SHOAH: The Paradigmatic Genocide, Essays in Exegesis and Eisegesis (review)

Hebrew Studies 36 (1995) 249 Reviews contemporaries. She has succeeded in strengthening the literary place of Arieli. The book is a meaningful contribution to the research of the literary works of the authors of the second immigration (ha'aliya hashniya). Lev Hakak University of California Los Angeles, CA SHOAH: THE PARADIGMATIC GENOCIDE, ESSAYS IN EXEGESIS AND EISEGESIS. By Zev Garber. Studies in the Shoah, Vol. III. Pp. xv + 213. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1994. Paper, $29.50. The present volume is an exercise in passionate as opposed to dispassionate scholarship. The author, Prof. Zev Garber, is trained in rabbinics, Bible studies, and Jewish thought, and he brings to his subject the critical disciplines of his various fields. As a Judaic Studies scholar and teacher of Holocaust studies, he makes very useful pedagogic resources available to the Judaic studies generalist. Garber's first essay, "Insiders and Outsiders," defines the audience to whom this volume and, for that matter, the intellectual enterprise, is addressed . His second chapter is especially useful for teachers of the Holocaust who were not trained in that field in their graduate school education . Garber not only deals with Holocaust chronology, but examines issues of historiosophy, anti-Semitism, and theological responses of Christians and Jews, as well as the Israeli historiographic response. Garber's treatment of theological issues wavers between the descriptive /analytic approach that is the conventional academic fare and a prescriptive/normative approach whose place in the university is questionable . While the questions that Garber asks are based upon an Orthodox or classical Jewish paradigm, he is no fundamentalist; he declares "Deutero-Isaiah's [suffering] 'servant of the Lord' and Judah HaLevi's 'Israel is the heart of man-kind'" to be absurd as theological justifications of Israel's suffering in the Holocaust. The epithet "Deutero-Isaiah" is not used by Orthodox theologians, and the very Willingness to categorize the Orthodox canon in these terms is (a) not really Orthodox and (b) not academic , for it expresses a normative theological value judgment. On the other hand, Garber's dating of the Exodus to the mid-thirteenth Century Hebrew Studies 36 (1995) 250 Reviews B.C.E. and the period of the Judges to 1200-1000 B.C.E. follows an Orthodox Jewish chronology rather than what is currently "accepted" in the critical literature. Similarly, Garber speaks of "healthy" responses to the Holocaust and, for this reviewer, adopts a position similar to '''maverick' covenant theologian," Rabbi Irving Greenberg, who maintains that God's unity and will remain operative, but not with the same force as before Auwschitz. The merits of this position are not within the purview of this review. It should be clear that Garber's considerable efforts are grounded in a theological as well as methodological bias. Garber's Holocaust course "written assignment" may be a "creative" rather than a conventional academic paper, as the student is asked to "appreciate" the subject matter and to be "actively involved in learning rather than being passively taught." The student is required to read a relevant book, understand it, and relate to the materials presented in the lectures. Also suggested are journal entries and role playing. While Prof. Garber contends that his is a serious academic exercise, in the hands of less competent instructors, especially those teaching students at two year colleges , the wrong kind of evaluative assignment, combined with materials presented with a nonnative bias, well might endanger academic credibility. Garber's chapters on "The Psychology of Labels" and "Dating the Shoah" are pedagogic masterpieces. He presents living examples of history, documents which generate well-directed discussion, and he never flinches f(om addressing hard questions. He cautions against referring to any and all enemies of the Jews as Amalekites. It should be noted that Jewish theologians have not adequately dealt with this issue. On one hand, m. Qiddushin 4 posits that the anathematized nations of Biblical antiquity are no longer extant, so that the requirement to extenninate them, including Amalek, has happily and conveniently lapsed. On the other hand, traditional Jewish theology requires that the commandments, including the obligation to obliterate the memory of Amalek (Deut 25:17-19), is eternal. What remains "commanded" in...