An Epitaph for German Judaism: From Halle to Jerusalem (review)

Emil Fackenheim's An Epitaph for German Judaism is much more than an elegy for the German Jewish victims of the Shoah. It is also an eloquent celebration of German Judaism post-Shoah. Even more, it is a fitting tribute to the late Emil Fackenheim and his "two hat" scholarly career as both a Jew and a philosopher.

With much of the publication devoted to reflections on Fackenheim's own personal and professional life, the uninformed reader is provided with a rich guide to his philosophical ideas and scholarly legacy. In close conjunction, issues of German Judaism past and present are engrossingly reconsidered. Utilizing the Sittlichkeit position, Fackenheim successfully applies his philosophical and theological training to his historical and sociological subject matter.

The complex nature of the contemporary global Jewish community, in terms of culture, spiritual faith, and religious practices, along with Judaism's pre- and post-Shoah existence, is of central concern throughout the publication. Fackenheim is realistically unapologetic about his inability fully to resolve the issues he advances. He offers philosophical reasoning and interestingly injects "German Idealism," most notably Hegelian ideas of "ethical life," into his frequently pessimistic diagnosis of the nature of humanity and interfaith relations. Fackenheim's view of the uncertainty of a progressive human linear development means that there can be no guarantee that the Shoah will never happen again. Fackenheim views Israel as the most important safeguard against this threat. "Judeo phobia" in Europe and the world has, in his view, escalated since the Shoah and is aggressively expressed against Israel. Fackenheim's theological solution is for greater inter-faith dialogue to improve Judeo-Christian relations. Fackenheim is calling for conversation and not just a tombstone to the past.

A number of unresolved matters relating to the Shoah are intriguingly presented. Most notably, when did the Shoah unequivocally begin, or, to be more precise, at what point was there no turning back? Kristallnacht, Fackenheim argues, was this crucial point at which "ordinary" Germans became accomplices and collaborators with the Nazi regime. This watershed marked the final entrenchment of the Nazis into power by giving them social as well as political affirmation. This contradicts the commonly accepted argument that the Nazis were fully entrenched by mid-1934 at the latest. Furthermore, Fackenheim suggests that neighbors and local community members committed the violence of Kristallnacht. This contention overlooks the argument that in most cases the SS perpetrators were not actually from the local area and a significant amount of opposition and disdain by local people against the SS activities existed. Kristallnacht, in Fackenheim's view, was an unforeseeable turning point, which polarized the local communities between victim and perpetrator. This unexpected event, along with the inability of most German Jews to find a country to emigrate to, he argues, explains why there was a large number of German Jews in Germany in 1939. Fackenheim also underlines the deep cultural and social bond of German Jews to Germany and their continued false sense of security right up until their murder. These two ideas appear contradictory, suggesting on the one hand that German Jewry was imprisoned within Germany and could not leave, while on the other, highlighting that many did not wish to leave and believed the situation could not get any worse. That about half the Jewish population of German in 1933 had left by September 1939 is another area dealt with hazily. Fackenheim does demonstrate that Germany was German Jewry's Heimat and that the Shoah represents the utter betrayal. He does not, however, present clearly and without contradiction the "when," "why," and "with what effect" of Nazism in Germany.

The issue of individual choice, resistance, and culpability for Nazi crimes is again grappled with clumsily. How could "ordinary" "good" Germans have been party to such horrors? Why were there onlookers and bystanders who did not resist and fight for their moral and ethical values? It is perhaps this aspect of the Epitaph that most poignantly elucidates...