Open Wounds: The Crisis of Jewish Thought in the Aftermath of the Holocaust

Preface

preface In this book, I undertake a Jewish response to the Shoah. Unlike most other authors who have engaged a similar task, I oªer a view of what makes a Jewish response Jewish. As with the determination of any definition, the attempt to define what is “Jewish” in a Jewish response to the Shoah entails drawing some lines of distinction. The distinctions, however, are intended more to establish a spectrum of shades of Jewish thinking than to determine an absolute delineation. Of course, like any definition, my understanding of what makes Jewish thought Jewish excludes some responses to the Shoah and includes others. But I do not take the term Jewish to be a synonym for “valid” or “insightful,” any more than it can be a synonym for “Orthodox” or “Chasidic.” Nor do I believe the question of what makes a Jewish response to the Shoah Jewish to be a question of what makes a Jew a Jew. But I do maintain that a Jewish response to the murder of the Jews is needful. And if a Jewish response is needful, then the question of what makes it Jewish must be raised. Further, I proceed from the premise that the Nazis’ assault on the Jews included an assault on the Torah that has defined the Jews for three thousand years. Indeed, the Nazis themselves understood this point. Therefore , I turn to the Torah slated for annihilation in the Shoah in my response to the Shoah. In keeping with centuries of Jewish teaching, I take the term Torah to include both the Written Torah and the Oral Torah, that ix is, both the Five Books of Moses and the texts of Mishnah, Gemara, Midrash, and Kabbalah, as well as commentaries ranging from Rashi to Schneur Zalman of Liadi. Just as I draw on a variety of Jewish thinkers, so do I draw upon a variety of what are termed sifrei kodesh, or “sacred texts,” in order to take my thinking about the Shoah to new levels. I do not regard one set of sacred texts to be more legitimate than another; the textual tradition consists of an interweaving of biblical, talmudic , midrashic, and mystical sources, each of which has its place in Jewish thinking and Jewish life. To be sure, one cannot divorce one aspect of Torah from another without undermining the substance of the whole teaching. As my bibliography indicates, I do not privilege the mystical over the talmudic or the biblical over the midrashic in my eªort to respond to the Shoah; rather, I take each of these categories to be interwoven with the others, and not isolated or unrelated to one another. This method, in fact, reflects an age-old Jewish method of seeking according to four levels of understanding: the literal ( pshat), the allegorical (remez), the homiletical (drash), and the mystical (sod ) levels. While modern and postmodern thinkers may balk at a response to the Shoah that contains mystical elements, the mystical perspective pervades Jewish philosophy and Jewish religious life. Maimonides, for instance, begins Part III of The Guide for the Perplexed by saying that his primary objective throughout the book has been to expound on the Maaseh Bereshit (Deeds of Creation) and Maaseh Merkavah (Deeds of the Chariot); in other words, his aim, as he states it, is to connect the mystical teachings with his philosophical inquiry. With regard to our daily lives, from the moment when we thank God for returning our soul to this world in the morning to the moment when we ask God to fill our eyes with light, lest we “sleep the sleep of death” at night, our days are filled with texts, teachings, and customs from the mystical tradition. When Elie Wiesel insists that what took place in the Holocaust took place in the soul, he opens up a mystical consideration of the event, particularly since he still identifies himself as a Chasid. When Emil Fackenheim considers whether the Divine image in the human being can be destroyed, he introduces a notion that has mystical implications, even though he was not a mystic. When Primo Levi refers to the Divine spark that was snuªed out in the Muselmann, he invites a consideration of what x Preface that spark is, which is a mystical question, despite the fact that he was not a religiously observant Jew. I do not see...