrest the eight Jews.

This is what Miep herself said about life in the company annexe where the eight Jews were hidden: “I have no word to describe these people who were still always friendly and grateful. Yes, I do have a word, Heroes. True heroes they were. People sometimes call me a hero. I don’t like it... I myself, I’m just a very common person. I simply had no choice.”

Another hero who not only risked her life to help Jews during World War II but suffered the consequences was Corrie ten Boom.

Corrie was a Dutch Christian Holocaust survivor whose family rescued many Jews from certain death at the hands of the Nazis. They helped Jews because of their love for God’s chosen people and they even provided kosher food and honoured the Jewish Sabbath. The Jews were hidden in a specially constructed compartment in Corrie’s bedroom where they remained until they could be conducted to safety by the Dutch underground.

Sadly, a Dutch informant betrayed the Ten Booms to the Nazis and the entire family was arrested. They were first sent to prison where Corrie’s father died ten days later lying in a corridor. Corrie and her sister, Betsie, were eventually sent to the notorious Ravensbrück Concentration Camp in Germany where the frail Betsie succumbed to the harsh conditions. Before she died she told Corrie, “There is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still.” Corrie was released on New Year’s eve, 1944. She later learned that her release had been a clerical error. All the women prisoners her age in the camp were killed one week later.

Corrie was famous for her simple, pithy sayings. In spite of what she’d endured she was able to declare, “Look around and be distressed; look within and be depressed; look at Him and be at rest.” In December, 1967, Corrie Ten Boom was honoured by the State of Israel as one of the Righteous Among the Nations.

Faith rediscovered

We cannot conclude our reflections on God and the Holocaust without mentioning Nobel Peace Prize winner, Elie Wiesel. Elie came from a strict Chassidic background in Romania, and was deported to Auschwitz at the age of 15. He survived physically but his soul was scarred. As a result of his incarceration in Auschwitz, Elie Wiesel came to doubt the existence of God but some 50 years later he found his way back to the faith of his fathers. He didn’t have his questions answered but like so many who have suffered profoundly he came to the conclusion that life without God is a tale told by an idiot. We are put in mind of Job who also suffered profoundly and who also didn’t receive answers, yet was able to say, “Though you slay me, yet will I trust you.”

This is what Elie Wiesel says of his journey back to God: “Where were you, God of Kindness, in Auschwitz? What was going on in heaven, at the celestial tribunal, while your children were marked for humiliation, isolation and death only because they were Jewish?

“These questions have been haunting me for more than five decades. You have vocal defenders, you know. Many theological answers were given me, such as: ‘God is God. He alone knows what He is doing. One has no right to question Him or His ways.’ Or: ‘Auschwitz was a punishment for European Jewry’s sins of assimilation and/or Zionism.’ And: ‘Isn’t Israel the solution? Without Auschwitz, there would have been no Israel.’

“I reject all these answers. Auschwitz must and will forever remain a question mark only: it can be conceived neither with God nor without God. At some point, I began wondering whether I was not unfair with you, Master of the universe. After all, Auschwitz was not something that came down ready-made from heaven. It was conceived by men, implemented by men, staffed by men. And their aim was to destroy not only us but you as well. Ought we not to think of your pain, too? Watching your children suffer at the hands of your other children, haven’t you also suffered?” Profound words.

The bad news is that antisemitism today is at even higher levels than in the period leading up to the Holocaust. This is not only bad news for the Jewish people, but is a bleak comment on the human condition. Man without God is evil at heart.

Could another Holocaust occur? Perhaps. The mere idea is enough to leave us in deepest despair were it not for one fact. The eternal God has made an everlasting covenant with the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. There have been many attempts before and after the Holocaust to destroy the Jewish people but in every generation God has raised up righteous Gentiles who have not only turned aside from the evil of antisemitism but have actively resisted it.

Therefore, some sixty years after the Holocaust we are able to make an astounding proclamation. It is a proclamation that our children’s children will still be making sixty years from now:

“Am Yisrael chai.” The people of Israel live.

Dr. Gary G. Porton is professor of religious studies, history and comparative literature at the University of Illinois

Dr Alan Ka Lun Lai. 2009. “Teaching Christianity in the Shadow of the Holocaust.” http://alankalunlai.blogspot.com/2009/08/why-should-asian-christians-pay.html