Studies in the Meaning of Judaism (JPS Scholar of Distinction Series)

16 / Recent Historic Events: Jewish and Christian Interpretations

16 / Recent Historic Events: Jewish and Christian Interpretations Several discussions about my book on contemporary Christologies1 suggested to me that I occupy an uncommon situation in the field of contemporary Jewish thought. Most of my professional colleagues are philosophers, specializing in the medieval Jewish or modern general areas. I am one of a tiny number identifying themselves as Jewish theologians and, rarer still, one with postrabbinic training in Christian theology . Standing between these two disciplines, then, I propose to undertake a comparative theological inquiry here, hoping thereby to gain insight into the distinctive faith of each tradition. Somewhat recklessly, I should like to work holistically and try to characterize the current situation in each faith by focusing on one broad theme. I can, perhaps, reduce the risk of so grandiose an enterprise by starting from a description of the Jewish situation, which I know better, and then moving on to what appears to me to be its closest Christian parallel. I hope the heuristic gains of this effort compensate for its substantive shortcoming.2 JEWISH INTERPRETATIONS For about two decades now, Jewish religious thinkers have centered most of their attention on the theological3 implications of recent historic events. Five distinct interests can be delineated. The first two, the “death of God” and the State of Israel, aroused far more participation than the three other topics I shall explicate. The early novels of Elie Wiesel and the first group of Richard Rubenstein’s theologically revisionist articles appeared in the late 1950s. 193 1983 Yet it was not until the mid-1960s that large-scale Jewish discussion of the meaning of the Holocaust began.4 I remain convinced5 that an important factor in finally legitimating this topic was the emergence of the Christian death-of-God movement then. In any case, the debate continued vigorously for about ten years and still sporadically resumes, though in rather ritualized fashion. What moved the Jewish theoreticians was less the classic issue of theodicy than responding to the actual, awesome events under Hitler. Rubenstein’s argument and title made Auschwitz the symbol for the new form of an old problem.6 He, Wiesel, and Emil Fackenheim asserted that the Holocaust was unique in the history of human evil. It therefore demanded totally new responses from Jews. It was, for all its negativity, our Mt. Sinai. Wiesel insisted that its singularity took it far beyond our ability even to frame proper questions about it, much less to provide answers. Rubenstein demanded a radical rejection of the received God of Judaism, in whose place he now saw the Holy Nothing. Fackenheim, after years insisting that God’s revelation (understood in Buber’s contentless I-thou terms) must be the basis of modern Judaism, could no longer speak of God’s presence in history. Instead, he built his Jewish commitment on the unconditional command to nurture Jewish life which came to the Jewish people from Auschwitz though no commander was discernible.7 The responses to these views were based on new ways of restating the old defenses: it is good that people are free and responsible , even to be Nazis; God is finite; having some reason to have faith, we can trust in God even though we do not fully understand God. The second major discussion arose out of the Holocaust controversy as a result of the 1967 Israeli Six-Day War. In the weeks prior to and during the news blackout of its first two days, the possibility of another “holocaust” loomed before world Jewry. This mood was intensified by our first experience of war by television. Those experiences were sufficient to arouse Jewish ethnic concern to levels previously unprecedented . They were then heightened by the details of an incredible victory—deliverance—and, even more miraculously, by seeing Jews enter old Jerusalem and, for the first time since the State of Israel had been established, being permitted to pray before the Temple Mount Western Wall. The effect of those weeks on American Jewry was profound, lasting, and utterly unanticipated. Our new affluence and success in an expanding American economy had made us lukewarm to our ethnic identity and rather indifferent to the State of Israel. The frightful threat and won194 A Track drous triumph of the Six Day War made us realize how deeply Jewish we were and wanted to be, and how organically we were bound to the State of Israel. Once again, we were...