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Chapter 15 Theology and the Holocaust The Presence of God and Divine Providence in History from the Perspective of the Holocaust Yosef Achituv This essay will evaluate various explanations of the Holocaust offered by the religious Zionist circles. It is not concerned with a comparative analysis that would elicit some criterion for judging how “successful” these explanations are. Rather, it focuses on one single issue: God’s presence and His providence in human history. It will dwell on the place this issue occupies in the “theology” of religious Zionism and will examine the extent of its durability in the face of the Holocaust. I will also inquire whether it has been weakened or undermined as a result of the trauma of the Holocaust and, in addition, will explore the ways in which the Holocaust is “exploited” for the purpose of strengthening the religious-Zionist identity. Finally, it will point at the process through which the religious Zionist conception that emerged from the Merkaz-ha-Rav school of thought lost its hold on religious Zionism, after dominating it for over twenty years, from the end of the 1960s to the mid-1980s. This development has given rise to two opposite trends. The first sharpens and reinforces the notion of the presence of God and His providence by associating it with a particular messianic faith and a mystification of Israeli nationalism, in conformity with the Merkaz-ha-Rav teaching. The second moderates this notion and shifts the emphasis to coping with the Holocaust on a human, ethical basis, in affinity with the nonillusionary theology that is claimed by modern Orthodox circles. As is well known, the trauma of the Holocaust led many Jews to deny God and lose their faith. Many were forced to rebuild themselves and their world, a world devoid of God and Torah. Those who retained their faith 275 and were still clinging to the Torah and the mitzvot sought the “explanation ” for the Holocaust, as well as the meaning it carried—however unique and traumatic it was—within the framework of their religious world. Their modes of reaction were not, and could not have been, fundamentally revolutionary. Neither those who were satisfied with an agnostic approach nor those who preferred to keep quiet were able to create a completely new religious language. From their own religious tradition and faith-oriented world they retrieved some points and anchors that made it possible for them to survive as believing Jews, while shifting emphases and reorganizing the religious priorities in their life. In other words, the most they could do was to create a variant of religious language that was absorbed in the parameters of their own, traditional religious world. History teaches us that seldom does reality uproot faith from the hearts of those it slaps in the face. Whether consciously or unconsciously, the believers mobilize all the interpretive options available to them in order to come up with adequate interpretation of the conflicting reality that threatens their world. These things are true of the individual believer. They are even more valid for a movement that invests tremendous efforts to recruit the shapers of public opinion, the educational systems, and the agents of cultural transmission for the purpose of inculcating and inseminating the principles of its faith in its followers.1 I assume that many of you would acknowledge this point if you considered the powerful measures taken by the ultra-Orthodox community in response to the Holocaust. Its intense indoctrinating initiative, which found its expression in numerous publications and in the introduction of ultra-Orthodox narratives of the Holocaust , is well documented in some fascinating studies that have been published in the last decades. I would like to begin with some basic assumptions related to the issue of the presence of God and His providence in history. 1. Side by side with the belief that God revealed Himself in front of all Israel at least once in history, in the Sinaite revelation, there is also a traditional religious position that God reveals Himself through history. This position is prevalent not only in Judaism but also in Christianity. According to the Christian version, the abject historical situation of the Jewish people serves as an irrefutable proof that God abandoned His covenant with the people of Israel and passed it on to those who are “Israel by spirit.” Down through the ages this very notion served to oppress and humiliate the Jews. That is to say, whoever contemplates...

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