After Tragedy and Triumph: Modern Jewish Thought and the American Experience (review)

96 SHOFAR Winter 1995 Vol. 13, No.2 The post-war years were difficult as well as opportune for most Americans. New fortunes were made, new frontiers explored. Jewish Americans, particularly those who resettled in the golden cities of Miami and Los Angeles, participated in the boom years. Contrary to the expectations of pessimists, they did not abandon Judaism, either its religious or secular cultural dimensions. Los Angeles became the home of the University of Judaism as well as other institutions of higher learning. It became, and remains, the home of more Jews than any other city except New York and Tel Aviv. Deborah Dash Moore has done a fine job of synthesizing much primary source material, many interviews, and monographic studies to produce the first important analysis of this migration. It will be the foundation upon which future studies of the subject are built. June Sochen Department of History Northeastern Illinois University Mter Tragedy and Triumph: Modern Jewish Thought and the American Experience, by Michael Berenbaum. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. 196 pp. $37.95. In After Tragedy and Triumph: Modern Jewish Thought and the American Experience, Michael Berenbaum situates the life and times of contemporary American Jews under the double sign of the Holocaust and the creation of the State ofIsrael-the tragedy and triumph of his title. The essays collected in this book map the increasingly complicated and ambivalent ways in which American Jews view these markers, and the concomitant complexity with which they (we) construct and evoke Jewish identity. The essays in this collection reflect on the present state of American Jewry, its concerns and self-perceptions, as it grapples with this "tragedy and triumph." The thirteen essays compiled here move through a broad range of figures, events and issues-including Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, modern Orthodoxy, theologians' and historians' debatespresenting a series of snapshots of contemporary Jewish life and thought. The essays map the impact of these ideas, thinkers, and experiences on the shaping of American Jewish thought and politics. It is Berenbaum's contention-and the major contribution of After Tragedy and Triumphthat all of these factors play a significant role in evolving the American Book Reviews 97 Jewish community (or communities) and also that American Jews interpret these thinkers and events in uniquely American ways. The double sign of the Holocaust and the State of Israel mark Berenbaum's central concern, the "nativization" ofthe Holocaust. How do American and Israeli Jews remember the genocidal onslaught which destroyed European Jewry half a century ago? As Berenbaum reminds his reader, there is no pure position, no way to reconstruct an unmediated past. All memories evoke the Holocaust in ways which "justifY the present and construct a future," although they may envision present and future very differently. Berenbaum traces the implications of the Holocaust both for contemporary Jewish thought and for Western civilization. The Nazi genocide, Berenbaum rightly insists, has "shattering consequences" which extend will beyond the boundaries ofJewish communities. The Holocaust "forever transforms the nature ofwhat it means to be human," Berenbaum asserts; it "alters our understanding ofculture and existence." Berenbaum criticizes the error of focusing exclusively on antisemitism in looking for the" lessons of the Holocaust. " He sees it as a misreading ofJewish history to read either power or powerlessness back into Jewish history as a predominant theme. The essays in this collection repeatedly warn of the danger inherent in the position ofJews today who, in interpreting current events, "view everything as a Holocaust" and thus distort the present. The recent massacre of praying Moslems in Hebron on Purim is a powerfully awful proof of Berenbaum's point. While Berenbaum refrains from a neat assertion of just what constitutes the "legacy" or "lessons of the Holocaust," the compendium of essays suggests that the memory of past atrocity should evoke but not end in an identification with its victims. When American Jews recollect the Holocaust, Berenbaum asserts, they emphasize menschlichkeit, or humaneness, reading into or extrapolating from the terrible events of history a set of distinctly American, pluralistic values. For Berenbaum, "the memories of victimization should sensitize the newly empowered community" to the victimization of those who are today not empowered. Thus, for Berenbaum, the...