Summary
Title: Holocaust Theology: A Reader
Author: edited by Dan Cohn-Sherbok
Publisher: New York University Press
ISBN: 0814716199
Pro:
• Handy single source for theological responses to the Holocaust
• Selections are easy to read and understand
• Great for college courses and general audiences
Con:
• Depth sacrificed for breadth
Description:
• Extensive collection of over 100 Christian and Jewish responses to the Holocaust
• Mostly short selections from other works
• Provides a wide variety of perspectives, many conflicting
Book Review
Theology today cannot be taken seriously if it does not take the Holocaust into consideration. Not all reactions to the Holocaust are the same, however, and grasping the extent of those responses is a daunting task. A recent book, Holocaust Theology: A Reader, does make it easier, fortunately. Edited by Dan Cohn-Sherbok, a professor of Judaism at the University of Wales, it collects selections from over 100 Christian and Jewish scholars and authors, grouped into four categories: “The Challenge,” “Faith in the Dead Camps,” “Wrestling with the Holocaust” and “Jews, Christians and the Holocaust.” It’s certainly not an exhaustive accounting of this topic, but it is comprehensive.
Many, like Richard Rubenstein, have come to reject the idea of a supernatural God capable of acting in history:
- “How can Jews believe in an omnipotent, beneficent God after Auschwitz? ...The agony of European Jewry cannot be likened to the testing of Job. To see any purpose in the death camps, the traditional believer is forced to regard the most demonic, anti-human explosion in all history as a meaningful expression of God’s purposes. The idea is simply too obscene for me to accept.”
By no means, however, is such a reaction universal. Many have found their faith reinforced, and that was true even at the time of the Holocaust. There were Jews who walked into the gas chambers singing — a horrible thought to many today, but they believed that what they were enduring was the “birth pangs” of the Messiah, and hence something to welcome.
Cohn-Sherbok himself considers the position of those who would reject theism altogether as going too far along the path of reinterpreting Judaism. By contrast, he argues for a return to traditional eschatology:
- “Without eventual vindication of the righteous in Paradise, there is no way to sustain the belief in a providential God who watches over His chosen people. The essence of the Jewish understanding of God is that He loves His chosen people. If death means extinction, there is no way to make sense of the claim that He loves and cherishes all those who died in the concentration camps.”
What he writes here is correct, of course — the problem is, he is arguing against a view which does not grant him his premise that a “providential God” actually exists. The skeptics who appear in the book allow the premise of a god to be questioned and conclude that there is nothing — not even traditional eschatology — which can allow one to reasonably believe that a loving God exists in a world where the Holocaust occurred. Cohn-Sherbok does not address those arguments — instead, he simply refuses to call his premises into question.
