The Philosopher as Witness: Fackenheim and Responses to the Holocaust

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The Philosopher as Witness

SUNY series in Contemporary Jewish Thought Richard A. Cohen, editor

The Philosopher as Witness Fackenheim and Responses to the Holocaust

Edited by

MICHAEL L. MORGAN and

BENJAMIN POLLOCK

STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS

Cover image: Allison J. Pollock “In Memory of Leo Baeck and Other Jewish Thinkers in ‘Dark Times’: Once More, ‘After Auschwitz, Jerusalem’ ” and “Hegel and ‘The Jewish Problem,’ ” © 2008 by Emil Fackenheim. All rights reserved. For information, please contact: Georges Borchardt, Inc., 137 East 57th Street, New York, NY, 10022. Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 2008 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu Production by Eileen Meehan Marketing by Fran Keneston Librar y of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The philosopher as witness : Fackenheim and responses to the Holocaust / edited by Michael L. Morgan, Benjamin Pollock. p. cm. — (SUNY series in contemporary Jewish thought 408) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7914-7455-6 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945)—Influence. 2. Holocaust (Jewish theology) 3. Philosophy, Jewish. 4. Fackenheim, Emil L. I. Morgan, Michael L., 1944– II. Pollock, Benjamin, 1971– D804.3.P523 2008 940.53'18—dc22

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Contents

Preface

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PART 1. REFLECTIONS 1. In Memory of Leo Baeck and Other Jewish Thinkers in “Dark Times”: Once More, “After Auschwitz, Jerusalem” Emil L. Fackenheim 2. Hegel and “The Jewish Problem” Emil L. Fackenheim

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PART 2. CRITIQUE 3. Hegel’s Ghost: “Witness” and “Testimony” in the Post-Holocaust Philosophy of Emil Fackenheim Susan E. Shapiro 4. Fackenheim on Passover after the Holocaust Warren Zev Harvey

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5. Of Systems and the Systematic Labor of Thought: Fackenheim as Philosopher of His Time Benjamin Pollock

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6. Fackenheim and Levinas: Living and Thinking after Auschwitz Michael L. Morgan

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7. The Holocaust and the Foundations of Future Philosophy: Fackenheim and Strauss Solomon Goldberg

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8. Fackenheim and Strauss Catherine H. Zuckert

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PART 3. RESPONSE 9. Emil Fackenheim: Theodicy, and the Tikkun of Protest David R. Blumenthal

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10. The Holocaust Is a Christian Issue: Christology Revisited Richard A. Cohen

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11. The Holocaust—Tragedy for the Jewish People, Credibility Crisis for Christendom Franklin H. Littell

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12. Man or Muselmann?: Fackenheim’s Elaboration on Levi’s Question David Patterson

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13. Emil Fackenheim, Irving Howe, and the Fate of Secular Jewishness Edward Alexander

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14. She’erith Hapleitah: Reflections of a Historian Zeev Mankowitz

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15. Willful Murder in the Lublin District of Poland David Silberklang

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16. Metahistory, Redemption, and the Shofar of Emil Fackenheim Gershon Greenberg

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List of Contributors

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Index

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Preface

Emil L. Fackenheim died at age eighty-seven in Jerusalem early Friday morning, September 19, 2003. His intellectual career, if we date its origin to his entrance into the Hochschule in Berlin in 1935, spanned sixty-eight years. People think of him as a Jewish theologian and philosopher and, especially, as one of the few Jewish theologians who was preoccupied with the Holocaust as a—in fact, the—momentous event for contemporary Jewish life and for Judaism today. As we look back over his career, it is probably not inaccurate to take the Holocaust to be its core and to take his post-Holocaust writings as his most important contribution and legacy. In a sense, all of his work, from his deep exploration of faith and reason in Kant and German philosophy and his probing examination of the religious dimension of Hegel’s thought to the attempt to articulate foundations for future Jewish thought, was a personal and philosophical response to Auschwitz and its unspeakable horrors. Fackenheim was born in Halle, Germany, in June 1916. His father was a prominent lawyer and his mother a lover of German literature and philosophy. Fackenheim went to the local gymnasium, where he developed an affection for classics. But when he graduated, in 1934, the spectre of Nazism cast its shadow over his life, his decisions, and his future. Sensing the urgent need for Jewish leadership and Jewish renewal, Fackenheim entered the liberal seminary in Berlin, the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, to prepare for the rabbinate. A year later, in 1936, he began to study philosophy at Halle simultaneously with his rabbinic program, but both efforts were cut short in 1939 with Kristallnacht, his own incarceration in Sachsenhausen, and subsequent flight—first to England and Scotland and finally to Canada and Toronto, Ontario. Entering the doctoral program in philosophy at the University of Toronto, Fackenheim received his degree in 1945, served a congregation in Hamilton, Ontario, and then, in 1948, returned to begin a teaching career at the University of Toronto, where he remained until his retirement in the early 1980s. He and his family then made aliyah to Jerusalem. Fackenheim was one of the most important Jewish philosophers of the twentieth century; he was also preeminent among that small group of Jewish vii

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theologians and philosophers that engaged the Holocaust as the primary event in contemporary Jewish experience. Some see in his career a dramatic shift, occurring around the time of the Six Day War in 1967, from general religious and philosophical reflection concerning faith and reason, revelation, and philosophy to a particular appreciation of the momentous character of Auschwitz and the Nazi death camps for modern philosophy, Jewish belief and Jewish life, Western culture, Christianity, and much else. From one vantage point, then, Fackenheim’s career seems to have turned from the universality of philosophical inquiry to the particularity of the impact of a single historical event on subsequent Jewish life and, indeed, subsequent life and thought. But this is to fail to realize how deeply Fackenheim’s earliest intellectual and existential decisions were steeped in the urgency of living as a Jew in Nazi Germany and in a sense of imperative about his life choices. One can easily see every move in his intellectual career, from his choice of rabbinic studies to his turn to philosophy, his commitment to medieval philosophy to his interest in the conflict of faith and reason, and his immersion in German Idealism to his turn to self-exposure to Auschwitz, as both philosophical and Jewishly involved, inextricably. The chapters in this collection, many of which originated from a conference held in Fackenheim’s honor in 2001 on the occasion of his eighty-fi fth birthday, take on a new character against the background of his death two years thereafter. At the same time that they testify to the various dimensions of Fackenheim’s work and its implications for life and thought today, they also represent now a kind of memorial to him, to his life and his thought. The title of the collection is intended to register a sense of urgency and perplexity about the conjunction of scholarly objectivity and historical engagement, between detachment and involvement. This collection is not called Fackenheim as Witness but The Philosopher as Witness. Philosophy, one might think, is a universal mode of inquiry, impartial in its methods, completely general in its subject matter, and utterly detached from the particularities of life and historical events. A witness is one who testifies, one who has experienced some particular event and who is called upon, whose responsibility it is, to express that experience, to recall and in a sense to confirm that event, to prevent its evaporation, its dissipation. Hence, the pairing of the two, of philosophy and witness, may strike some as anomalous. One is objective and detached, critical and probing; the other is subjective and involved, expressive and elucidating. One seeks universality, some might argue, while the other is intrinsically particular. Moreover, in this case, the object of philosophizing and the object of witnessing are at least in part the same—Auschwitz, Nazi atrocities, horror, evil. What would philosophizing about Auschwitz be without some witnessing, and what would witnessing about it be without some philosophizing? Here, in a dramatic, influential way, Fackenheim’s thought is most powerful. It is both deep and powerful philosophizing and at the same time inescapable and undeniable witnessing, and it speaks to the necessity to bring the two together,

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to bring together philosophy and scholarship with Auschwitz, to enable us in the future to live, to struggle to understand, to endure, and to respond. In a sense, however, witnessing has been present in the Western philosophical tradition from its ancient beginnings. In some cases that witnessing involves appreciating the deficiencies of everyday experience and testifying to the existence and significance of what transcends it—from Plato’s Forms to Plotinus’s One. In other cases that witnessing begins and to a degree stays with an allegiance to the concrete world, our sensory experience of it, and our conduct in it. Fackenheim is heir both to German Idealism and to the existential reactions to it. His thinking has always taken seriously the way philosophy testifies to truths that lie within and beyond the world, in order to come to grips with our experience, our understanding, and our lives in the world. But Fackenheim’s special contribution to the philosophical duty to witness concerns the intensity and seriousness of his witness to the events of Auschwitz and the radical evil manifest in Nazism. Philosophy has never had to testify to such an evil, nor has it ever developed the resources to do so. Exposing itself to Auschwitz, philosophy must be transformed, as must be Judaism, Christianity, and much else. With this special task of witnessing, moreover, Fackenheim gives a new twist to the conception of the Jewish people as a witness to the nations and a witness for God. As a witness to the horrors and epoch-making evil of the death camps, the Jewish philosopher bears a new message to the non-Jewish world, about responsibility and suffering and the future, and in so doing, as a Jew, the Jewish philosopher witnesses for God when God, in a sense, does not witness for himself. But the task of witnessing is itself conflicted and perhaps in the case of Auschwitz even paradoxical. Fackenheim regularly turns to the writings of Primo Levi and principally to Levi’s portrait of the Muselmann. Here we have the ultimate product of the Nazi death factories, a victim who is living but not living, dying and living at once, a new mode of existence, chilling and incomprehensible. In his late volume of essays, The Drowned and the Saved, Levi puzzles about the task of remembering and witnessing the events at Auschwitz. He classifies himself, together with all survivors who lived to testify, as members of a privileged group, those he calls “the saved,” who managed to survive through luck or guile or some special opportunity. “The drowned,” on the other hand, are the real and genuine product of the camps, and they did not survive. Their memories and their testimony do not exist; they cannot. Hence, witnessing the horrors is both necessary and impossible, and this paradox is something that Fackenheim recalls as well, a lesson he affirms again and again to us as we seek not to witness but to remember, which also is a duty both necessary and in some ways impossible. This book begins with two pieces that Fackenheim prepared specially for the conference. One deals with the Judaism he left behind in Germany and the way in which that Judaism and its representatives sought to cope with

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the Nazi menace. The other deals with philosophy and primarily with Hegel; if the first chapter is about German Jewry and its responses to Nazism, then the second chapter is about German philosophy and the same horror. Chapters 3–8 are themselves critical engagements with Fackenheim’s work. Some deal with themes, philosophical ones such as the notion of system or the role of hermeneutics in his magnum opus To Mend the World, and theological ones, as well. Susan Shapiro’s essay takes up the theme of philosophical witnessing directly, questioning the extent to which Fackenheim’s use of the category of “witness” enables him to think both rupture and recovery together after the Holocaust. Warren Zev Harvey explores what he cogently argues is the paramount question of Fackenheim’s God’s Presence in History: how is it possible for a Jew to celebrate Passover after the Holocaust? Harvey finds in Fackenheim’s answer to this question a revealing instantiation of Fackenheim’s own fragmented Hegelianism. Benjamin Pollock’s contribution to this volume inquires into the systematic character of To Mend the World and suggests that the distinctive manner in which Fackenheim takes up the systematic task of philosophy after the Holocaust exemplifies Fackenheim’s attempt to articulate his own historical moment in thought. Here too are three chapters that address Fackenheim’s work in comparison with two great twentieth-century philosophers, both Jewish, and perhaps—like Fackenheim himself—both Jewish philosophers as well as philosophers tout court. In their respective contributions, Sol Goldberg and Catherine Zuckert address Fackenheim’s relation to Leo Strauss, who was not only an important political philosopher but also a significant influence on Fackenheim’s career and his thought. One might claim that both Fackenheim and Strauss were motivated to philosophical inquiry by the horrors and evils of Nazism. Strauss famously saw Nazism and Heidegger, the philosopher of modernity in which Nazism flourished, as the nadir of a process of relativism and nihilism that emerged from debates in the late nineteenth century. Strauss’s response was to reflect on the possibility of revelation, the nature of naturalism, and the grounds for a liberalism that could withstand the modern challenge. He found his solution in a return to the ancients and to what he called “classical liberalism.” Fackenheim, of course, demurred. To him the greatest philosophical antecedent was not Plato but Hegel, and he could accept no return to antiquity and the classics that was not mediated through Hegel, nor conducted in the shadow of Auschwitz. The result was an exposure to evil that never could transcend wholly the historical, the mandate not to recover an old ideal but rather to create new ones by healing a fractured world. Strauss had once challenged Fackenheim to take Heidegger very seriously indeed, and one might claim that in the end he has outdone Strauss in that regard. In Michael Morgan’s essay, Fackenheim also is compared to Emmanuel Levinas, who himself was moved by the rise of Nazism and Heidegger’s involvement with it to seek a depth that Heidegger had failed to uncover. In

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Levinas’s case, it is a moral or an ethical depth, one that is sensitive to the inherent responsibility to others that grounds all human life and experience. Fackenheim in the end never seeks to go beyond history to find a way to recover it and recover within it; Levinas, in a sense, does, and Morgan explores how the two thinkers conceive of their tasks and how their similarities and differences compare. Chapters 9–15 take Fackenheim’s thought or his interests and develop responses to the Holocaust in several venues and in several ways. They explore a genuine post-Holocaust Christianity and Jewish theology in the shadow of Auschwitz. Franklin H. Littell speaks of Christian responsibility from within the circle of the Church and its recent as well as historical practices. David R. Blumenthal develops his own unique conception of a Jewish God who is abusing and challenging. Richard A. Cohen provides a creative and powerful account of the deficiencies of Christianity that any honest and serious postHolocaust Christianity must confront. His discussion reaches deeply into the heart of Christianity and its failure of love and responsibility and points out how a genuine post-Holocaust Christianity must distinguish itself. From these theological discussions and responses to Auschwitz, we turn to literary critical ones. One of the central motifs of Primo Levi’s powerful literary work is the phenomenon of those whom he says “lay on the bottom,” the “drowned,” or the Muselmänner. Fackenheim often has reflected on the importance of the Muselmänner for grasping the radical nature of the Nazi evil and especially on Levi’s characterization of them. David Patterson provides us with an extensive reflection on the phenomenon, its place in literary responses to the death camps, and more. In his fascinating piece, Edward Alexander takes up a figure, Irving Howe, who is contemporary with Fackenheim and yet whose career involves a complex and changing relationship to the Holocaust and the state of Israel. Alexander’s comparison of Howe and Fackenheim raises important questions about the changing face of the “secular” in Jewish culture and politics over the course of the twentieth century. Our volume ends with two detailed, original historical discussions, and a treatment of religious responses to the Holocaust during the event itself. Zeev Mankowitz highlights the remarkably—and hitherto mostly unacknowledged—active contribution of Holocaust survivors designated as the She’erith Hapleitah—the “saved” or “surviving” or “saving” remnant—to the foundation of the State of Israel. David Silberklang explores two case studies of “willful murder” in the Lublin district of German-occupied Poland between 1940–1942 in order to pose the question of agency, the very question raised by Fackenheim in his essay, “Holocaust and Weltanschauung: Philosophical Reflections on Why They Did It.” Fackenheim has regularly argued that the Holocaust requires a reevaluation of all modes of life and of thought, including that of historians. These historical works depend for their focus on a desire to clarify dimensions of the Holocaust and survival after it and to follow scrupulously and

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responsibly the canons of historical method. From them we learn important details about resistance to Nazism and the agents of Nazi atrocities, and we are given thereby materials in terms of which our understanding of human nature can and should be refashioned after the Holocaust. Gershon Greenberg examines how the real historical events of the Holocaust impacted the metahistorical worldview of the ultra-Orthodox leaders who experienced them. Greenberg illustrates how the Holocaust tested the limits of their ability to account for the suffering their communities endured in the vocabulary of the traditional theological narrative of God’s relation to Israel. And Greenberg ends his chapter by highlighting Fackenheim’s own attempt to grapple with the metahistory of the catastrophe by identifying moments of Tikkun within the Holocaust itself, fragmentary as these moments may be. The chapters in this volume, then, do not attempt a comprehensive picture of what Fackenheim’s work might mean for future Jewish life and future Jewish thought. Nor do they attempt an overarching picture of why Fackenheim’s theological and philosophical engagement, as an extensive witnessing that is at the same time a probing examination and response, is vital to future intellectual responses to Auschwitz. Rather, these chapters are examples of where the future might lead. All testify, directly or indirectly, to the richness of the foundation that Emil Fackenheim built. In some ways it is a systematic foundation, but in other ways its real power and efficacy reside in its focus, its range, and in its various details, not in its systematic nature. Recovery from Auschwitz and after it is not going to happen based on a secure, solid foundation. That recovery is not a narrowly systematic endeavor. It will be variegated and complex, as diverse as our lives and our experiences. Fackenheim’s thinking can be and should be examined in the light of all those who influenced him, those he himself discussed and debated, and those who are contemporary intellectuals of significance. The method and content of his thought also should be analyzed, clarified, and challenged and its implications assessed. And lines should be traced, concerning how themes he addressed and others he left undiscussed—for example, implications for issues of gender and social justice, for environmental issues and international conflict, for world hunger and more—might be dealt with in a post-Holocaust future. The chapters in this book are an attempt to stake out lines of thinking and to begin a process that is as important as it will be difficult, to hold together the universality and impartiality of intellectual reflection with the particularity of exposure to the Holocaust and to the work of a thinker whose importance for coping with that event is not to be underestimated.

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Reflections

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CHAPTER 1

In Memory of Leo Baeck and Other Jewish Thinkers in “Dark Times” Once More, “After Auschwitz, Jerusalem”

EMIL L. FACKENHEIM

REMEMBERING LEO BAECK The last time I spoke in public was at Hebrew Union College, Jerusalem, on November 7, 2000, just two days before the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the event I would understand—in retrospect, many years later—as the beginning of the Holocaust. Two days later, someone in Berlin would mention Rabbi Leo Baeck, no more than his name, for who would still know him? But I had been a student of his, in the period 1935–1938, at the Berlin Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums. Even before I got there in 1935, Baeck had distributed a prayer, to be read in Berlin synagogues on Kol Nidre, which—as always at the beginning of Yom Kippur—“confessed Jewish sins, individual and collective,” but also, at Kol Nidre, this early in the Nazi regime, voiced “revulsion at the lies, the false charges made against our faith and its defenders,” then adding “let us trample these abominations beneath our feet.” This was Baeck at his militant: he had been Feldrabbiner in the Great War. The prayer ended as a plea that 3

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these “soft words” be “heard.” However, Heil-Hitler barks and pseudo-Christian “prayers” were too noisy: the soft prayer was not heard. For this and other acts of courage, Baeck was jailed, several times. In all that followed, he showed the same rectitude, and also an uncommon perspicacity, for he knew, early on, that this was the end of German Judaism. But he vowed to stay in Berlin as long as even a minyan was left, kept his vow, hence was deported to the Nazi Musterlager, Theresienstadt. By accident he survived, went on teaching in London and Cincinnati, but never spoke of the horrors he knew: he wanted Jewish faith to live—the German liberal version included, if not in Germany, elsewhere—rather than die in despair: he took the horrors he knew to his grave. But he taught Midrash in Berlin as if nothing was happening, also homiletics: when once a Rabbinatskandidat was too long in his Probe-Predigt, “trial sermon,” also spoke on too many subjects, Baeck corrected him, mildly, as was his custom: if this were his last sermon before leaving for Argentine, only then would this sermon do: this was one of his few references to our situation. Scholars who did not know him often fail to grasp how deeply Baeck knew what he was up against, yet would not compromise either on how he taught Judaism in Berlin or on how he practiced it in Theresienstadt. If, despite this, the Nazis used him, his rectitude included, this only shows their utter shamelessness, cunning and, most important of all, the weltanschauung that inspired it all; but to this I can come only later—much later. THE DICTUM OF JEWISH PHILOSOPHER HANS JONAS The aforementioned is in summary of an address I gave more than half a year ago.1 Then I also reported how Baeck taught Midrash. The biblical Song of Songs is understood by the rabbis, not as love between the sexes but between God and Israel. Song of Songs, 2:7, “adjures the maidens of Jerusalem to awaken not, nor stir up love until it pleases.” I recall Baeck teach a Midrash on this verse in Berlin, but did he teach it also in Theresienstadt? Half a year ago I was sure; now I am no longer. When, after the war, I visited him in London I did not dare to ask about Nazi crimes, and all he would tell me was that, when he and another had to pull a heavy wagon in Theresienstadt, they were discussing Plato and Isaiah. Since my lecture at Hebrew Union College, of half a year ago, a turmoil has occurred that then was not predicted but that, now we know, is yet far from over; also, unlike then, we have two days of reflection ahead of us. Hence I will mention just one more fact—just one horror Baeck knew: in Theresienstadt, the Nazi Musterlager, he learned of the fate awaiting Jews boarding those trains. Innocents, they wondered: would they take them to a work camp? To some sort of newly established settlement? Baeck was told the truth, but could he believe it, was it believable? Now most of us know “Auschwitz” has

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happened, while others assert it never did: but for Baeck—then and there, in Theresienstadt—was it believable? Whether it was or not, he had a problem: should he tell? But if one knew, soon all would. He decided on silence: the horror he took to his grave included this silence. Was he right? Basic for philosophy—especially the “existential,” such as Martin Heidegger’s—is that doctors knowing their patients will die must tell them the truth, but while the doctor’s doomed patient can speak to a lawyer and, of course, to family, in contrast, at Auschwitz each would die alone: for that death philosophy, including the “existential”—stress, though it may, loneliness vis-à-vis death—has not been—never will be—existential enough. Philosophic thought must therefore go one step farther: in the Holocaust, “much more was real than is possible.” We owe this dictum, mind-boggling as it is, to Jewish philosopher Hans Jonas; to put less briefly what Jonas put all-too-briefly, if the evil-more-than-possible is radical, and if to explain radical evil is ipso facto to diminish it, that is, make it less than radical, must not philosophy, the more self-critical it is, be the more ruthless in facing the Holocaust as being both “real-and-impossible”? This goes far to explain why scoundrels still get away with “there never was a Holocaust, at most some normal killing to avoid some normal plague.” Holocaust denial was already predicted by the perpetrators: in “Auschwitz” they would scoff at the victims: “if a few of you should survive, who will believe you?” It seems, then, that we are in the midst of a race, lasting perhaps for 100 years, at the end of which the Holocaust will either be denied or—much the same—be distorted beyond recognition, or else—with patient scholarship, pious memory for which that past will never go away and an always-insufficient philosophy be recognized for what it was. And of the 100 years only just over sixty are gone. I call philosophy “insufficient” because a philosophy that truly faces the Holocaust does not need to be told: it knows its own insufficiency itself. Philosophy is rational, and reason explains; but is not explaining radical evil ipso facto making it less-than-radical? It would seem that historians can show radical evil, but cannot explain it.2 The two days ahead are on philosophy, general as well as Jewish: it is good to keep Jonas’s dictum in mind. MORDECAI KAPLAN AND MOSHE DAVIS My final lecture, at the end of this conference, will be on general philosophy; this, my first, at its opening, is on Jewish philosophy, hence, to be comprehensive should include the American, Mordecai Kaplan; but I had long been too much of a “Buberite” (of which more later) to take Kaplan seriously on theology. If, nevertheless, I once gave a lecture in his honor, it was mostly for

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Moshe Davis: he had absorbed Kaplan’s critique of Jewish theology as ignoring Jewish “peoplehood,” hence, invented a concept of “Jewish civilization.” Davis had applied this concept radically, first by making Aliyah and then, in Jerusalem, with the help of that concept founded an “Institute for Contemporary Jewry,” this within Hebrew University, but also, in a sense, against it: a time “epoch-making ” (Hegel) for “Jewish peoplehood”—the Holocaust and the rebirth of a Jewish state—was no time when “contemporary events” could be left to journalists: it also needed scholars—and, so I thought—philosophers. Moshe did more than anyone else to bring us to Jerusalem. MARTIN BUBER Martin Buber was not personally exposed as Leo Baeck; yet as early as 1933 the thinker, who has bestowed the word “dialogue” on politics—more, made genuine dialogue with “the Other” the core of his thought—was himself compelled to rise to tough politics. Two hundred years earlier, with Jewish emancipation in Germany beginning, a certain Johann Caspar Lavater had written to Moses Mendelssohn, asking him to refute what some third-rate Christian theologian had written or, if unable to, to do “what Socrates would have done,” convert. Mendelssohn was famous, admired widely, even by Gentiles, as “another Socrates.” Lavater never would have been famous, at least not in Jewish history, not even because of this episode, but only because his challenge was public, hence, at length, forced Mendelssohn to become the first modern Jewish philosopher. But in immediate response to Lavater, Mendelssohn replied publicly, as diplomatically as possible. In 1933, Buber was challenged, also publicly, replied also publicly, also diplomatically; but that Jewish emancipation in Germany was coming to an end was obvious from the book the challenger had sent him: Gerhard Kittel did not want conversion but asserted that Jews were a fremdes Volkstum: Kittel was a Christian Nazi. I once used that term, Christian Nazi, in a lecture—just once. (If one used it more often, one would cheapen it.) Someone stormed forward after the lecture: “Christian Nazi? A contradiction in terms!” I said, sadly “true by definition, but for twelve years the impossible-by-definition was empirically real.” Kittel’s father, Rudolph, had edited Biblia Hebraica. The son was the first editor of a theological dictionary of the New Testament. It will not do for Christian apologists, at this late date, to get away with “Nazism was pagan.” If Kittel was not another Lavater, then Buber was not another Mendelssohn. In replying publicly, Mendelssohn risked goodwill, perhaps his health; in doing the same, Buber risked concentration camp.3 Just prior to the 1938 Kristallnacht Buber found refuge in the Yishuv, soon the embattled, reestablished Jewish state. Long before, however, his 1923 I and Thou became a classic, if not for Muslims for Christians as well as Jews. For me this small book is precious still, for in it Buber made the


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Durchbruch, “breakthrough,” of his life, from his earlier ideas-about-Judaism to God himself, a Durchbruch he even in extremis never abandoned. Perhaps this was not without help from his friend and collaborator, Franz Rosenzweig who, in the Herzbuch, the “core” of his Star of Redemption, had cited Song of Songs, 8:6, that “strong as death is love.” A love stronger than death would invite a mystic flight from reality, which Buber and Rosenzweig jointly opposed; a death stronger than love would lead to pagan despair.4 Rosenzweig’s choice of this passage had been—for philosophy, Judaism—a stroke of genius. On his part, Buber focused on the actuality of the inter-human, the possibility of human-Divine “dialogue”: he persisted in it, as long as possible—possibly too long: its key thesis is that one must be open in “dialogue,” so that even from a genuine “encounter” with a human “thou”—let alone the Divine “Eternal Thou”—one does not emerge the same as one had been. The allusion is to biblical prophets, their initial call: after Isaiah, ch. 6, Jeremiah, ch. 1, surely neither prophet was the same. But while I still am with Buber on the Bible, he himself shrank from such allusions. The one time Rose and I met him, in 1957 in Princeton, he asked me to change one word in an essay I had written. I had called him a “prophet in modern guise.” He asked me to substitute “sage.” The Holocaust was over in 1945, surely known to all who cared ten years later, yet—as historians such as Yehuda Bauer have understood—it is one thing to learn “facts” about it, another to absorb even some, let alone the Holocaust as a whole, for the closer one gets to it the more unintelligible and incredible it is. Much has recently been written on Buber on politics, but for me his thought on God has always been ultimate, hence, what still troubles me deeply, retroactively, even reading him now, is that as late as 1957 he could still write the following: The mutuality between God and Man is not demonstrable, just as is the existence of God itself; but he who dares speak of it, thereby testifies to it, and also calls for testimony on the part of one addressed, present or future. 5 Who—other than a few individuals here and there—all by then, virtually alone, totally helpless—was “addressed” during the Holocaust, even after it? Five years earlier, Buber had published Eclipse of God, a book admitting that “Gottesfinsternis is the characteristic of the world-hour we live in.” 6 True, Eclipse of God concerns only the realm of thought, not that of life, when it deals with Sartre, Heidegger, Jung, even Kierkegaard. But Maurice Friedman, Buber’s faithful biographer, ends his chapter on Gottesfinsternis with a question I had asked of Buber when he was still alive—whether his “eclipse” is not “troubling.” Buber had replied that he was unable to conceive of divine Revelation as ever ceasing; but that for us humans it appears as a time of divine absence. Friedman’s own chapter ends with Buber himself:

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“He that says it is getting brighter leads into error.” Bold though he was for a Durchbruch to God, Buber would not, could not, face radical evil. I must stress again that Buber knew the Holocaust cannot be forgotten or “forgiven,” but add now that all sorts of Christians ask us to do both.7 LEO STRAUSS Leo Strauss never was my teacher, but I still think of him as a mentor, which he later was, but he pushed me into thinking as far back as Berlin when I studied Wissenschaft des Judentums, what such as Yehuda Halevi or Maimonides had written and thought; but I wanted to know whether it was true, any of it. Hence, just at the right time I came upon Strauss’s advice to “reopen the dusty old books,” “dusty” as well as “old” because, if anyone opened them, it was only for Wissenschaft, “facts”—for me already then, dead facts. Specifically, even back in Berlin, Strauss disturbed and enlightened me with one question: “Which is more critical, modern philosophy when, simply qua modern, it dismisses Revelation, as a cultural, purely human phenomenon or its medieval predecessors when, while using reason, they treat it as merely human, that is, subject to Revelation which is divine?” This question disturbed and enlightened me so deeply, so lengthily, as to cause me to write my Toronto PhD thesis, years later, from 1943 to 1945, on medieval Arabic philosophy, and from this I got to Maimonides: I would take past Jewish philosophy seriously, but only if it was not Jewish only, even though it accepted Revelation, nay, because of it. In retrospect, I can say this: I never was as much of a “Buberite” as to accept his Durchbruch to God on his own grounds, for an essay of mine on Buber’s concept of Revelation followed only after I had explored Maimonides.8 Only as late as 1982 did I dedicate To Mend the World to Leo Strauss’s memory, for he had recovered for me the possibility, hence, necessity, of Jewish philosophy. From nobody else did I ever learn so deeply that great thinkers of the past are not superseded fools but fellow philosophers, contemporaries. HEIDEGGER, ROSENZWEIG, PRIMO LEVI Subsequently, I abandoned medieval philosophy for “thought-in-the-‘present age’ ” (Kierkegaard), hence, could not—no more than Strauss—avoid Martin Heidegger. But neither Strauss’s involvement nor my own was either long or deep for—to quote Heidegger’s student, Karl Löwith—he was a Denker in dürftiger Zeit, “a time of need.” 9 In contrast, Strauss and I turned to philosophers in times of greatness. (As I would tell my Jewish students—those concerned with the subject—Jewish philosophy must be done in relation to either Plato/Aristotle or Kant/Hegel.10) With hesitation, Strauss finally turned to Plato, I to the “golden age” of German philosophy, climaxing with Hegel. But neither Strauss nor I could ever become indifferent to what was happening to Jews.11


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Strauss and I had Franz Rosenzweig in common: he dedicated his first book to Rosenzweig’s memory, and I, as already mentioned, my magnum opus to that of Strauss himself. In taking Rosenzweig seriously, we had a third in Emmanuel Levinas; but he found it necessary to stay with Heidegger, much longer, more deeply than either Strauss or I. The same dürftige Zeit—it had started before the Great War—that caused Heidegger to write Sein und Zeit caused Rosenzweig to immerse himself in Hegel, only to conclude that his own Stern der Erlösung was possible—for a Jew post-Hegel mortuum, even necessary. Hegel had rescued him permanently—so Rosenzweig thought—from “historicity,” viewed by him as a “curse” because to be in the midst of history was to be cut off from Transcendence, the highest, metaphysical truths. For Rosenzweig, Hegel’s “old thinking” had risen, in an abstract way, to Transcendence, so that post-Hegel mortuum, his own “new thinking,” was possible. But—as I will try to show later—little more than twenty years after 1921, the first appearance of the Stern, a devastating rupture took place in history, by no means for Jews only, that caused both “old” and ”new” thinking to plunge into an unprecedented crisis, in my view not over yet: Good and Evil after Auschwitz: Ethical Implications for Today: What are the “ethical implications for today”?12 “Good” is still the same after Auschwitz but is “Evil”? Hegel’s “Spirit” could “overcome” even the “death of God,” the worst evil he could think of, and if for Nietzsche “God is dead,” “everything is permitted”; but in “Auschwitz,” radical evil was commanded—even committed by “ordinary men” merely invited, as a way to celebrate Erntefest, “harvest festival,” that is, to participate in the final murder of Polish Jewry.13 But what of philosophy? His Zeit was dürftig, for Heidegger, and also for Rosenzweig, who wrote much of his Stern in the trenches of the Great War, but the two philosophers ended quite differently: Rosenzweig’s book ends with a hopeful, perhaps even joyous, call “Into Life.” Heidegger’s end may be said to be in 1953, when he published lectures first given in 1935. The book is published without change: toward its end, included is praise of the “truth” and “greatness” of the national-socialist “movement,” if not what was, he subsequently claimed, was already then offered as its “philosophy,” but also, early in the book, repeatedly, that Germans are the “metaphysical” Volk, endangered in Europe’s heart in the “pincers” between Russia and America, two countries “metaphysically the same,” in “preeminence of mediocrity.”14 The book’s appearance caused much discussion, as to whether, in republishing in 1953 what he had said in 1935, Heidegger was honest or, even in 1953, still something of a Nazi, albeit with a different “philosophy” and the cognoscenti know that this kind of discussion, more among French than German Heideggerians, has not yet ended.15 But for me, a Jewish philosopher writing in 2001, it is not only irrelevant but also offensive, indeed, philosophically mendacious, for it still evades what Heidegger never faced—that his—possibly once—“metaphysical Volk”

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had become implicated, even philosophically, hence destroyed by the Nazi weltanschauung, hence he said not a single word while, in the name of that very weltanschauung, indeed, for its sake, they acted criminally to the Jews of Europe, also abused teachers I revered, exploiting Baeck’s rectitude, assaulting Buber’s faith at its weakest; only Strauss had escaped, not only physically but also in thought, seeking refuge in philosophy elsewhere. May one say that “escape” can be applied also to Rosenzweig? He never left Germany, died heroically, tragically, much too young in 1929—but even so, as it were—by “divine grace”? His death occurred more than three years before the Nazi Machtergreifung, “seizure of power”: his death may be compared to that of German Judaism as a whole. The “Into Life” with which his Stern ends in 1921 still speaks today, but to whom? Not to Jews of twenty-odd years later, the Auschwitz Muselmänner, for of these Primo Levi wrote in 1958, “One hesitates to call them living; one hesitates to call their death death, in the face of which they have no fear, for they are too tired to understand.”16 It took Levi fully thirty years before he could write that the Muselmänner are not only victims but also witnesses, both unique: “When the destruction was terminated, the work accomplished was not told by anyone, just as no one ever returned to recount his own death. Even if they had paper and pen, the submerged would not have testified because their death had begun before that of their body. Weeks and months before being snuffed out, they had already lost the ability to observe, to remember, compare and express themselves. We speak in their stead, by proxy.”17 Now that Levi is dead, who is proxy? For humans of flesh-and-blood it is impossible, hence there remains only philosophy, possibly all of it, certainly the Jewish. Ever since Jacob, possibly since Abraham, Jews have wrestled with their God, and—whatever may be said of it otherwise—Jewish philosophy has always protected Him from triviality, often against superhuman odds, philosophy’s own included, letting Leibniz prove this was “the best of all possible worlds,” Voltaire mock “theodicy.” Henceforth, Jewish philosophy has a new task, located as it is between two extremes, neither of which can be trivialized, one, as always, God, the other the 6 million. They “did not return from their death.” Even they do not, cannot. HALLEL AND HÄNDEL I am ambivalent about Germany. This is most easily explained by my Heimatstadt: two persons known worldwide were born in Halle, one famous, the other infamous. Historians such as Eberhard Jaeckel view Reinhard Heydrich as a worse German instigator of the Holocaust than even Himmler, this latter merely Hitler’s treue Heinrich, and Hitler himself was Austrian. Heydrich was


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Curt Lewin’s neighbor, and Lewin was a good friend of my father’s: that the Holocaust had been as close to me I learned only decades later. The world-famous person, born in Halle, was Georg Friedrich Händel, of great composers surely alone in his love not only of biblical but also postbiblical Judaism: he composed Israel in Egypt, Jephtah, and many other Old Testament works, but also the postbiblical Judas Maccabaeus. Despite his words in his Matthaeus-Passion, which disturbed my mother, who loved Bach’s music, even though Rosenzweig recommended Bach, Händel is better in that even his Messiah contains no anti-Jewish words. More, love of Händel was with us not only personally, for we often heard Hallel (Psalms 113–118) in synagogue, on Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot, to the great hymn from Judas Maccabaeus; this also was sung in Berlin synagogues, but in Halle it was special.18 In 1998, on a visit to Halle, I went to the Marktplatz, not for other Sehenswürdigkeiten, “things to see”—such as the Rote Turm or the Marienkirche, in which one of Bach’s sons, Wilhelm Friedemann, had once been organist—but just for one purpose: to see whether Händel’s statue is still there. They had smashed Mendelssohn’s in Dresden and changed the text of Händel’s Israel in Egypt to “Opfersieg von Walstatt.”19 Twelve years of Nazism had been enough to make Germany judenrein, but too short to “cleanse” her of “Aryan Jew lovers”: Händel’s statue is still there. Even so, my attitude to Germany remains ambivalent, for in Kristallnacht they destroyed the Halle synagogue and, soon after, through expulsion or murder, “cleansed” her of Jews. True, there are Jews again in my Heimatstadt, even a Bethaus in the cemetery, but “Hallel and Händel”? Once a possibility, even an actuality, but nimmermehr, “never again.” BUBER IN DEFIANT FIDELITY I also am ambivalent about Jews, even Israelis, also related to “Hallel,” but quite different otherwise. I get this from a slim book of Buber’s which, not contained in his collected German Werke, seems to exist only in English and, in Germany at least, is all but unknown: At the Turning 20 consists of three lectures and is preceded by the foreword: “The reader should bear in mind that a Jew speaks here to Jews, in the center of the Diaspora [i.e., New York], in the hour when the deciding crisis of Judaism begins to become manifest.” For these lectures, I have reason to believe, Buber’s arm was twisted, just as mine was, in the same city, fi fteen years later, when I first spoke of the “614th commandment.” At the final lecture’s climax, Buber asks: “Dare we recommend to the survivors of Oswicim, the Job of the gas chambers: ‘Call to Him, for He is kind, for His mercy endurests forever.’ ” (This, slightly misquoted, is Buber’s English, translated badly and not edited at all.)

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The verse Buber quotes, too, is taken from Hallel, which—to repeat—is recited on Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot, festivals when once Israelites would go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, there to give thanks to the “God of history.”21 Evidently, Buber could not bring himself to use the word “Auschwitz” in German. Prior to the crucial question just quoted, he has asked whether Jews can still “speak” to God, “hear His Word,” two questions surely testing, even ruining, his thought in toto, yet he ends his lecture with a defiance that, for him, has no precedent: “Though His coming appearance resemble no earlier one, we shall recognize again our cruel and merciful Lord.” This Buber writes in 1952. As late as 1960, five years before his death, Buber completed a project begun many decades earlier with Rosenzweig, a translation of the Hebrew Bible for German-Jewish readers—this, however, when none to speak of are left in Germany. Buber’s Gottesfinsternis is still here, still with us, yet I say to all Jews here in Jerusalem tonight—to Jews anywhere—that we are a collective Nahshon. The Midrash imagines that this biblical figure jumps into the Re(e)d Sea before the waters had even parted, hoping for a miracle, but determined, if none would happen, to swim alone. “After Auschwitz, Jerusalem”: the “comma” means no cause-effect relation obtains between these two, only links: one hope, the other resolve. NOTES 1. The November lecture appears in English in Judaism 197:50 (Winter 2001): 53–59. 2. This was shown masterfully by Ian Kershaw: Hitler 1889–1936: Hubris; Hitler 1936–1945: Nemesis (London: Penguin, 1998, 2000). The author needed fully fi fty years for a perspective on World War II yet was himself still close enough not to treat it as “ancient,” no longer relevant, for his generation still suffered the aftermath. Hence, his book is scholarship yet reads like a tragedy, not only for victims but also Germans who, mitgegangen, were mitgehangen, had somehow or other gone along with it. Kershaw has done what another Englishman, Winston Churchill, promised but could not do, get rid, with Hitler himself, also of his “shadow.” (Of course, this is only a book, not post-Hitler history, getting rid of it, all of it.) Hence, Kershaw is gripping on the Holocaust, in Hubris, as no mere Führer whim but indispensable for the Nazi weltanschauung; in Nemesis, first as “Marks of a Genocidal Mentality” (ch. 3) and in the end, in terrible, logical fulfillment of a “prophecy” (ch. 10). Germans reading the book can now relate to what is called the Rausch of their grandparents, while Raul Hilberg, the first and still most intrepid witness, can now be satisfied. Yet despite Kershaw, the “race” of which I have spoken is unfinished, for simultaneous with Kershaw was Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett, A War To Be Won (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000) which merely counts the war dead, implying that, of 50 million, 6 million Jews are not that many, especially since “war-related deaths” are “not easy to define” (555).


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Murray and Millett are thus far only last in a long line. The first postwar book was Bullock’s Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (London: Odhams Press, 1952), whose interest in tyranny in general then made him write Hitler and Stalin (London: HarperCollins, 1991), like Hannah Arendt, concerned with totalitarianism in general, away from the Holocaust in particular. Then came Joachim Fest’s Hitler (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1974), who begins with “Hitler would have been a great man had he died in 1938.” He forgets, or finds irrelevant, that Kristallnacht was in that year and ends with admitting that the Führer did have a weltanschauung in which Jew hatred was central but because of “remnants of bourgeois morality” (744) wanted no details; then came Robert G. Waite’s The Pyschopathic God (New York: Basic Books, 1977), a “psycho-history,” as such, always suspect to historians but especially when “explaining” the Holocaust; now we have Winter-Baggett and Gerhard L.Weinberg contradict each other about the relation between the two wars, hence ipso facto about the Holocaust. Winter-Baggett’s Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century (London: BBC Books, 1996) has the Second World War merely continue the Great War, thus making the Holocaust possible, including that the Auschwitz inscription Arbeit Macht Frei was honestly meant by Rudolph Hoess, the world’s greatest mass murderer (399). “Hatred was no part of his nature, but systematic killing was” (398). In contrast, Weinberg’s Germany, Hitler and World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) documents that, unlike the first, World War II was about “who would live and what peoples would . . . disappear” if wanted by the German “aggressor.” But even Weinberg admits that Hitler’s announced “alliance with the devil against the Jews has not been given the attention it deserves” (33). This survey shows the uncertainty of historians regarding “radical evil.” The first to write on this concept in modernity was Kant; Hegel tried to “overcome” Kant, and Schelling pursued what Kant had written. 3. Buber’s essay is in Disputation and Dialogue: Readings in the Jewish-Christian Encounter, a classic in this subject, edited by my late friend, Frank Ephraim Talmage (New York: KTAV, 1975). 4. See my article in Wolfdietrich Schmied-Kowarzik, ed., Der Philosoph Franz Rosenzweig (Freiburg: Alber, 1988); also, especially those by Shlomo Avineri and Otto Pöggeler. 5. Martin Buber, Werke vol. I (München: Lambert-Schneider, 1963), 170. 6. Ibid., 520. 7. Maurice Friedman, Martin Buber’s Life and Work (New York: Dutton, 1983), 167. 8. In chapter 11 of Schilpp-Maurice Friedman, Martin Buber (La Salle, Illinois: Open Court Press, 1967) I treat Buber’s concept of Revelation. In note 21 that follows I ask why Richard Rubenstein did not remain with Buber’s “eclipse.” 9. Heidegger, Denker in Dürftiger Zeit (Göttingen: Vanderhoeck & Rupprecht, 1960). 10. At least one has listened to my advice. See Michael Morgan, Platonic Piety (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990). 11. Strauss’s last book is Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1983), yet in its middle is a chapter on “Jerusalem and Athens: Some Preliminary Reflections.” 12. The question was raised in Rome in 1998, but few of the thirty Catholics, Protestants, and Jews attending, myself included, would say—except for us, temporar-

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ily—our answers were final. The text is Good and Evil after Auschwitz: Ethical Implications for Today, ed, Jack Bemporad, John T. Pawlikowski, and Joseph Sievers (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 2000). 13. See, on the one hand, for voluntary murder by “ordinary men,” Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men (New York: Harper, 1992, esp. ch. 15). On the other hand, not even in Auschwitz was evil inevitable. Dr. Ella Lingens, a prisoner, recalled at the Frankfurt trial that there was one island of peace at the [Auschwitz] Babice subcamp, because of an officer named Flacke. “How he did it I do not know,” she testified. His camp was clean and the food also.” The Frankfurt judge, who had heard endless protestations that orders had to be obeyed, was amazed: “Do you wish to say,” he asked, “that everybody could decide for himself to be either good or evil at Auschwitz?” “That is exactly what I wish to say,” she answered. Toronto Globe & Mail, October 2, 1981. 14. Einführung in die Metaphysik (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1953), 32, 34, 152. 15. See Richard Wolin, The Heidegger Controversy (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993), especially Otto Pöggeler, 198 ff. Heidegger’s supposed depth in his search for “Being” precludes the most elementary moral judgments when he classifies murder at Auschwitz and bombs at Hiroshima as merely two ways of technology, as if Japan had not declared war, while it was true of victims of Auschwitz only in the Nazi weltanschauung. 16. Survival in Auschwitz (New York: Collier, 1958), 82. The book’s original title If This Is a Man? is much more philosophical. 17. The Drowned and the Saved (London: Abacus, 1988), 64 18. See Fred P. Frieberg, Musik im NS Staat (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1989), 352. In 1942, Hans Georg Goerner, Musikdirektor of Berlin Propstei, wrote that it was impossible to sing “about the glorification of the Jewish Yahwe of vengeance, while world Judaism prepares the mobilization of all humanity, for annihilating the Aryan race” (353). Under the influence of Pietism, “Daughter Zion,” once was a German song for Christmas Eve, but the music was not only in London synagogues. 19. I am writing to Halle’s Oberbürgermeisterin for a picture, for my memoirs. 20. Martin Buber, At the Turning (New York: Farrar, Strauss & Young, 1952). 21. In a forthcoming review of The Death of God Movement and the Holocaust, ed. S. R. Haynes and J. K. Roth (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999), I ask why Richard Rubenstein—who says that, never a “God-is-dead theologian,” he merely asserted this was “the time of ‘God is dead’ ”—did not stay with Buber’s “eclipse,” the crucial difference being that one can still stay with the Jewish “God of history” if one can hope for the “eclipse” to end. I was glad to contribute to his Festschrift myself, but it would have been better to have a different title than What Kind of God?

CHAPTER 2

Hegel and “The Jewish Problem” EMIL L. FACKENHEIM In a story, probably apocryphal, Hegel on his deathbed declared that only one understood him, then added—upon reflection—that this one did not understand him either. Almost 200 years have passed since 1831, the year of his death, so surely I am not, belatedly, the story’s anonymous one who “almost” understood him, still less so because—after ten years’ work on my The Religious Dimension in Hegel’s Thought—I published the essay “Hegel and Judaism: A Flaw in the Hegelian Mediation.”1 There are plenty of Hegel interpreters, of course, both during his life and to this day and, putting it mildly, neither “right-” nor “left-wing” Hegelians have been much concerned with justice to Judaism. Here two examples may suffice, one slight, the other rather big: a two-volume Hegel-Lexikon, otherwise wissenschaftlich, was published in 1935—reprinted in 1957 without change on this topic—in tune with the Germany of those twelve years, the way it “abridged,” that is, distorted him on Judaism: this is the slight one, possibly an “error.”2 The big one is a Hitler biography—published in 1971, in safely post-Nazi Germany, even available in English since 1973—that links Hegel to the Führer himself.3 There are many ways one can abridge, even interpret, Hegel without distorting him, but these two are not among them. Before anything else, therefore, I had better explain a term in my title. After what has happened, “Jewish problem” is normally avoided, here, however, indispensable: Hegel did have a problem with Judaism, was unable to solve it, knew it himself and, above all, as Leo Strauss once said to me, had Rechtschaffenheit, “rectitude”—“honesty as philosopher” was what Strauss meant 15

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to say. Rosenkranz was right in calling Hegel “repelled” but also “fascinated” by Judaism. However, unlike Rosenkranz, here I am not satisfied with merely explaining Hegel: what I want is truth for philosophy after the Holocaust. INTRODUCTION TO HEGEL, IN NAZI BERLIN Now I begin properly, best with a personal story. In Germany, rabbis once were expected to be also Herr Doktor, hence when, after matriculation in 1935, I enrolled for rabbinic study in Berlin’s liberal Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, I also tried to enroll in Berlin University but—like other Jews after 1933—was rejected. However, a long-forgotten chapter of Jewish resistance in Germany—the Hochschule—refused to be intellectually ghettoized, hence brought expelled Jewish professors into its walls. (Small physically, the building on Artilleriestrasse was not so otherwise: Hermann Cohen had taught there, and Franz Rosenzweig had been his student. The street, now renamed, is again in the Berlin Jewish quarter. In my time it housed both the orthodox and our liberal seminary, the former nicknamed “heavy artillery,” ours “light”; but when it housed Hermann Cohen and Franz Rosenzweig, it was hardly “light.”) Thus we got historian Eugen Täubler, who ought to be celebrated, at least among Jews, for he did not wait to be expelled from Heidelberg Universität but, anticipating expulsion, resigned in protest, yet was popular enough that even “Aryan” students wanted him back—in vain, of course. His presence in the Hochschule was a morale builder for us. Thus we also got philosopher Arnold Metzger, a former assistant to Edmund Husserl. But while Täubler may yet become famous, the two books Metzger wrote have been ignored.4 Metzger was the worst and best philosophy teacher I ever had: worst pedagogically, expecting first-year students to understand Kant or Husserl; best in making philosophy seem monumentally relevant: one night—he had given up on the Hochschule, its “philosophically dumb” students, but kept inviting us “bright” ones to his home. The subject was Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. He began as follows: placing a bottle on the table, he said that before this evening was over, in one way or another, the bottle must be gone. When it was, the way it was proper, I went away thinking that if I ever am to understand philosophy, I must understand the Phänomenologie for, as Metzger put it, in that work nothing mattered, ultimately, except the “presence” or “absence” of Hegel’s “Absolute”—of all places in Berlin, of all people for Jews in the Nazi capital. The year was 1937, even 1938, just a few months before Kristallnacht, the night in which synagogues were burned, German Judaism was destroyed, and the Holocaust began. (Whatever the view of historians, in Israel or anywhere else, this is still my view reached, of course, only after many years of thought.) Here is one characteristic passage from Hegel’s work:

Hegel and “The Jewish Problem”

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Aber nicht das Leben, das sich vor dem Tode scheut und sich vor der Verwüstung rein bewahrt, sondern das ihn erträgt und in ihm sich erhält ist das Leben des Geistes. Er gewinnt seine Wahrheit nur, indem er in der absoluten Zerrissenheit sich selbst findet. The Life of Spirit does not shun death, thereby preserving itself pure from devastation, but endures it, and in just this way maintains itself: only in being torn apart absolutely does it find itself.5 (my translation) Hegel here anticipates Nietzsche’s “death of God.” Shattering though the event is for both thinkers, Hegel gives humanity a chance thereafter. Nietzsche, in contrast—unwittingly, of course—gave Nazis what they wanted.6 In 1956, Karl Löwith made a judgment on Nietzsche, which is final for me to this day: “still close” to us, he is already “quite remote” when he “coined maxims with an unheard of harshness . . . of which in his personal life he was never capable” but which were “practiced for twelve years,” among them “the dangerous life, contempt for sympathy, a decisive nihilism of action, according to which that which already falls is yet to be pushed down.” (I have quoted this passage as far back as in Quest for Past and Future [Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1968], 297–98.) I have already said that on that Saturday night, we got away at 4 a.m., with me thinking I must understand Hegel, if ever I am to understand philosophy. But in Metzger’s Berlin home, we dealt only with the “Preface”; it took me fi fteen years—what years!—before I tackled the Phenomenology itself. This chance occurred as follows: Then a lecturer in the University of Toronto’s philosophy department, I approached Fulton Henry Anderson, its formidable head, with a request itself formidable: there was no graduate course on Hegel, I said, and I wished to teach him. (Making it less formidable, I added Fichte and Schelling.) F. H.’s response was like an assault: “Do you understand Hegel?” (As a rule, he spoke softly but vociferated when a cause required it.) I lied, got the permission I wanted, and taught the Phenomenology til retirement. I never got to its end, however, and always warned students of famousbut-impatient readers: Karl Marx got to “Lordship and Bondage,” I would joke, Søren Kierkegaard a bit further, to the “Unhappy Consciousness.”7 Earlier, at the beginning of this conference, I said that Jewish philosophy must be related to either Plato and Aristotle or Kant and Hegel; now, I expand on just one difference: for Aristotle’s “ancients,” there is a struggle for primacy, between philosophy and poetry8; for Hegel’s “modernity,” it is between philosophy and history. I also remind my readers of Hans Jonas’s dictum “much more is real than is possible”: it follows that if the struggle were with poetry—which, Aristotle writes, deals with “the possible,” while history

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reports “the actual”—then the dictum could be tautological, that is, meaningless; it means everything, however, for modernity, and its most important philosopher is not Kant but Hegel.9 Jonas himself said what he did with regard to a distinctly modern event, the Holocaust. THE CONCEPT AUFHEBEN Let me jump now to The Religious Dimension in Hegel’s Thought. If I got one thing straight in that book, it is Hegel’s concept Aufheben, not translatable, hence not translated here but expounded. Every Privatdozent has it, its three aspects, “preserving,” “abolishing,” and—since for ordinary logic this is contradictory—decisively a third, getting Aufheben beyond the contradiction, “raising” both to a higher level—note well, both. Every Privatdozent may have the concept, but The Religious Dimension gets inside Hegel’s exposition, in his lectures on “Philosophy of World-History” and “Philosophy of Religion,” in 1821, 1824, 1827, and even 1831, the year of his death. For Hegel these lectures were not easy, straightforward: he kept struggling with them. Thus in 1824 and 1831 he went from Jewish to Greek to Roman religion, but in 1827 he reversed himself in part, from Greek to Jewish to Roman. Moreover, the historically later is not always religiously superior: this is a common error about Hegel. He placed Roman religion far below Jewish and Greek: “Dying was the only virtue which the noble Roman could practice, and this he shared with slaves and criminals condemned to death.” And while “we” may love Apollo we cannot, any more than Jews, worship “a cow, a sea, an Indian or Greek god”: nature, all of it, for “us” as well, is entgöttlicht, “demythologized.”10 Rosenkranz was therefore right in seeing Hegel as “fascinated” with Judaism but, pious Hegelian that he was, had wrongly assumed he had solved the problem. Indeed, because Hegel, according to his reading of the book of Job, thought that he had shown an “admirable confidence”—insofar as Jews, so to speak, were a “collective Job”—that Jews and Judaism were a problem at all. HEGEL’S “JEWISH PROBLEM” There is a Hegel passage never quoted by anyone. Not even Peter C. Hodgson’s recent essay, outstanding though it is, has a trace of it.11 Hegel writes of a Zuversicht, die im jüdischen Volk eine Grundseite und zwar eine bewunderungswürdige ausmacht, a “confidence that is an admirable trait in the Jewish people.”12 A few pages later he adds that, in converting others, Islam is “fanatical,” Jews merely wish that others, too, would “praise the Lord,” are “fanatical”


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only when “their own heritage, their religion is under assault.” Clearly Hegel had not forgotten that he once wrote of the “most enthusiastic courage” with which Jews had fought for Jerusalem.13 That Hegel’s assertion about an “admirable Jewish Grundseite” is not about an ancient or a medieval stance only—in any case long over—is evident from his thoughtful treatment of the book of Job. He describes its beginning, correctly, as generally human, but its end as specifically Jewish: for his Job, God’s “honor” is primary to the end, and his own “earthly good fortune” only “in consequence,” this latter until he dies in “good old age” (Job, 42:17). Hegel considers Moses, even Abraham, Joblike, hence Jews as a whole, as it were, as a “collective Job.” He would have been deeply impressed by a Jewish funeral, with the mourners citing Job, saying Kaddish for eleven months, repeating it on every anniversary—the Kaddish does not mention the deceased, only the holiness of God.14 But for Hegel, Job remains a Jew, to the end. THE “JEWISH PROBLEM” AND WELTGESCHICHTE Hegel is the first, perhaps the only, philosopher ever to mediate between—as it commonly is called “synthesize”—Eternity and History, hence his history is Weltgeschichte, “world history.” Naturally, his Aufheben includes the history of thought, medieval also. But our special interest here is the Middle Ages themselves, limited as they are by the Crusades. Beginning in the “West,” with them “murdering and plundering many thousands of Jews,” they culminate in the “East” where, “still bloody with the murdered inhabitants of Jerusalem,” the crusaders “fall on their faces before the Redeemer’s Sepulchre, with prayers.”15 For Hegel these prayers are ultimate, hence the “contrast” between them and the “murder and plunder” is ungeheuer, “immense,” itself ultimate, but even in the West’s Middle Ages, “Heaven” and “Earth” are still far apart and, thereafter, “World Spirit” can never go East again. What must be noticed here, has always been overlooked, is that in the Crusades Jews are not only victims but also—albeit negatively—witnesses. Hence, even though Hegel did not know Kaddish, how long are Jews a “collective” Job—does Jewish Zuversicht remain a Grundseite of the Jewish people, an “admirable, basic trait”? Perhaps as long as the medieval self-contradiction, in the Crusades themselves, is not overcome. As we have seen, Hegel sees Job as far back as in Moses, even Abraham, hence Jews as a “collective Job”; moreover, the biblical Job himself has a Zuversicht, “trust in God,” which is “primary”; only “in consequence” does he himself get back his former “good fortune,” his “temporal happiness.” As we also have seen, Rudolf Otto’s claim to Wissenschaft degenerates, at this point, into Christian apologetic. But Hegel does have “a problem” with this very “collective Job,” in his Old Testament, from Genesis chapter 12 on and—except for the book of Job,

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with which he truly wrestles—through nearly all of it. Hence, there is a “noteworthy, infinitely harsh, the harshest, contrast” between “the universal God of Heaven and Earth” and His “purpose in the world of history,” limited as they are to this one “family,” even when expanded into “a nation.”16 For Hegel this contrast is “harsh,” “infinitely” so, since for him God is “not jealous,” hence he rejects—must reject—in Jewish Geschichte what theologians call Heilsgeschichte, that is, a “scandal of particularity,” making one wonder, of course, whether, in his own Weltgeschichte, “world history,” this “scandal” persists as well, especially if in his Weltgeschichte the Christian is the ”absolute” religion; more, we find him assert, elsewhere, that in “David’s Psalms and Hebrew prophets” Judaism is itself weltgeschichtlich.17 For this reason the climactic question is—to which all thus far has pointed—exactly what, for Hegel, is Weltgeschichte? And exactly how can it be that, yet involve the Christian as “absolute religion”? And why—most baffling, a scandal for nearly all Hegel scholars, can Weltgeschichte have reached an End? Assured as we have been of Hegel’s Rechtschaffenheit, “rectitude,” it will not seem petty for us also to ask: What has happened to the “Jewish problem”? The questions are intertwined. First, if God is not “jealous,” Divinity is immanent in all religions, in humanity as well as divinity, hence—as much as Humanity, Divinity has a history, and Weltgeschichte is both-in-one: no wonder Franz Rosenzweig complained that Hegel could say, but not think, the word Und, “and,” and that Rosenzweig’s own Star of Redemption begins with “God und World und Man,” all three separate. Second, the Christian religion is “absolute” in that—as long as, in Judaism, weltgeschichtlich though it is—the “Finite” is over against God, God Himself is “finite and limited”: this “may sound blasphemous”18 but is Hegel’s ultimate stand vis-à-vis the “collective Jewish Job”; but—include as it does and must his stubbornness as “admirable”—any true modernity must imply that it is no longer necessary—as at least I understand him—Hegel is the only thinker to make the Trinity intelligible; but its price is a “modernity” for which Jewish stubbornness, admirable as it has been all along, is no longer necessary. Essential in these intertwined questions is one question not asked thus far, about the “Reason” that knows Weltgeschichte: if it is of Divinity as well as Humanity, the Reason must itself have risen above finitude, that is, itself be human divine. This, a staggering presumption on Hegel’s part, also is a staggering humility, for history—the French Revolution, the Protestant Reformation, philosophy from Spinoza through Kant-Fichte-Schelling—has made the time ripe for it: no wonder Hegel wrote that “the time is ripe for Philosophy to be raised to a Science”: this is just the sort of passage that had excited Metzger in Berlin.19 At least in legend, Hegel complained that nobody understood him; in any case, only on this assumption could he end his Philosophie der Weltgeschichte as follows: “This is the true theodicy, the justification of God in history. To develop this course of World-Spirit has been my endeavor.”20


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This end is not of Geschichte, that is, social-political, but of Weltgeschichte, that is, theo-political.21 THE PLUNGE FROM WELTGESCHICHTE TO GESCHICHTE Just one page prior to its monumental conclusion Hegel had written that “consciousness has come thus far.” But in “Hegel Revisited,” Shlomo Avineri has brought Hegel’s “Reason” from “Heaven” to “Earth,” his Weltgeschichte to Geschichte. An earlier essay of his had stressed Hegel’s commitment to Jewish emancipation in “modernity,” embattled as it was in his time.22 In “Hegel Revisited,” Avineri points out an “irony”: Hegel was mistaken, if not about Weltgeist about his own Zeitgeist, with the author stressing not only Hegel’s Zeit but also our own, citing such as Nazi philosopher Alfred Rosenberg, for whom—along with the French Revolution and Marx—Hegel was “alien” to his “blood.” Since then we have had not only Hitler as a “philosopher” but also Nazi actions, including the Holocaust. For Hegel, just as the biblical “fear of the Lord” is the ancient “beginning of religious wisdom,” so Spinoza is the “philosophical beginning” of “modern wisdom.” In contrast, as Karl Löwith has stressed, not even Streicher made a difference to Heidegger, either to his politics or his “Seyn,” and even Löwith himself has made nothing of the fact that, in contrast to Hegel, Heidegger, in harking back to Heraclitus has, in effect, wiped out the Old Testament: Was the Holocaust an assault on Man or God? No deeper question can be asked about “Planet Auschwitz,” to name it as a Katzetnik did, and for Hegel “Planet” would have been a perfect metaphor, that is, “Auschwitz” as a world by itself. For Hegel’s Weltgeschichte, “Auschwitz” would have been an assault on both, God and Man, extreme enough to cause his “theodicy” to lie in shambles. Jews, singled out by Hegel as “admirably stubborn,” were now singled out not for mere contempt—this largely “overcome” by most churches—but with few Christians yet prepared that “to overcome Auschwitz” is impossible. Earlier, occupied with Jewish philosophers, I quoted Primo Levi on the Muselmänner. Now having argued for Hegel as the greatest modern philosopher, I must quote Levi again, now on “Auschwitz” Sonderkommandos. Muselmänner were the “living dead”; in contrast, Sonderkommandos were kept deliberately alive, just for one task: to pull corpses from gas chambers, then dispose of them. Levi writes: One is stunned by the paroxysm of perfidiousness and hatred: it must be the Jews who put the Jews into the ovens; it must be the Jews, the sub-race, the sub-men, who bow to any and all humiliation, even to destroying themselves.23 The Sonderkommandos, Levi goes on, were “deprived even of the solace of innocence.”24

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Or—another part of “Auschwitz”—what of SS Brigadeführer Juergen Stroop’s Report, which he called ‘The Jewish Quarter Is No More’ ”? Close to the Nazi Goetterdaemmerung, there were few more Nazi victories; yet Stroop’s Report “made the ‘massacre’ sound like a ‘victory’ ” (Guenter Grass), even included a Bildbericht, “pictorial record,” photographs of Jews—armed poorly, if armed at all—who, rather than get captured, jumped to death from burning buildings, pictures also of rabbis: proof, if this were still needed, that Nazis were no “ordinary” racists, practicing ordinary “genocide”: Nazism began and ended with attacks on Jews and, with it, on the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.25 I requote a few words from the text with which I began: could Hegel still write that das Leben des Geistes, “the Life of Spirit,” finds itself only in der absoluten Zerrissenheit, “in being torn apart absolutely”? When he wrote this he still thought that the worst evil possible was the death of God, and so did Martin Luther, as well as Karl Barth, a Protestant who, unlike Hegel and Luther, lived through Hitler but, like Martin Buber, could not face this evil, hence still said that, for Christians, “Good Friday” is always “after Easter.” But Hegel had lived before it happened, as Luther had. For Nietzsche, if God does not exist, “all is permitted”; but, at “Auschwitz,” evil was commanded, and while Hegel’s Geist can “find itself” only in absoluter Zerrissenheit, it is smashed beyond repair when “ordinary men” are invited—by no means compelled—to take part in an Erntefest, “Harvest Festival,” the celebration of which is the murder of the last remaining Polish Jews. FOR RECOVERY, BACK TO HEGEL AND HEINE In 1819 seven Jews met in Berlin to found a Verein, subsequently called für die Kultur und Wissenschaft der Juden. It was devoted to Jewish Renewal in a truly modern time, not merely abstractly but historically. Enlightenment-modernity had been too unhistorical: some of the seven, gripped by the thought of modernity historically, stated that their “first dogma” was that conversion to Christianity is “inadmissible,” but also had a “second,” for them nearly as powerful, that “if we feel the inner necessity of our continued existence [as Jews], its possibility is undeniable.” Of the seven, three would soon be famous, but only one of them remained faithful to its “first dogma,” and Leopold Zunz’s “modernity” would be Wissenschaft des Judentums, the best of which I got in Berlin, 1935–1938 but by then unsatisfactory. Of the other two famous ones, Eduard Gans, already a Hegelian, had asserted, during the five years the Verein lasted, that Jewish Aufgehen, “merging,” in Europe would not mean Untergehen, “perishing,” assertions that Heinrich Graetz, Zunz’ successor in Wissenschaft, then in Breslau, would dismiss as “muddiness,” “eccentricity,” and “Hegelian gibberish.”26 Not all members of the Verein thought Hegel was gibberish: Eduard Gans, one of the two violating its “first dogma,” became an articulate Hegelian;


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the other, Heinrich Heine, who surely attended some Hegel lectures, wrote in 1850, nineteen years after the master’s death, that he did not “return to Judaism,” for he “had never left it.” Today Heine is often quoted—although in Germany, not nearly as often as he should be—as prophetic in predicting that those burning books would end up burning people. Was he prophetic also in other respects, a Zionist before his time? His On Edom ends: Und alle die Thränen fliessen Nach Sueden in stillem Verein Sie fliessen und ergiessen Sich all’ in den Jordan hinein. Avineri’s essay ends, sadly, “Hegel never really had a chance.” Two peoples are traumatized today—or should be, hence in need of recovery—the grandchildren of the perpetrators and those of the victims. Perhaps both can find the recovery they need, not in Dichter und Denker in our “age of darkness” but in the age of German greatness, the Dichter Heine, and the Denker Hegel. NOTES 1. The book (in the following, RD) was first published by Indiana University Press in 1967, now University of Chicago Press, 1982. The essay is in The Legacy of Hegel (The Hague, the Netherlands: Nijhoff, 1973), 161–85. I still agree with Karl Rosenkranz, Hegel’s first biographer, that Jewish history both “repelled and fascinated” Hegel but, at my age, nearly thirty years later, I no longer see his “dark riddle” quite the same way. (Hegel can be viewed many ways, sometimes by the same person, long enough later.) James Doull, a Hegel scholar and friend of mine, wrote a response, also published there. 2. Hermann Glockner, ed. (Stuttgart, Germany: Frommann, 1935), republished 1957, vol. 1, 1178, especially 1180. The text Glockner quotes may itself distort Hegel. On Hegel’s “admirable” Jewish “confidence,” see further below. 3. Werner Maser, Hitler (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 130. The Führer knew only a few Hegelian phrases—Weltgeschichte, Weltgericht, and so on—and even German scholars such as Maser did not read Hegel at length or with care. Hegel did have a low view of America, but only for his time: for him it was “the land of the future” which, at Hitler’s time, had arrived. Hence—comical though it sounds—one might argue that because neither his generals nor his scholars nor Hitler himself read Hegel with care, nobody questioned Hitler’s declaration of war on America, and Hitler followers were surprised when they lost. 4. They are Phänomenologie und Metaphysik (Halle, Germany: Niemeyer, 1933) and Freiheit und Tod (Tübingen, Germany: Niemeyer, 1955). 5. Phänomenologie des Geistes, ed. Georg Lasson (Leipzig: Dürr, 1907), 22. (henceforth PG). The work has been translated by A.V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977).

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6. Despite heroic efforts, the late Walter Kaufmann tried to save Nietzsche for Enlightenment thought but could not: the cards had been stacked against him, ever since the Great War, when German soldiers were given either the Bible (for those who could fight better with God) or Nietzsche (for those who could do it better without Him). 7. PG, 125 ff., 132 ff. 8. Poetics 1451b: “The true difference is that the one relates what has happened, the other what may happen. Poetry is a more philosophical and higher thing than history, for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular.” For a contemporary philosophy and Jewish existence, see my “Philosophy and Jewish Existence in the Present Age,” Daat (1978): 5 ff. 9. Only self-styled “moderns” think of a segment of the past as “Middle Ages.” But while Kant’s essay on Aufklärung defines modernity, in his lectures on “Philosophy of History” and “Philosophy of Religion” Hegel attempts to explore it, including it in religious depth. Hannah Arendt, famously, mentioned that Eichmann quoted Kant but failed to ask in depth what made this possible, instead coining the term banality of evil. To be sure, she meant to justify it in her Gifford Lectures but died before she did. 10. For the complex details, see RD, 157–58. 11. In Nineteenth Century Religious Thought in the West, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 97 ff. 12. Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion, II, ed. Georg Lasson (Hamburg: Meiner, 1966), 79. Henceforth cited as PR. 13. Early Theological Writings, trans. T. M. Knox (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), 159. Well aware that it was out of context, I cited this passage when speaking at two German universities, Bochum in 1998 and Halle. 14. Rudolf Otto’s Idea of the Holy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1950) is a classic in the philosophy of religion, but one price it pays is Christian apologetic about Job. Hegel ends with Job himself, his honor of God, with earthly good fortune for Job himself only in consequence. Otto’s Job is superseded by Christ, for the “guiltless suffering of the righteous” is the “most mystical problem of the Old Covenant,” and the book of Job is a “prophecy of Golgatha,” where the problem, “already adumbrated in Job, is repeated and surpassed.” Hence for Otto, chapter 38 ff. of the book—Job’s experience of, and submission to, the divine Presence “out of the whirlwind”—is the book’s climax; the rest is merely “an extra payment, thrown in after quittance has already been rendered” (77 ff.). 15. Philosophie der Geschichte, ed. Eduard Gans (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1848), 474, 478; see also Philosophie der Weltgeschichte, ed. G. Lasson (Leipzig: Meiner, 1919), vol. 2, 847 ff. Henceforth PW. 16. PR II, i, 81 ff. 17. WG II, 727. 18. PR II, ii, 7. 19. PG, 6. 20. PW II, 938. 21. Three essays in Jon Stewart, The Hegel Myths and Legends (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1996), on “the myth of the end of history,” are up to date, citing Fukuyama, Kojeve, and Hegel himself, but none are serious about Hegel’s Divinity as itself having a history. See also my essay in Stewart’s collection. 22. Journal of Contemporary History (April 1968): 133–47. The earlier essay is “Hegel’s Views on Jewish Emancipation,” Jewish Social Studies (April 1963): 145–51. See


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also Hegel’s Rechtsphilosophie (# 270 Anmerkung). In my view # 358 of the same work is highly significant in that barely two paragraphs before its end, the Jewish people appear again, but little or nothing has been made of this text by general philosophers; in my view it can be understood only as Hegel’s “Reason” rising to Divinity, a Protestant finally superseding medieval theology. In different ways, Franz Rosenzweig and Karl Barth seem to have understood Hegel this way, but never worked it out. 23. The Drowned and the Saved (London: Abacus, 1988) 35. Hereafter DS. 24. DS, 37. 25. See the Midrash that concludes my To Mend the World. Hitler’s last will and testament ends as follows: “Above all, I charge the leaders of the nation and those under them to scrupulous observance of the laws of race and merciless opposition to the universal poisoners of all peoples, international Jewry.” 26. These speeches of Gans were edited by Shneur Zalman Rubashoff, a Russian Jew who for a while lived in Germany, subsequently to become Salman Shazar, Israel’s third president. On my address in a conference presided over by Shazar, in 1970, as part of our “pilgrimage” first to Bergen-Belsen, then to Jerusalem, see my “From BergenBelsen to Jerusalem” (World Jewish Congress, 1975). Comments on my address were made by Arthur Morse, Piotr Rwicz, Manes Sperber, and Alfred Kazin.


PA RT 2

Critique


CHAPTER 3

Hegel’s Ghost “Witness” and “Testimony” in the Post-Holocaust Philosophy of Emil Fackenheim

SUSAN E. SHAPIRO I have been strongly influenced by Emil Fackenheim’s thought, especially his major work To Mend the World: Foundations of Post-Holocaust Jewish Thought.1 Fackenheim is the philosopher who has raised the most important questions after the Shoah. Although I sometimes take a different tack in responding to these questions, his work continues to deeply inform and challenge my own. One of the reasons I have found his thought so important is that he attempts to think both rupture and recovery in the same work. One of the significant characteristics of Fackenheim’s writings is his starting from within the claim of radical negation emerging from the Shoah. He then raises the question of recovery, of affirmation, only from within this testimony of radical negation. As a consequence, Fackenheim deliberately weights our attention toward negation and suffering; the possibility of hope and comfort must, for Fackenheim and for those upon whose testimony he draws, be justified in the face of the priority of the claims of massive suffering and its negating effects. Fackenheim, thus, does not assume that recovery of the Jewish tradition or of the Sacred or Holy is possible after the Shoah; nor, however, does he think that such recovery is impossible. In this way, Fackenheim is able to attend to the dual claims of “rupture and recovery,” of negation and affirmation, without necessarily effacing one claim or the other. 29

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In order to better understand the tensive, even contradictory, demands of this double witness, I will here examine the role of hermeneutics—that is, the theory or philosophy of interpreting experience, events, and texts—in Fackenheim’s work To Mend the World. I, thus, will take a step back from speaking directly of the event of the Shoah into questions of language. In this way I hope to get a clearer view of the difficulty, problematics, and limits of hearing and thinking about the claims of rupture and recovery in the same work. For, as I will argue, it is in light of a critical hermeneutics of testimony that the range of witness emerging from the Shoah may best be heard. By taking this interpretative turn, the competing moments of rupture and recovery may be bridged without privileging any one form of testimony—for example, that of resistance—over any other. In his major work To Mend the World, Fackenheim argues that the Holocaust represents a total break with the history of Western thought, action, and belief. The greater part of this text is devoted to a retrospective reenactment of this break. The last section is focused on the recovery of the foundations of thought, action, and belief after this rupture. I ask how Fackenheim’s argument moves from radical negation to affirmation and how he figures this move rhetorically and hermeneutically in order to accomplish this apparently contradictory task. Again our question in this chapter is, “How does one think both rupture and recovery, together, in the same work?” I will pay particular attention to the role of the categories of “witness” and “testimony” in this double task. Fackenheim begins by demonstrating how Western philosophy has moved from a view of thought’s transcendence of history to its engagement with history to, finally, its utter finitude and loss of transcendence in its disastrous confrontation with one historical event in particular: the Holocaust. As Fackenheim states, “Where the Holocaust is, no thought can be, and where there is thought, it is in flight from the event.”2 For Fackenheim, the foundations of reason have been destroyed in the Shoah, and thought may now only uncover this disaster in its own thinking. But if, as Fackenheim argues, the Holocaust and thought displace one another, then how may they be brought together in order to demonstrate this displacement? If the Holocaust negates Western reason, then what sort of argument may be used to demonstrate or prove this negation? When Fackenheim juxtaposes the Holocaust and reason in order to show the displacing effects of their encounter, this writing takes a pronounced rhetorical turn. It is primarily through testimony and the witness of examples that the turning points in his argument are most persuasively and powerfully made. The displacement of thought by the Shoah, for example, is rhetorically accomplished in the disruptive inclusion of pieces of documentary narratives—such as selections from Holocaust and post-Holocaust diaries and memoirs—in the middle of his examination of the logic of the philosophical arguments under

Hegel’s Ghost

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consideration. These “documentary pieces” of the event break into and paralyze thought. One such account is from Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz.3 It is placed by Fackenheim in the midst of a philosophical argument the logic of which ruptures, both in its content and in its very performance: On their entry into the camp, through basic incapacity, or by misfortune, or through some banal incident, they are overcome before they can adapt themselves; they are beaten by time, they do not begin to learn German, to disentangle the infernal knot of laws and prohibitions until their body is already in decay, and nothing can save them from selection or from death by exhaustion. Their life is short, but their number is endless, they the Muselmänner, the drowned, form the backbone of the camp, an anonymous mass, continuously renewed and always identical, of non-men who march and labour in silence, the divine spark dead within them, already too empty really to suffer. One hesitates to call them living; one hesitates to call their death death.4 How does one reweave such an account back into the logic of the argument one was following until this point? The reader cannot. The argument that is being made by Fackenheim here is that such a return to the foundations of Western thought after the Shoah is impossible, just as, in one’s reading, a return to the argument dropped earlier, as if now to complete it, is impossible. In this way the failure of thought in confronting the Shoah is rhetorically demonstrated. If the ruin of the foundations of Western thought by the Holocaust is demonstrated through testimony and example, then so is Fackenheim’s reorientation to the future made possible rhetorically. Fackenheim relies on the astonishing testimony of physical and spiritual resistance to the Nazis within the Holocaust itself in order to move beyond the utter collapse of Western thought. Examples cited, described, and documented by Fackenheim are the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, the continued maintaining of the mitzvot by the Buchenwald Hasidim (even though they considered the Holocaust both historically and theologically unprecedented), and the paradigmatic resistance of Pelagia Lewinska, a Polish noblewoman who, in Auschwitz, recognized its total and deadly logic and who, in response, “felt under orders to live” and so to resist. But from the instant that I grasped the motivating principle . . . it was as if I had been awakened from a dream . . . I felt under orders to live. And if I did die in Auschwitz, it would be as a human being. I would hold on to my dignity. I was not going to become the contemptible, disgusting brute my enemy wished me to be. . . . And a terrible struggle began which went on day and night.5

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This testimony is certainly both powerful and moving. It gives those of us who did not live through, but rather after, the Shoah an example that may light our way through despair. Like the account of the Muselmänner that ruptures the foundations of reason, Lewinska’s testimony of resistance disrupts the totally negative logic of the arguments leading up to it in the text of To Mend the World. In both cases, the documentary effect of testimony breaks the logic of the discourse preceding it, although with opposite results. If with the first testimony we are plunged into despair, then the second testimony makes possible hope. Indeed, in perhaps the darkest moment of the text, this testimony of resistance appears, offering the possibility of a reorientation toward the future, a recovery of which possibility had until this point been fully unimaginable. In each instance, analogous rhetorical strategies are employed that make history—in particular, the events of the Shoah and of the founding and maintaining of the State of Israel—the agent of both the rupture and recovery of thought. The move from rupture to recovery is not, however, accomplished through rhetoric alone. Fackenheim secures this move by turning to logic. In attempting to preserve and privilege the testimony of resistance, he translates the grounds of its persuasiveness into a logic that effaces the rhetoricity of his argument. By converting the testimony of spiritual resistance into an ontological category, Fackenheim seals the contradictions, between the testimonies of rupture and those of recovery, from within. He shifts the weight of his argument from negation to affirmation, securing the testimony of resistance and the redemptive possibilities it enables from negation by the rupture he so carefully and powerfully demonstrates to be total in the first part of his text. The testimony of resistance has logical and ethical status such that it necessitates and commands present action. Fackenheim writes, given that “authentic thought was actual during the Holocaust among resisting victims, therefore such thought must be possible for us after the event; and, being possible, it is mandatory.”6 Because resistance was possible then and there, in the Shoah itself, Fackenheim argues that resistance is necessary for us here and now, both logically and morally. Recovery, then, surprisingly is to be found within the rupture itself, for if within the Holocaust the abyss was crossed in resistance, then it has already, in principle, been closed and the process of Tikkun, that is, mending, begun. We are mandated to continue this process of recovery now through resistance, reconnecting our past and present in anticipation of a messianic future. Such a desire to reestablish the continuity between past and future broken in the Holocaust is very hard to criticize. Certainly, we all desire this recovery. But in Fackenheim’s turning away from rhetoric to logic, there is a loss. By making resistance logically necessitate and morally legislate for us now, Fackenheim has undercut the very ground of this testimony in reorienting surprise and astonishment that made it so effective, moving, and transformative.

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In moving from a rhetoric of rupture to a logic of recovery, then, Fackenheim risks undoing the basis of reorientation—from within the abyss—toward the possibility of a different future. The effacement of rhetoric in Fackenheim’s argument has another cost as well. However admirable, exemplary, and reorienting is the testimony of resistance, its categorical and ontological privileging necessarily excludes and negates the claims of other testimonies to the event. Although Fackenheim in no way wants to denigrate the mute testimony of the Muselmänner, his privileging of physical and spiritual resistance risks such a slight. For the logic of privilege necessarily implies that something else is excluded or made secondary. Both of these losses are a result of the paradoxical treatment of rhetoric (especially of the role of testimony and example) in To Mend the World. On the one hand, rhetoric makes possible the uncovering of the disaster that the Holocaust is within Western thought, making evident the collapse of the foundations of action and belief. On the other hand, it is precisely this rupture that is covered over in the logical and categorical guaranteeing of recovery. The contradictions in Fackenheim’s work (in this case, between a rhetoric of rupture and a logic of recovery) are due not only to his privileging of the testimony of resistance, they issue from his interpretive assumptions as well. In To Mend the World, Fackenheim explicitly describes his own thinking as hermeneutical. A truly human existence that is not already hermeneutical in its own right is impossible; not only thought but existence as well is hermeneutical. . . . An historicist hermeneutics (for which past and present are situated in different historical situations but also part of one continuous history) understands itself as “dialogical”—and ever incomplete.7 The Holocaust has radicalized this historicist hermeneutic, putting in question the accessibility of this “one continuous history” and its mediation between past and present. In the foreword to his The Jewish Bible after the Holocaust: A Re-reading,8 Fackenheim says: A continuity between past and present is assumed also by recent general hermeneutics, and this despite its stress on the historical situatedness of both. I am close to this hermeneutics except for one crucial point: neither Paul Ricoeur nor Hans-Georg Gadamer and certainly not Martin Heidegger ever face up to the Holocaust, as an event by which historical continuity must be ruptured. What such a rupture might mean for general hermeneutics lies outside the scope of this book.9

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It is in To Mend the World that Fackenheim addresses these questions, in Part IV, section 11. The concern there is whether and how this gap, this rupture between past, present, and future, may be bridged. As I have demonstrated, this mediation is accomplished by the testimony of resistance in particular. Although a general hermeneutic helps Fackenheim frame the problem of bridging the gap between different historical moments, it is not, however, a resource for his thinking about the status of language regarding either the rupture between these historical situations or its role in their mediation. It is the tone, but not the grammatical, rhetorical, or poetic coherence of language, that for Fackenheim is in principle marked by the Shoah. Throughout his writings, including To Mend the World, Fackenheim employs a somewhat idealist hermeneutic in which experience and perception are understood to precede, and thus to be separable from, language (despite his avowed turn to a general hermeneutic). For example, in his God’s Presence in History: Jewish Affirmations and Philosophical Reflections,10 experience and perception are treated as primary, whereas language and interpretation are considered secondary. In following Buber on miracles, for example, Fackenheim writes: What is decisive with respect to the inner history of Mankind is that the children of Israel understood this as an act of their God, as a “miracle”; which does not mean that they interpreted it as a miracle, but that they experienced it as such, that as such they perceived it.11 Just as the maidservants who witnessed the splitting of the Reed Sea in the Exodus from Egypt are considered by Fackenheim authoritative, so the Holocaust has its canon of testimony. These later witnesses, furthermore, let the facts “speak for themselves” and are not understood, by Fackenheim, to speak for—that is, to interpret—these facts. In this way, although Western thought is ruptured in the Holocaust, language has been left unmarred. Both the rupture and recovery of thought may then, at least in principle, be enacted without either breaking or mending language. Thus the startling recovery of the last part of To Mend the World is made possible, indeed prefigured, by the text’s interpretative assumptions. The securing of language from the effects of catastrophe is especially surprising because Fackenheim is aware of the problems of protecting thought from rupture by events. Indeed, he distinguishes his own thinking from that of Hegel in just these terms. In the preface to the second edition of To Mend the World, Fackenheim writes about the difference between healing and mending. Hegel once said that the wounds of Spirit heal without leaving scars. He could no longer say this today. To speak of a healing has become inappropriate. Scars of the wounds of Spirit remain and will continue to remain. But a mending is possible, and therefore necessary.12

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I certainly share Fackenheim’s discomfort with “healing,” and for many of the same reasons. Where are the scars? If they must disappear in order for the Spirit to be justified, as Hegel thought, then, by implication, these scars are anti-Spirit. On the contrary, not only must these scars remain, for Fackenheim, because a healing without them is now “inappropriate,” but they also are the very site of recovery. Recall that it is from within the rupture, from within the Holocaust itself, that the reorienting testimony of physical and spiritual resistance issues. And, as I have already explained, for Fackenheim, the possibility of mending makes mending necessary as well. But, as I also have already indicated, it is precisely this logical necessitating of resistance and mending that threatens to undo its very basis in risk. But must we not ask, especially with regard to Fackenheim’s counterpoint to Hegel’s notion of a wounded Spirit healing without leaving scars, Is not language itself affected and wounded, scarred? Would not the recognition of the scarring of language in and by the Shoah importantly further intensify the difference Fackenheim draws, in criticizing Hegel, between healing and mending? Fackenheim’s insulating of the authority of experience from the vagaries of interpretation is understandable, given that we live in an age in which not only the Sacred or the Holy must be justified, but in which even the veracity of the Holocaust has been denied. But can we really hear and attend to this testimony if we separate so firmly between what is said and how it is spoken or written? I think not. Indeed, the very scarring of discourse may offer an unavoidable starting point and resource for post-Holocaust thought. Beginning not only with the rupture of thought but of language as well, a hermeneutics of testimony becomes possible that attends to the full range of testimony from the Shoah—including that of the Muselmänner. Further, it will also be more consonant with Fackenheim’s actual rhetorical practice—such as the use of testimonies and examples—than with his more idealist hermeneutical theory. For, as I have argued, it is through the rhetoric of testimony and the witness of examples that the argument of To Mend the World is made and on which it, finally, depends. The insertion of testimonies and examples into the logic of his arguments is not merely a rhetorical device to sway the passions through anecdote and artificial and external proof. Because language and experience cannot finally be separated, and rhetoric cannot fully be effaced in the logic of the work, a rhetorics and hermeneutics of testimony must be regarded as constitutive of the argument of the text as a whole. If the Holocaust ruptures thought, then it is inscribed in ways that demonstrate this very claim. That the effects of this inscription cannot be contained by Fackenheim’s somewhat idealist hermeneutical assumptions and logical strategies, however, says less about the limits of his enterprise than it does about the contradictory claims and demands of post-Holocaust writing and thought generally. The attempt to write and think rupture and recovery together in the same work issues in a series of contradictions that pull apart post-Holocaust

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discourse. Almost inevitably, one function—negation or affirmation—is figured as subservient to the other. In part, this is because these oppositions undergird not only post-Holocaust thought, but they produce the aporias of all post-Holocaust representation, including the rupturing effects of the Shoah on language. For example, muteness, silence, and broken speech have not only become themes and motifs of post-Holocaust writing, the writing itself is made mute, silenced, broken. The hermeneutical question then becomes, “How does one give testimony to an event that negates the very assumptions of discourse that makes possible such telling?” The imperative to testify lest the Holocaust be condemned to historical forgetfulness only intensifies the hermeneutic antinomy confronting those who would give witness to this event. Writing about the Holocaust becomes at once both impossible and necessary. In The Drowned and the Saved,13 Primo Levi writes: I must repeat: We, the survivors, are not the true witnesses. . . . We survivors are not only an exiguous but an anomalous minority: We are those who by their prevarications or abilities or good luck did not touch bottom. Those who did so . . . have not returned to tell about it or have returned mute, but they are the [Muselmänner], the submerged, the complete witnesses, the ones whose deposition would have a general significance. They are the rule, we are the exception. . . . We speak in their stead, by proxy.14 And, yet, this confession of testimonial failure is itself effective. This “effective failure” is elaborated on by Elie Wiesel when he says: “What [the writer] hopes to transmit can never be transmitted. All he can possibly hope to achieve is to communicate the impossibility of communication.”15 Post-Holocaust testimony, then, is ironically made possible through the inscription of this very failure in writing. The aporias of post-Holocaust representation, however, can be broken through in our willingness to listen. After all, we must hear and respond to the claims of those who, in the isolation of their painful memories of the event, call us to listen, as best we can, to their testimonies. “Why,” Primo Levi asks, “is the pain of every day [in the camps] translated so constantly in our dreams, in the ever-repeated scene of the unlistened-to story?”16 It is the first obligation of a post-Holocaust hermeneutic to allow the possibility of hearing this testimony; for it is in this hearing, and in the recognition of our obligation to attend to this witness, that the humanity of those who were destroyed in the Shoah may be recovered. If the Muselmann is the “complete witness” whose testimony, however, can only be spoken by proxy, then certainly we must shape our hermeneutic so as to be able to include and attend to this testimony. It is very clear in To Mend the World that Fackenheim is haunted both by the image and the witness of the Muselmänner. For example, he writes:

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The screams of the children and the silence of the Muselmänner are in our world. We dare not forget them; we cannot surpass or overcome them: and they are unredeemed.17 In a response to my review of To Mend the World, Fackenheim wrote in the second edition (1989) of that book: [Shapiro] recognizes the problem of the book and focuses on the crucial point in its argument for a solution. Her error in the cited criticism is due to her failure to recognize that post-Hegelian thought, like Hegel’s own, moves. Hence the Muselmänner are not left behind as this thought reaches the resistance that mends its own ontological foundations: it can reach, come to possess, and continue to possess these foundations only as it, ever again, moves through the mute testimony of the Muselmänner by which it is paralyzed. Not accidentally does the present essay end with the statement that while a mending of the world of Spirit is possible, a healing is not.18 Indeed, as I have already demonstrated, it is with regard to the witness of the Muselmänner that the question of Hegel, the Holocaust, and the hermeneutics of testimony arises most acutely. I suggest that it is the recognition of the inescapability of the aporias of language in representing the Shoah that opens a hermeneutical space for the mute, “impossible” testimony of the Muselmänner to be “heard.” Our different evaluations of testimony in which I emphasize the need to preserve its risk character and irreducible plurality rather than categorizing and privileging one form of testimony—that of resistance—over others turns in part on our different readings of Hegel as well as on the question of even the desirability of a post-Hegelian stance after the Shoah. Fackenheim reads Hegel as, in his terms, “moving” and as carrying forward into the next stage what I see as substantially left behind in just this move. There is no question, however, as I have emphasized, that Fackenheim vehemently does not wish to leave the Muselmänner behind. Indeed, his turn to confront the Holocaust at all in his philosophical thought is motivated in large measure by his desire to rescue the memory of those who died in the Shoah as a contemporary moral imperative for us now. Still, I believe that the effect of his methodological assumptions ultimately, if unintentionally, works against the realization of this inclusive aim. Thus my critique of Fackenheim in this regard is in service of the fulfillment of his own goals; it is precisely to make a postHolocaust hermeneutics of testimony more inclusive in just these terms. NOTES Part of this chapter was published previously in “For Thy Breach Is Great Like the Sea: Who Can Heal Thee,” Religious Studies Review 13:3 (July 1987): 210–13.

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1. Emil L. Fackenheim, To Mend the World: Foundations of Post-Holocaust Thought (New York: Schocken Books, 1982, 2d ed., 1989). 2. Fackenheim, To Mend the World, 200. 3. Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz (New York: Collier Books, 1993); first published as Se questo e un uomo (Torino: Giulio Einaudi editore, 1958); first English edition titled If This Is a Man, trans. from Italian by Stuart Woolf. 4. Ibid., 82. 5. Quoted in Fackenheim, To Mend the World, 217; see also Pelagia Lewinska, Twenty Months at Auschwitz (New York: Lyle Stuart, 1968), 141 ff., 150. 6. Fackenheim, To Mend the World, 249, emphasis in original. 7. Fackenheim, To Mend the World, 258–59. 8. Emil L. Fackenheim, The Jewish Bible after the Holocaust: A Re-reading ((Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1990). 9. Ibid., viii. 10. Emil Fackenheim, God’s Presence in History: Jewish Affirmations and Philosophical Reflections (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1972); first edition, New York University Press, 1970; Charles F. Deems Lectures, delivered at New York University, 1968. 11. Quoted in Fackenheim, God’s Presence in History, 12; see also Martin Buber, Moses (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1958; London: East and West Library), 75. 12. Fackenheim, To Mend the World, xxv. 13. Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved (New York: Vintage Books, 1989); first edition of this translation, (New York: Summit Books, 1988), trans. Raymond Rosenthal; first published in Italian as Sommersie i salvati (Torino: Giulio einaudi editore, 1986). 14. Ibid., 83–84. 15. Elie Wiesel, “The Holocaust as Literary Inspiration,” in Dimensions of the Holocaust, annotated by Elliot Lefkovitz (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1977), 7–8. 16. Levi, Survival in Auschwitz, 60. See also, Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, 12: “Almost all the survivors, orally or in their written memoirs, remember a dream which frequently recurred during the nights of imprisonment, varied in its detail but uniform in its substance: they had returned home and with passion and relief were describing their past sufferings, addressing themselves to a loved one, and were not believed, indeed were not even listened to.” 17. Fackenheim, To Mend the World, e.g., 135. 18. Ibid., 336, footnote 13, emphasis in original. To put into context Fackenheim’s criticism of my review, I quote from the sentences immediately preceding those quoted in the body of my chapter. There, Fackenheim remarks: “Shapiro’s is an excellent review of To Mend the World, indeed, the best I have read. She recognizes the problem of the book and focuses on the crucial point in its argument for a solution.”

CHAPTER 4

Fackenheim on Passover after the Holocaust WARREN ZEV HAR VEY Emil Fackenheim’s classic little book God’s Presence in History: Jewish Affirmations and Philosophic Reflections appeared in 1970, three years after the Six Day War. It was based on lectures delivered in 1967 and 1968. No book written by a Jewish philosopher after the Holocaust has presented more forcefully the case for the God of History and dealt more seriously with the problem of Judaism and historical meaning. In this sense, God’s Presence in History stands in the tradition of Rabbi Judah Halevi’s twelfth-century Kuzari, Rabbi Nahman Krochmal’s nineteenth-century Guide of the Perplexed of the Time, and Franz Rosenzweig’s pre-Holocaust Star of Redemption. Like Krochmal and Rosenzweig, Fackenheim is profoundly influenced by Hegel’s philosophy of history. THE PARAMOUNT QUESTION In God’s Presence in History, Fackenheim raises the question of how it is possible for a Jew to celebrate Passover after the Holocaust. The question is raised several times in the book and may be said to be its major question. Fackenheim himself suggests that this is the major question in the book. In one place, he quotes the words of the Passover Haggadah: “In every generation there are those who rise against us to annihilate us, but the Holy One, blessed be He, saves us from their hand.” He then comments: “It is only a small exaggeration for me to say that whether, and if so how, the contemporary religious Jew can still include this sentence in the Passover 39

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Seder liturgy is the paramount question behind my entire investigation in this book.”1 The question of how a Jew can honestly say “The Holy One, blessed be He, saves us from their hand,” when millions of Jews were not saved from the hands of the Nazis, does not give Fackenheim rest. This question is part of the larger one of whether the ancient Jewish faith in the God of History is still possible after the Holocaust, which is the cruelest evidence against the existence of such a God. God’s Presence in History begins with a comparison of the individualistic mystical vision of Ezekiel, the sublime vision of the Chariot (ma‘aseh merkabah), with the revelation of the liberating God of History to the entire people at the Red Sea. Fackenheim paraphrases the Midrash (Mekhilta, Shirata, 3): “Even the lowliest maidservant at the Red Sea saw what Isaiah, Ezekiel, and all the other prophets never saw.”2 Ezekiel saw the Chariot but did not see what all the Israelites saw at the Red Sea. The faith of Judaism, Fackenheim teaches, is not based on the mystical visions of individuals, like the prophet Ezekiel, but on the experience of the people who encounter the liberating power of the God of History. The individualistic vision of Ezekiel was not a root experience of Judaism. The splitting of the Red Sea was. Ezekiel saw the skies open up above the River Chebar, but he did not see the miraculous and saving presence of God in history. He did not see what the maidservant at the Red Sea did. As a root experience of Judaism, the miraculous salvation at the Red Sea is remembered and reenacted every year at the Passover Seder. The miracle witnessed by the Israelites at the Red Sea becomes our miracle when we reenact it.3 In a Hegelian dialectic, the past shapes our present, and the present shapes our past. “In every generation,” it is written in the Passover Haggadah (cf. Mishnah, Pesahim 10:5), “one must see oneself as if one is going out of Egypt.” One must reenact the historical event. One must bring the God of History to the Seder table and experience His presence, as did the Israelites at the Red Sea.4 This at least was the case before the Holocaust, writes Fackenheim. But is it possible after the Holocaust? Is it still possible to bring the God of History to the Seder table? In the Hegelian dialectic, the past not only shapes our present, but our present shapes our past. After the Holocaust, is it still possible to reenact honestly the miracle of salvation at the Red Sea? Does our present allow room for the God of History? “How can the religious Jew be faithful to the faith of the past and the victims of the present?”5 Now Fackenheim is unusual among contemporary Jewish philosophers in his Hegelianism. He also is unusual among Hegelian philosophers in the honesty and profundity with which he confronts the failures of Hegel’s philosophy of history. Already in 1955, in his essay, “Judaism and the Idea of Progress,” he affirmed unequivocally that the Hegelian theory of necessary progress cannot be maintained after the Holocaust:

Fackenheim on Passover after the Holocaust

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This evil phenomenon [Nazism] . . . gave the final lie to the view that histor y is necessar y progress. . . . Histor y is regarded as necessary progress only by those who are relatively remote from the evils of history. And in order to maintain that view, they must make light of these evils.6 Nonetheless, Fackenheim has remained true to the views that history has meaning, that there is a profound dialectic between past and present, and that God is revealed in history. It is this commitment to the significance of history that makes Passover after the Holocaust so difficult and problematic for him. THE MODERN PASSOVER In God’s Presence in History, Fackenheim initially raises the problem of our celebrating the Passover Seder without reference to the Holocaust. How, he asks, can the modern individual, living in a secular world, affirm the God of History? To illustrate this problem, he refers to the Passover Seder: [T]he pre-modern Passover Seder was the celebration of the divine saving Presence at the Red Sea, a celebration which implied—whatever the changing fortunes of contemporary history—that the Divinity which had saved once was saving still, and would ultimately bring total salvation. The modern Passover Seder is different things to different Jews. At one extreme [that is, among the secular Jews] it is a celebration of human freedom and nothing more. . . . Even at the other extreme [that is, among the religiously observant] there is doubt . . . concerning its present relevance. . . . [C]an the presence of God be more than a mere memory?7 Modern secularism, in Fackenheim’s analysis, does not refute the God of History but provides alternative explanations and claims that “the God hypothesis” is superfluous: had a modern secularist witnessed the salvation at the Red Sea, he or she could have found physical or psychological explanations why “the event . . . had only appeared to be miraculous.”8 Conversely, the absence of God in the modern secular world, according to Fackenheim, does not prove Nietzsche’s dictum that “God is dead,” for the biblical notion of God’s “hiding His face” or Buber’s notion of the “eclipse of God” is a satisfactory alternative explanation for that absence.9 Having raised the problem that modern secularism poses to faith in the God of History, Fackenheim now turns to the radically different problem that the Holocaust poses to it. Unlike modern secularism, he explains, the Holocaust does seem to refute the God of History. He then addresses himself to the question of the Passover Seder after the Holocaust:

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The pious Jew during the Passover Seder has always reenacted the salvation at the Red Sea. The event always remained real for him because He who once had saved was saving still. And this latter affirmation could continue to be made, even in times of catastrophe, because the divine salvation remained present in the form of hope. What if our present is without hope? The unprecedented catastrophe of the Holocaust now discloses for us that the eclipse of God [as alternative to the “death of God”] remains a religious possibility within Judaism only if it is not total. If all present access to the God of history is wholly lost, the God of history is Himself lost. [W]e have come face to face with the horrifying possibility . . . that Hitler has succeeded in murdering, not only one third of the Jewish people, but the Jewish faith as well. Only one response may seem to remain—the cry of total despair—“there is no judgment and no judge.”10 In the face of modern secularism, Fackenheim had asked: “Can the presence of God [at today’s Passover Seder] be more than a mere memory?” In the face of the Holocaust, one is forced to ask: Can it be even a mere memory? Even memories have to be believable. FAITH AND DEFIANCE In the final paragraphs of God’s Presence in History, Fackenheim returns to the question of the Passover Seder after the Holocaust: Can the miracle at the Red Sea still be reenacted? . . . After Auschwitz, can we continue to celebrate the Passover Seder? . . . [T]he ancient Passover has acquired a new quality. Always mixed with longing, the celebration is after Auschwitz mingled with defiance as well. There has always been the longing for a future when salvation would no longer be fragmentary . . . when men everywhere . . . would see what once the Israelite maidservants saw. Astonishingly, this longing survived even at Auschwitz itself. We dare not destroy it, but must keep it alive.11 Fackenheim speaks of an empirical fact, an existential fact, a reality. The Jews’ longing for salvation in history has survived the Holocaust and is now mingled with defiance. Jews do continue to celebrate the Passover. The faith in the messianic redemption in history was affirmed even by martyrs in the death camps. According to testimony of survivors, many Jews went to their death reciting defiantly Maimonides’ Twelfth Principle of Faith, as formulated


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by a later liturgist: “I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah, and though he tarry, nevertheless I believe.” They thus affirmed their faith in the God of History. “We ask,” writes Fackenheim, “how at Auschwitz . . . this statement of faith remained possible. We shall never know.”12 The survival of the presence of the God of History after the Holocaust cannot be explained by Reason. It is “astonishing.” Hegel’s philosophy of history has no answers. How is it that Jews do in fact celebrate the Passover today? Fackenheim argues that it is not on the basis of Reason but on that of Faith—a faith mingled with defiance. The very affirmation of Jewish existence after the Holocaust, Fackenheim argues, is an expression of this faith and defiance. It does not seem to be an expression of Reason, for one would have expected reasonable Jews to escape from their Judaism to save themselves and their children from a future Holocaust. The affirmation of Jewish existence after the Holocaust is what Fackenheim had called, in an unforgettable 1967 essay, “the 614th commandment.”13 Citing that essay, he repeats in God’s Presence in History that “Jews are forbidden to hand Hitler posthumous victories.” The “commanding Voice of Auschwitz” commands Jews “to survive as Jews” and forbids them “to despair of the God of Israel, lest Judaism perish,” for “a Jew may not respond to Hitler’s attempt to destroy Judaism by . . . cooperating in its destruction.”14 This commandment to survive as Jews, continues Fackenheim, is “heard by Jews the world over . . . believing and secularist.”15 In particular, it is heard in the State of Israel, where Jews, secularist and religious, commit themselves collectively to Jewish existence. The commandment to survive as Jews contains within it the prohibition to despair of the God of History, for the historical vocation of the Jew qua Jew has been to bear witness to the God of History. The decision to remain a Jew after the Holocaust is in effect a decision of faith not to abandon “our millennial post as witnesses to the God of history,” even though in the Holocaust we witnessed the absence of God in history.16 A religious Jew affirms the God of History in conflict, perplexity, and protest.17 A secularist Jew cannot of course make himself or herself believe but also cannot reject the God of History, for to do so would be to “side with the murderers and do what they have left undone.”18 This means that the secular Jew, though Godless, must not absent himself or herself from the Passover Seder. “How can even the secularist, who has long abandoned the celebration, not reinstate it?”19 The secularist Jew, who acknowledges no God, paradoxically bears witness to the God of History at the Passover Seder. Fackenheim concludes God’s Presence in History with a quotation from the song of the Warsaw Ghetto Jewish underground, “a new song of defiance in the midst of hopelessness.” In spite of everything, “our footsteps confirm, we are here!” Mir zeinen do. And he adds: “We are here, exist, survive, endure,

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witnesses to God and man, even if abandoned by God and man.”20 The Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1943, he notes, began on the first day of Passover.21 A DARK RIDDLE In his essay “Hegel and Judaism: A Flaw in the Hegelian Mediation,” published in 1973 but delivered as a lecture in 1970, the year God’s Presence in History was published, Fackenheim quotes the statement of Karl Rosenkranz (1844) about Hegel’s attitude toward the Jews: “The phenomenon [of Jewish history] both repelled and fascinated him, and vexed him as a dark riddle all his life.”22 Hegel’s ambiguous attitude toward Judaism reflects his greatness, according to Fackenheim. “Jewish religious existence [with its radical distinction between the Divine and the human, and with its continued existence after Christinianty] is radically at odds with central commitments of his philosophy.” Therefore, explains Fackenheim, it vexed him. However, Hegel was fascinated by Jewish religious existence just because it would not fit into his system, for as a true philosopher “he was unable to ignore a millennial historical fact simply because it would not fit into his system.”23 Hegel’s inability to ignore historical facts, writes Fackenheim, sets him apart from Heidegger: Heidegger ignored flesh-and-blood history—even the torture cellars of the Gestapo, to say nothing of the Holocaust. . . . In contrast, in his time Hegel passed through flesh-and-blood history before transcending it, and would have to attempt doing likewise today. Making the attempt with the flesh-and-blood history of Auschwitz, his thought would be . . . “paralyzed” by inevitable failure: to transcend the Holocaust is impossible.24 Hegel, Fackenheim is convinced, would have boldly faced the fact of the Holocaust and understood that it contradicts his rational system. Jewish religious existence was a problem for Hegel’s philosophy, even before the Holocaust, and a fortiori after it. Fackenheim’s Hegel does not say “So much the worse for the facts.” He recognized that the Jews were here, and he was vexed and fascinated by us. And we are here. Mir zeinen do. FRAGMENTED HEGELIANISM Fackenheim thus concludes that the continued religious existence of Judaism could not be mediated by Hegel’s rational philosophy of history, and that the Holocaust could not be mediated by it. Moreover, he argues, many other facts in the modern world, including the proclamation of the State of Israel,


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could not be mediated by Hegel’s dialectic. Failure of mediation results in a “fragmented middle.” As Fackenheim explains in his Religious Dimension of Hegel’s Thought: But what if Hegel’s appraisal of his own age, and hence of all history, were radically mistaken? Or what if epoch-making events were to occur which destroyed all grounds of the Hegelian estimate, either of modern secular freedom, or of modern Protestant faith? . . . [T]his would fragment the middle of Hegel’s thought, if only because it would shatter his “peace” between faith and philosophy. Nor can anyone [today] doubt that this possibility has become actual.25 Hegel or any honest Hegelian must begin by recognizing that the middle is fragmented. Fackenheim’s own philosophy may be accurately described not as Hegelianism but as fragmented Hegelianism. He explicitly writes of his own philosophic position: “As a philosopher, I dwell in the fragmented Hegelian middle.”26 There are, if I am not mistaken, two versions of Fackenheim’s fragmented Hegelianism. According to the conservative one, affirmed explicitly in God’s Presence in History and elsewhere, the fragmentation is only temporary, and in the messianic era, Reason will reign unfragmented.27 According to the radical one, implicit especially in more recent writings but briefly intimated already in God’s Presence in History, the fragmentation is an inescapable feature of the human condition and will continue to be so even in the messianic era. “Hegel’s . . . middle . . . will surely remain broken, with . . . his ‘absolute Idea’ shattered.”28 The radical version represents Fackenheim’s most significant thinking about historical meaning. According to the Talmud (BT Megillah 10b), when the Israelites were saved at the Red Sea, the angels wished to sing. God, however, rebuked them: The work of My hands, the Egyptians, are drowning in the sea, and you wish to sing?! In an insightful interpretation, Fackenheim writes in God’s Presence in History: This Midrash is much-quoted, for it encourages moralistic sermons concerning a God endowed with universal benevolence. The real content of the Midrash, however, is otherwise. Even in the supreme but pre-Messianic moment of His saving presence God cannot save the Israelites without killing Egyptians. Thus the infinite joy of the moment . . . is mingled with sorrow, and the sorrow is infinite because the joy is infinite. Thus the root experience in Judaism is fragmentary and points to a future consummation because of its fragmentariness.29

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The pre-messianic Passover commemorates the fragmentary root experience at the Red Sea, and so it too is fragmentary. It is presumed here that things will be different in the messianic era. This is an explicit affirmation of the conservative version of fragmented Hegelianism. However, Fackenheim also cites a striking rabbinic teaching (Mekhilta, Pisha, 16), included in the Passover Haggadah, according to which the miracle at the Red Sea will continue to legislate similar Passover Seders “even in the Messianic days.”30 According to this teaching, the apparently superfluous word “all” in Deuteronomy 16:3 (“that thou mayest remember the day when thou camest forth out of Egypt all the days of thy life”) is interpreted as meaning: “including the Messianic days.” The intimation is clear: the fragmentary Passover Seder, commemorating the fragmentary root experience of liberation from Egypt, will continue to be fragmentary even in the messianic days, which themselves will be fragmentary. This is the radical version of fragmented Hegelianism. A fragmented Hegelian philosophy of history teaches that the real is not rational but eternally fragmentary. The discovery of this teaching for Hegelianism may be likened to the discovery of irrational numbers for Pythagoreanism. CONCLUSION Living after the Holocaust, can we still celebrate the Passover Seder? This has been a difficult and painful question for Fackenheim. He is unable to give an affirmative answer on the basis of Reason but compelled to do so on the basis of Faith. This sort of faith is not Hegelian, and not found in Fackenheim’s The Religious Dimension of Hegel’s Thought. It transcends Hegel, even as the God of History transcends Geist. It is not rational, but is real. NOTES 1. Emil Fackenheim, God’s Presence in History: Jewish Affirmations and Philosophic Reflections (New York: New York University Press, 1970), 32, n. 13 emphasis added. Cf. Fackenheim, What Is Judaism? (New York: 1987), 207–208. The following comments are based in part on my introduction to the Hebrew anthology of Fackenheim’s writings, ‘Al Emunah ve-Historiyah (Jerusalem: Hassifriya Hatziyonit, 1989), 7–17. 2. Fackenheim, God’s Presence in History, 4. 3. Ibid., 11, 14. 4. Ibid., 9–14. 5. Ibid., 90. 6. Fackenheim, Quest for Past and Future (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968), 86. Cf. God’s Presence in History, 83: “The ideals of Progress fail, for Progress makes of Auschwitz at best a throwback into tribalism and at worst a dialectically justified necessity.” 7. Fackenheim, God’s Presence in History, 46 (paragraph division added). 8. Ibid., 43; cf. 44–49.


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9. Ibid., 49–61. Cf. already Fackenheim’s Metaphysics and Historicity (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1961), 79, n. 44: “Qua poet, Nietzsche may be entitled to proclaim that ‘God is dead.’ But why should anyone accept this . . . ? Why should he not instead lament, with the Psalmist, that ‘God hides His face’? In the total absence of philosophical argument, the choice is made entirely on authority.” 10. Ibid., 78–79. Cf. Leviticus Rabbah 28:1. 11. Fackenheim, God’s Presence in History, 95–96. 12. Ibid., 96–97. 13. “The 614th Commandment,” reprinted in Fackenheim, The Jewish Return into History (New York: Schocken Books, 1978), 19–24. Cf. Fackenheim, Quest for Past and Future, 19–20. 14. Fackenheim, God’s Presence in History, 84. 15. Ibid., 85. 16. Ibid., 71. 17. Ibid., 88–90. 18. Ibid., 84, 89. 19. Ibid., 95. 20. Ibid., 97–98. 21. Ibid., 96. 22. Fackenheim, “Hegel and Judaism: A Flaw in the Hegelian Mediation,” in The Legacy of Hegel, ed. J. J. O’Malley, K. W. Algozin, H. P. Kainz, and L. C. Rice, 161. (The Hague, the Netherlands: Nijhoff, 1973). Cf. Fackenheim, Encounters between Judaism and Modern Philosophy (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 86. 23. Ibid. 24. Fackenheim, To Mend the World, 2nd ed. (New York: Schocken Books, 1989), xxiv. 25. The Religious Dimension of Hegel’s Thought (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967), 224; cf. 241–42. Also cf. “Hegel and Judaism,” in The Legacy of Hegel, 185: “Not least among the epoch-making, radically astonishing, unanticipated events of the age which might shake [Hegel’s] thought are Jewish death at Auschwitz and Jewish resurrection at Jerusalem.” 26. Fackenheim, “A Reply to My Critics,” in Fackenheim: German Philosophy and Jewish Thought, ed. Louis Greenspan and Graeme Nicholson, 282 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992). Cf. Fackenheim, Jewish Philosophers and Jewish Philosophy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 222: “As a scholar I sought to understand the Hegelian middle; as a philosopher . . . I concluded that Hegel’s absolute knowledge is fragmented. . . . I had reached that conclusion already prior to 1967, the year of turmoil which forced me to face up to the Holocaust; thereafter, the conclusion was confirmed, but with a wholly new dimension. In a way, I may be said to have dwelled in the broken Hegelian middle ever since.” 27. Fackenheim, God’s Presence in History, 18–19, 25, 96. Cf. Encounters between Judaism and Modern Philosophy, 168–69. 28. Fackenheim, Jewish Philosophers and Jewish Philosophy, 226. Cf. Fackenheim, To Mend the World, 312–13, 328–30. 29. Fackenheim, God’s Presence in History, 25, emphasis in original. 30. Ibid., 10–11.


CHAPTER 5

Of Systems and the Systematic Labor of Thought Fackenheim as Philosopher of His Time

BENJAMIN POLLOCK In the opening pages of To Mend the World, Emil Fackenheim reflects back on the development of his work in the fields of philosophy and theology and comments: “The first . . . formal commitment of my thought that was to remain permanent was [the commitment] to ‘system.’ ”1 Fackenheim calls his commitment to system “formal” in order to express his conviction—shared by some of the greatest of his philosophical guides: Schelling, Hegel, and Rosenzweig included—that philosophy can attain its ultimate goal, it can—to quote Hegel—“lay aside the title ‘love of knowing’ and be actual knowing,”2 only if it takes on the comprehensive, ramified form of a scientific system. As Fackenheim is well aware, however, philosophy, over its 2,500-year history, has rarely expressed itself, or even sought to express itself in systematic form. Systems only appear “possible and necessary in philosophy,” Fackenheim explains, “when there is reason to believe that philosophical knowledge is complete,” a belief that finds its “greatest expression in the system of Hegel.”3 Fackenheim devoted ten years of study to making sense of this seemingly megalomaniacal belief of Hegel’s, and the result is his classic work The Religious Dimension in Hegel’s Thought. Fackenheim discovers, in this work, that “if Hegelian ‘science’ is marked by an unprecedented philosophical presumptuousness it is also marked by an equally unprecedented philosophical humility,”4 for Hegel believes that he can and must complete philosophy in 49

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the form of a system, only because “the times are ripe”5 for such a systematic completion; that is, Hegel’s “belief” that his own “philosophical knowledge is complete” is a belief in the intimate connection between philosophy and history. It is a belief that his own vantage point as a thinker living at his particular moment in history has made possible a completeness of knowledge hitherto literally unthinkable. Hegel is thus faced with the task of completing philosophy in the form of a system, only because he is conscious of himself as being a philosopher of his time. We divulge no great secret today when we acknowledge that Hegel’s time is not our time. The plain fact is that times have changed since Hegel undertook his systematic completion of philosophy. What does it mean, then, for Fackenheim himself to be committed to the philosophical task of system, a task made possible and necessary by a time long past? A pressing question for any contemporary systematic thinker, this question carries with it the utmost urgency in the case of Fackenheim. For which other contemporary thinker has confronted the rupture in history that divides our time from the time of Hegel with the kind of “intellectual probity”6 that Fackenheim demands of himself? We therefore ask of Fackenheim: If Hegel’s systematic realization of the goals of philosophy was possible and necessary in his time only because the times were “ripe” for such realization, then what becomes of system in our time? What has become of the systematic task of philosophy after the Holocaust? This is precisely the question Fackenheim asks himself at the beginning of To Mend the World. It is the question that stands in the background of the book as a whole and pushes the reader forward from its reflective beginnings, through its search for philosophical models, onto its painful confrontation with the Holocaust world itself, and finally, to the fragmentary mending with which it ends. If, as Hegel says, “dichotomy is the source of the need of philosophy,”7 then the dichotomy that demands the philosophical response of To Mend the World is the dichotomy of system and Holocaust. For what would a comprehensive, systematic grasp of all reality be if it could not grasp the ultimate evil of the Holocaust world? And, on the other hand, what philosophy is truly forced to grapple with the Holocaust if not that philosophy that designates as its goal the systematic comprehension of all reality?8 As his determined attempt to bear philosophical witness to the Holocaust indicates, Fackenheim’s abiding commitment to system should by no means be mistaken for a dismissal of history, or for a dismissal of the singular event that ruptured his own time. For his part, Fackenheim tells us at the very beginning of To Mend the World that his commitment to system actually goes hand in hand with the seemingly opposing realization that the times for system have passed. He explains himself in the closing lines of the second section of the introduction to the book, itself entitled “Systems.” Referring to Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption, he asserts,“[It] is not only the most recent but also the last system, not only within the sphere of Jewish thought but also beyond it.

Of Systems and the Systematic Labor of Thought

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Today there can be none, or none that is not an anachronism. This conclusion I long suspected but did not fully reach prior to the present work, in which the reasons for reaching it are fully spelled out. Then what remains of system when ‘systems’ have come to an end?”9 It is thus that Fackenheim formulates the question that we have come upon as most urgent for his own thought, and he concludes, “Systems are gone. What remains—in philosophy, theology, and the relation between them—is the systematic labor of thought.”10 When the time for system has passed, Fackenheim tells us, what remains of system is the systematic labor of thought. A most peculiar answer, indeed; and at the same time, perhaps it is the kind of answer we should expect at the beginning of a work of philosophy, that is, an answer that raises more questions than it quells. I would like to devote this chapter to exploring the meaning of this enigmatic statement for Fackenheim, to trying to discern what Fackenheim means when he articulates his own philosophical act as neither an attempt to complete a system of philosophy, on the one hand, nor an escape from all systematicity into a kind of postmodern philosophical play, on the other, but rather as “the systematic labor of thought.” We ask this question, furthermore, with an eye both toward determining more closely what it means for Fackenheim to be a philosopher of his time, and toward examining what possibilities Fackenheim opens up and closes off within philosophy when he reaches this conclusion about the nature and demand of philosophy in his time.

k Before delving into the product of Fackenheim’s “systematic labor of thought,” To Mend the World, it behooves us first to come to a better understanding of the nature of “system” as such, the very system that Hegel takes as his task and that Fackenheim himself explores before articulating, in opposition to it, the philosophical needs of his own time. As Heidegger has taught us, the original meaning of logos consists in “gathering,” and as such, system can be understood as the culminating act of logos, as the complete gathering together or unification in thinking of all that is.11 The question is whether such systematic unification can occur without the denial of the very real differences that always exist between the different beings that are to be unified. According to Fackenheim, complete knowledge (i.e., system) demands that in his or her act of gathering or unifying the philosopher achieve a stance that is at once “all-comprehensive, yet radically open.”12 Indeed, Fackenheim asserts that “the word ‘system’ is wholly misunderstood unless the usual connotation of closedness is brought into immediate clash with a notion of total openness. Hegel’s system is by its own admission and insistence a closed circle, but it is also totally open, by virtue of a claim to comprehensiveness which makes it the radical foe of every form of one-sidedness.”13

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According to Fackenheim, we see, the “connotation of closedness” commonly attributed to philosophical systems reflects a misunderstanding: the authentic system is, in fact, anything but a mere closed-off totality of philosophical thought that ignores the irreducible heterogeneity of reality. On the contrary, according to Fackenheim, the “claim to comprehensiveness” asserted by and fulfilled through the philosophical system eschews “every form of one-sidedness” and demands total openness. Precisely because system aims for the total comprehension of all reality, systematic thinking does not close itself off from reality, but rather it seeks to leave itself “radically open” to the real differences that characterize the manifold particulars of the world. The truth pursued in systematic philosophy is hence the absolute truth that makes possible and manifests itself in all reality as such, an absolute truth designated, in Hegel’s terminology, as “the identity of identity and difference,” as “the union of union and nonunion.”14 In the Religious Dimension in Hegel’s Thought, Fackenheim tells us that the openness to difference or “nonunion” demanded by the philosophical task of system is no less than the defining feature of Hegel’s philosophy. “The central claim of Hegelian thought,” Fackenheim writes, is . . . to unite a pluralistic openness as hospitable to the varieties of contingent experience as any empiricism with a monistic completeness more radical in its claims to comprehensiveness than any other speculative rationalism. . . . The Hegelian philosophy must be both unyieldingly realistic in its acceptance of nonunion and unyieldingly idealistic in its assertion and production of union. And it is able to be both only if it can be a thought activity which overreaches life, rather than one which is either destructive of life or shipwrecked by it.15 According to Fackenheim, Hegel’s system is able to be both accepting of nonunion and productive of union at once, because its thought does not ignore or destroy or close itself off from reality, but rather it “overreaches” that reality. Overreaching is the English term Fackenheim uses to translate übergreifen, which describes the mediating activity of Hegel’s dialectical thought whereby it claims to grasp and preserve each particular of the world in its otherness and, at one and the same time, to raise that particular out of its otherness into the unity of the system.16 We cannot raise the question here of the success or failure of Hegel’s method; what is important for our purpose is how Fackenheim, following Hegel himself, contrasts this dialectical thinking that remains “radically” open to the world with a philosophy that only attains the unity of eternal truth by sacrificing the otherness or difference inherent to the contingent world. It is Hegel’s commitment to an “overreaching” way of thinking, according to Fackenheim, that “produces his charge that Schelling[’s]


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thought reduces the Absolute to a ‘night in which all cows are black’—a charge made in behalf of a labor of thought—which must take place, so to speak, in the daylight of multicolored life.”17 According to Fackenheim’s reading of Hegel, we see, Hegel claims that Schelling only attains the Absolute standpoint by blurring the difference inherent to particularity. Hegel’s “overreaching,” in contrast, consists in a “labor of thought” that stays with “multicolored life,” with a life that manifests itself in variation and difference. Hegel’s labor of thought describes for Fackenheim the way in which his systematic thinking remains open to the world, the way it works through reality as it is, the way it refuses to turn away from manifest reality in its pursuit of a higher truth. Fackenheim further discloses the significance that this “laboring” character of Hegel’s thought has for him in his elaboration of Hegel’s assertion that “philosophy is the Sunday of life.” Fackenheim writes: The spiritual life which is philosophic thought is not a sheer infinity unsullied by finiteness. It is a laboring rise to infinity and a having-risen which, in order itself to have substance and reality, requires the reality of the world which is the object of the labor. In the complete philosophic thought the Idea manifests itself as divine play. But this play has reality only because it includes the whole pain and labor of human life. The philosophical Sunday is not other-worldly joy, indifferent to the grief of this world . . . it is a this-worldly joy, which can be joy only because its very life is the conquest of the world’s grief.18 Philosophy, we see, is able to attain the systematic completeness and harmony symbolized by the Sabbath, only because it labors through the reality of the world’s workaday week. Fackenheim explains here, furthermore, that philosophy must laboriously struggle through the reality of life precisely because that reality itself is labor, pain, and grief. Philosophy can only hope to grasp and thereby transcend the labor that is reality by laboring with reality itself, in order ultimately to raise reality through its own labor toward the sabbatical peace it ultimately seeks. The fact that the sabbatical completion that philosophy carries out in the system only comes after the labor of the week is emblematic of the intimate connection we saw earlier in Hegel’s thinking between philosophy and history. We recall that Hegel sees his task as the completion of philosophy only because he sees himself as the philosopher of his time, a time that is “ripe” for the systematic completion of philosophy. What has made Hegel’s time ripe in this fashion? Nothing other than the “enormous labour of world-history”19; the final philosophy, Hegel’s own system, is “the result of the labor of spirit over two and a half millennia.”20 It becomes clear that for Hegel, the labor of

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thought that is his philosophy is itself made possible by the labor of history; Hegel’s system of laboring thought, which achieves its peace and completion only because of its own labor, is the product of the laboring history of the world, it is the Sabbath toward which world history itself has labored. Hegel’s recognition of the “labor” of philosophy that his time in history demands is thus at one and the same time a recognition of the labor of history that has laid the groundwork for his time. Our survey of Fackenheim’s reflections on Hegel’s system and his labor of thought has led us to a rather precise picture of how Fackenheim understands what appeared initially to be a perplexing turn of phrase. The “labor of thought,” the labor of Hegel’s systematic thought, is the process through which his thought stays with the world instead of abandoning it for a transcendent truth; it is the way it grasps a reality that is itself laborious, painful; and it is both a reflection on and a product of the labor of history, which alone has brought about the systematic wholeness, the sabbatical completion that Hegel asserts.

k What began as a preliminary inquiry into the nature of system has led us seemingly by chance to a discussion of the specific sense in which Fackenheim understands Hegel’s “labor of thought.” This labor of thought, we have seen, is what makes Hegel’s “all-comprehensive, yet radically open” system possible; and yet, we recall, the “systematic labor of thought” is precisely what Fackenheim upholds in opposition to system as such in the opening pages of To Mend the World. It is the form that systematic philosophy must take on after the time for system itself has passed. What is it that could possibly transform a labor of thought once imperative for the comprehensiveness of system into a systematic labor of thought that comes at once to oppose system? One is inclined to answer tentatively: the demands of a “labor of thought” could only be thus transformed by a rupture in the very reality that thought takes upon itself to labor through. We recall our initial question, to which Fackenheim’s “systematic labor of thought” was supposed to serve as answer: What happens to the philosophical task of system when the time is no longer ripe for such a task? We might rephrase our question now as follows: What happens to system when history no longer reveals itself as a labor leading toward and making possible a systematic unification in thought and life, but rather when history ruptures thought and life irretrievably, when a particular event in history reveals itself as a “caesura,” a “horror . . . starkly ultimate”?21 What is demanded of philosophy in such a time? As Fackenheim notes, while Hegel himself could in no way have foreseen or predicted a rupture the likes of the Holocaust, he did reflect on the way


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in which the “severe strains” of “his contemporary world” threatened his own systematic project. “Moreover,” Fackenheim notes, “on occasion he responded to these [contemporary strains] with an altogether startling turn of thought.”22 At the end of his 1821 Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Hegel reflects on the selfishness, the decadence, and the divisiveness of his time, which had “fragmented immediate spiritual unity” to such an extent that it endangered the pursuit of wisdom itself. What is philosophy to do in such a time, Hegel asks? His answer is as unequivocal as it is surprising: “philosophical thought has no choice but to become a ‘separate sanctuary,’ inhabited by philosophers who are an ‘isolated order of priests.’ They cannot ‘mix with the world, but they must leave to the world the task of settling how it might find its way out of its present state of disruption.’ ”23 Recounting Hegel’s response, Fackenheim cannot hold back his alarm: “What an incredible, what a shattering turn of thought! The entire Hegelian philosophy may be viewed as one vast effort to stay with the modern Christian world, in contrast with Greek-Roman philosophy, which was compelled to flee from the ancient-pagan world. Are we to understand that the Hegelian philosophy too is, in the end, forced into flight?”24 There is no doubt that Hegel’s response to crisis in his own time is startling in the light of the very “labor of thought” that makes possible his systematic formulation of philosophy. We would be wise, however, to take seriously Hegel’s flight in the face of a desperately fragmented reality, for such a flight is all the more telling in the case of a philosopher who does his utmost to labor with the world. Such a flight tells us two things in particular about how Hegel understands philosophy: first of all, it tells us that, as a philosopher, Hegel’s first allegiance is to the pursuit of wisdom; second, it tells us that, according to Hegel, different historical situations have differing impacts on the pursuit of wisdom. While one historical situation may arise that actually makes the attainment of wisdom realizable, another historical situation may endanger the pursuit of wisdom itself, and the philosopher is called upon to act differently in each case. The first case demands and makes possible a systematic realization of wisdom; the second demands a return to a kind of quasi-esoteric transmission of philosophy, a form that protects philosophy from the very world it seeks to understand. Despite what Fackenheim notes as its “devastating consequences” for Hegel’s own systematic endeavor, Hegel is unequivocal in these lectures as to what philosophy must do in such a historical situation. No less unequivocal is Fackenheim’s own rejection of Hegel’s flight from the world for the sake of wisdom. What is remarkable is that Fackenheim rejects Hegel’s flight from the world on what he sees as Hegelian grounds! Moreover, through all the changes that Fackenheim’s philosophical standpoint undergoes between The Religious Dimension in Hegel’s Thought and To Mend the World, Fackenheim never wavers from this Hegelian rejection of Hegel. Reflecting on how Hegel

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might respond to the thought-shattering events of our own day, Fackenheim asserts, in the Religious Dimension in Hegel’s Thought, “A 20th-century Hegelianism would have to stay with a fragmented world. . . . It is entirely safe to say that Hegel, were he alive today, would not be a Hegelian.”25 Or, again, in Encounters between Judaism and Modern Philosophy: “For his part, this writer can imagine Hegel only as radically self-exposed to the realities—at the price that his ‘modern world’ and his philosophical comprehension of it both lie in shambles.”26 And, finally, in To Mend the World: “In his time, Hegel passed through flesh-and-blood history before transcending it, and would have to attempt doing likewise today.”27 No less startling than Hegel’s own flight from the world in the face of the irreparable fragmentation he witnessed in his time is Fackenheim’s own claim that Hegel would have to “stay with a fragmented world” in our time in order to remain true to his systematic principles. The whole argument that emerges between Hegel and Fackenheim regarding Hegel’s own thought, and ultimately regarding the task of philosophy as a whole, hinges precisely on the importance Fackenheim attributes to the very “labor of thought”—“radically open” to reality and to history—that makes Hegel’s system possible and that Hegel seemingly abandons in the face of a contemporary reality that no longer appears to him to be ripe for the completion of philosophy. Fackenheim asserts that what is demanded of philosophy in a time of fragmentation—in a time of fragmentation the likes of which history has not yet known—is a “labor of thought” that stays with the world, even at the risk of losing itself in the fragments of the world. Thus he concludes in To Mend the World, “So long as no way is found to confront the Holocaust and endure, it has the power to render questionable all overcoming everywhere.”28 Fackenheim is explicit here regarding the task of philosophy in a time faced with unprecedented fragmentation: thought is not to flee the world; rather it is called upon to confront the Holocaust, for if it cannot confront the Holocaust and endure, then all life, all thought, all “overcoming” is rendered questionable—and by “overcoming” here, Fackenheim intends the same “overreaching” character of Hegel’s thought that had enabled thought to grasp the reality of the world in the comprehensive form of a system. In other words, philosophy cannot flee the world in the face of the Holocaust, because in the face of such “starkly ultimate” horror, nothing is safe, there are no more “separate sanctuaries” in which philosophers can hide; nothing can flee, not even thought itself. He writes: “We are faced with the possibility that the Holocaust may be a radical rupture in history—and that among things ruptured may be not just this or that way of philosophical or theological thinking, but thought itself.”29 It is the fragmentation, the rupture of the Holocaust, that thus leads Fackenheim to conclude that what is demanded of philosophy in his own time cannot be system, for system is not possible in the face of such a rupture;


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what is demanded, instead, is a labor of thought that remains with the world, that confronts the rupture at all costs. And yet Fackenheim’s thought does not come to an end with the rupture; rather, it searches for a way both to recognize and remain in the fragmentation of its time and yet, at the same time, to point somehow beyond that fragmentation. Indeed, we could have gathered as much from the fact that Fackenheim does not define his task simply as “the labor of thought” but rather as the “systematic labor of thought.” What makes it possible for Fackenheim to point beyond fragmentation while remaining in fragmentation is “the help of a new category,” the category of Tikkun, of mending. The kabbalistic idea of Tikkun has systematic consequences for Fackenheim’s own thought, for it offers him a model for how one can posit unification even at a time of total fragmentation. As he writes regarding the kabbalistic Tikkun itself: The “exile of the Shekhina” and the “fracture of the vessels” refers to cosmic, as well as historical realities: it is that rupture that our Tikkun is to mend. But how is this possible when we ourselves share in the cosmic condition of brokenness? . . . Just in response to this problematic the kabbalistic Tikkun shows its profoundest energy. It is precisely if the rupture, or the threat of it, is total, that all powers must be summoned for a mending.30 A proper elucidation of Fackenheim’s notion of Tikkun and how it functions in To Mend the World—which of course takes its title from this notion—must remain beyond the scope of this chapter.31 In our context, we can only point to what we see as the systematic ramifications of this notion. Earlier we asserted that system can be understood as the culmination of the original idea of “logos,” of philosophy as a unification, as a gathering together in thought of all that is. For Fackenheim, Tikkun, “mending,” is none other than the power through which a fragmented reality can begin to be unified, gathered together again, after the Holocaust. This labor of Tikkun is only possible for post-Holocaust thought, however, because the labor of Tikkun was actual in the very midst of the rupture of the Holocaust itself. After the Holocaust, Fackenheim suggests, thought no longer comes to “overreach” the diversity of life in order to raise reality into systematic unity, but rather Fackenheim goes “to school with life” in the face of the Holocaust, bearing witness to unprecedented acts of Tikkun, in order to illuminate the direction that a post-Holocaust systematic philosophy of Tikkun must take. The mending that Fackenheim himself carries out in the wake of these acts of Tikkun in To Mend the World, we suggest, is what is “systematic” in his “labor of thought.” It is the form of a systematic thinking that is yet not system, that is not complete, because it “accept[s] from the start that at most only a fragmentary Tikkun is possible.”32

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Reflecting on the philosophical demands of his time at the beginning of To Mend the World, Fackenheim writes, “In these circumstances, thought cannot wait for a ripeness of time that may never arrive. Rather than hope for a wisdom that comes only after a day of life is done, it is gripped by the necessity to announce and help produce a new day while there is yet night. And it cannot be deterred by the obvious fact that its announcing and producing, insufficiently wise as it is, must be both fragmentary and uncertain.”33 I once asked Fackenheim when it was that he came to the realization that he had begun to philosophize and was no longer thinking and working merely as a scholar of philosophy. His answer was that he knew he had begun to philosophize when he no longer had any choice about what it was he was thinking. One could imagine no better formulation of how it must feel to be called upon to philosophize in a time of rupture. The goal of this chapter has been to explain how Fackenheim responds to this call with what he describes as “a systematic labor of thought,” with a thinking that is systematic without being a complete system, and that labors, even in its fragmentation, toward a Tikkun. For his part, no doubt, Fackenheim had this task in mind when he concluded the introduction to To Mend the World with a quote from Rabbi Tarfon, which he claimed was most “fitting for Jewish thought in our time”: Lo alecha ham’lacha ligmor, v’lo ata ben chorin l’hivatel mimena. It is not incumbent upon you to complete the labor, but you are not free to evade it.34 NOTES 1. Emil L. Fackenheim, To Mend the World: Foundations of Post-Holocaust Jewish Thought (New York: Schocken Books, 1982, 1989; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 6. Henceforth, TMW. 2. G. W. F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes. Werke 3 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970), 14. Translated into English as Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 3. 3. TMW, 4. 4. E. L. Fackenheim, The Religious Dimension in Hegel’s Thought (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967, 1971), 33. Henceforth, RDH. 5. Hegel, Phänomenologie, 14/Phenomenology, 3–4. 6. “Preface to the Second Edition,” TMW, xiii. 7. G. W. F. Hegel, The Difference between Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of Philosophy, trans. H. S. Harris and Walter Cerf (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1977), 89. 8. Cf. Zachary Braiterman (God) After Auschwitz: Tradition and Change in Post-Holocaust Jewish Thought (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 145: “When Fackenheim claims that the Holocaust ruptures ‘thought,’ he therefore means that it has ruined Hegelian system.” For a reflection on the alternative question of whether or not ancient philosophy would view the Holocaust as a unique philosophical problem, see Solomon Goldberg’s chapter 7 in this book.


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9. TMW, 5. 10. Ibid. 11. See, for example, Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Gregory Fried and Richard Polt (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 135–39. 12. RDH, 20. 13. Ibid., 17. 14. See, for example, RDH, 26. 15. Ibid., 76, 229, emphasis in original. 16. For Fackenheim’s discussion of Hegel’s use of the term, see, e.g., RDH, 98–99. 17. RDH, 28, emphasis added. 18. Ibid., 105–06, emphasis in original. 19. Hegel, Phänomenologie, 33–34/Phenomenology, 17. 20. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy: The Lectures of 1825–26. Volume III: Medieval and Modern Philosophy, trans. R. F. Brown and J. M. Stewart, with the assistance of H. S. Harris (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 271. 21. TMW, 320, 238. 22. RDH, 234. 23. Ibid., 234–35. 24. Ibid. 25. RDH, 12. 26. E. L. Fackenheim, Encounters between Judaism and Modern Philosophy: A Preface to Future Jewish Thought (New York: Schocken Books, 1980), 158. 27. “Preface to the Second Edition,” TMW, xxiv. 28. Ibid., 135. 29. Ibid., 193. 30. Ibid., 253. 31. For a serious examination of the role of Tikkun in the structure of To Mend the World, see Michael L. Morgan, “The Central Problem of Fackenheim’s To Mend the World,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 5:2 (1996): 297– 312. 32. TMW, 256. Cf. Susan Shapiro’s contribution to this volume, in which she explores how Fackenheim’s use of the testimony of “documentary pieces” from the Holocaust itself within the overall philosophical argument of To Mend the World serves to exemplify rhetorically how the Holocaust disrupts philosophical thought. 33. Ibid., 29–30. 34. Ibid., 30.


CHAPTER 6

Fackenheim and Levinas Living and Thinking after Auschwitz

MICHAEL L. MORGAN To compare the thinking of Emil Fackenheim and Emmanuel Levinas is no simple task. The scope and depth of their work make each singly a challenge, and to treat both at once doubly so. But I shall try. Let me focus on three themes: their criticisms of the Western philosophical tradition; their views about God; and the role of the Holocaust in their work. Furthermore, I will suggest that the differences between them in these three areas are grounded in something more fundamental, their basic philosophical attitudes and approaches. For Levinas, there is something more primary than ontology, ethics, social interaction, and everyday life; for Fackenheim, as he often says, thought must go to school with life: the ontic is more fundamental than the ontological. One way of looking at the two, then, will reveal that their difference over the role of history and the Holocaust is linked to this difference about foundations. These are the themes I shall try to address. Levinas argues that traditional Western philosophy has a common feature; it all collapses into some form of idealism in which the other is reduced to the same or the self-same, the world to the I or self or spirit.1 To be sure, in the systems of Plato, Plotinus, and Descartes—all arguably within the Platonist tradition—there is a hint of the infinite, of the otherness and radical distinctness of the other—Plato’s Form of the Good, the One in Plotinus, and the idea of infinity in Descartes’s third Meditation. And in everyday life as well, in the experiences of death, love, and brute existence, there are clues of this 61

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absolute transcendence. Still, Western philosophy is limited. Its representational character, its modes of experience and cognition, its use of language grounded in logic and the polarity of subject and object—all these features obscure and distort the other in all its separateness. There is a transcendence that looms beyond being, that is more primordial, more fundamental, and more basic than Western philosophy allows. The genuine engagement with that other, the face-to-face encounter of the I and the other person, occurs at a different level, in a different domain, and then it accounts for and manifests itself in—to one degree or another—everyday life and thought.2 From 1947 in Time and the Other to 1961 in Totality and Infinity to 1974 in Otherwise Than Being and later still, Levinas’s probing of this primordial domain has continued. It has registered in a variety of terms, metaphors, descriptions, and analyses, all creative efforts to explore and illuminate a territory that is preexperiential, preconceptual, and prelinguistic—or, alternatively, that is beyond being, beyond lived experience, and beyond thought and language. There is here a core idea, I think, that has undergone revision and enrichment but that nonetheless always has retained certain features. First, as a primordial venue or structure, this face-to-face encounter of the I with the human other always has a dual presence, as it were.3 On the one hand, it is a standard for everyday social and moral relationships and hence is manifest, to varying degrees of purity and distortion, in everyday life. On the other hand, it is a transcendental condition that both underlies and issues in human life with all its discursive, linguistic, moral, and political nuances and details. Thus the face-to-face encounter, its content, and the human responsibility that arises out of it are both ideals of experience and presuppositions of experience. Levinas’s account is both empirical and normative, in one sense, and transcendental, in another. Second, whether Levinas calls this encounter “putting the I into question” or “persecution” or “hostage” or any number of such things, its content is largely the same. The other confronts the I, calling into question its power, its unlimited enjoyment of all that occupies its world, and the other, out of its situation, both destitute and imposing, commands the I to take responsibility for the other’s life.4 Indeed, the responsibility for the other and for all others is infinite and boundless, to the degree that in effect, as Levinas later says, the I substitutes itself for the other and for all others; the self takes upon itself the life and well-being of everyone and thereby, as it were, identifies itself with them.5 From one perspective, the other is poor, absolutely powerless, and unconditionally in need; from another, the other is dominating and threatening, its command unrestricted and irrecusable, as Levinas often puts it. The other, that is, is powerful and powerless; and in the encounter, the I is free and yet its burden is total and absolute. The command of the other is necessary; the I cannot avoid it, reject it, or deny it, for its self and its identity arise only out of the imperative and its acceptance of responsibility for the other’s very exis-

Fackenheim and Levinas

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tence. Moreover, that acceptance is more than an acknowledgment of the other; it also is a self-acknowledgment. Levinas associates this self-acknowledgment with shame, which involves a total subjection to the other and a recognition as a self uniquely subjected to the other, a realization of what the I owes to the other and all others and how inescapable and unbounded that debt is. At its best, everyday life manifests compassion, sensitivity, sympathy, and respect among persons. Social existence that reflects these attitudes is valued, but even it only partially and deficiently expresses what is primordial and basic, the responsibility to the other that arises out of the face-to-face encounter. For the face-to-face is in itself, as it were, beyond life, just as it is beyond being, and its content—what Levinas calls “ethics”and “religion,” among other things—is first philosophy; it is the transcendental foundation that replaces what once was called “metaphysics.” And this brings us to a third persistent feature of the face-to-face, that it is by its very nature a specifically normative event that is, as a normative or an imperative sense or meaning, the ground of identity, activity, language, and institutions.6 Meaning in general, of course, is a feature of everyday life, language, experience, and relationships. Moreover, meaning is the engine of intentionality, what consciousness is consciousness of, and, as such, is part of the object of Husserlian and then Heideggerian transcendental phenomenology. Levinas, however, realizes that meanings in everyday life and the theoretical reflection on it are tied to culture, world, language, and thought. Only metaphorically can the face-to-face have meaning or sense; only metaphorically can it be meaning or sense. Alternatively, we might say that sense or meaning, for human existence, is fundamentally the meaning of our responsibility for the other and freedom before the other; all other meaning derives from and is an expression of that primordial meaning. Functionally, the face-to-face serves Levinas’s metaphysics and his philosophical anthropology as an analogue of Kant’s conception of moral rationality or the role of God and divine revelation for Buber or Barth.7 In this sense, the face-to-face is like Kantian autonomy that is a condition for moral life and its content as well. But whereas for some the meaning-giving event (for example, revelation for Rosenzweig) is a fact to be grasped and understood, for Levinas it is a normative and transforming event first and foremost; it changes the I in virtue of the demand placed on it uniquely and without restriction, the demand to share the world, not to kill or murder the other, to care for the other, to withhold its own unlimited power, and to acknowledge the other alongside itself. The very identities of the self and the world arise, as Levinas sees it, only with this commanding presence and with the realization of this absolute responsibility. Let me add one last feature of Levinas’s face-to-face that is acknowledged as early as Totality and Infinity and then is enriched, underscored, and elaborated on later.8 In Western philosophy, what grounds human existence and whatever meaning it has is regularly conceived as a fact. Often that fact is taken to

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transcend history and nature and hence is so conceived as divine. When such a divine and transcendent ground of meaning is denied or rejected, when the world is taken to be disenchanted, then philosophers turn to natural forces or human capacities, most notably rationality, to replace it. For Levinas, in a manner of speaking, the other’s existence and the ultimate demand it places upon the subject constitute the normative fact of meaning-giving. Here, then, is Levinas’s radical relocation of the ground of meaningful human existence. But, as he regularly and persistently claims, the face-to-face is itself beyond and prior to life, being, and thinking. It is human and yet not human; it is historical or temporal and yet not so; it is divine and yet not so. It is ethics but original, not ordinary and everyday, as ethics; it is religion but not ordinary, institutional, and worldly as religion. Given all of these caveats, then, what, one might ask, is its relation to the divine itself, to the absolute transcendence that Western religion has called “God”? Talk about God as the center of meaning-constitution for human life, of God as commander of principles and law, as the core of the moral life—all this, to Levinas, reveals something that is true about the human situation, but it conceals as well as reveals. In the moral life, God is indeed somehow present. The face-to-face is already at a distance, so to speak, from everyday sociability, and yet even its absoluteness and its transcendence are grounded in something beyond the self and the other. More specifically, the height of the other’s face—its unconditional demandingness—is grounded absolutely in something, Levinas believes, that is other than the other. For Levinas, the human other, who faces and persecutes the subject as a you, in the second person, is itself the “trace” or fleeting, impermanent, and nonindicative expression of a divine ground that is even more distant. This ground is a divine Absence, distant beyond distant, other beyond other, at the limit of remoteness, never to be encountered as a you, always a third-person “he” or “that,” but even beyond the impersonal that-ness of a first cause or ultimate ground, which stands for the absoluteness of the meaning that the face-to-face articulates and bears. Levinas calls this divine Absence not you, not He, but “illeity”—“He-ness” or “That-ness,” to emphasize both its role and its distance and unrecoverability. Levinas’s God is beyond Buber’s Thou and Cohen’s God-Idea; it is beyond the God of the philosophers and also beyond the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It is farther than far, and yet, in its trace, the face of the destitute other that makes each of us hostage to the existence of each and every other, it is nearer than near. Levinas’s earliest work was his lucid and penetrating exploration of Husserl’s phenomenology and, following it, early essays on Heidegger.9 But it was not long into the 1930s that Levinas’s disenchantment with Heidegger took hold, a disenchantment provoked by Heidegger’s Nazism and later, in the 1940s, deepened by the revelations of the death camps. Later I will ask whether the Holocaust, as we now call it, influenced the substance of Levinas’s philosophy


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or played a largely psychological role for him. As we turn to Fackenheim’s thinking, it is clear that for Fackenheim it played both roles and perhaps more. Auschwitz and the persecutions of Nazism motivated Fackenheim from early in his career, when he left Halle for Berlin, and at the crucial point, in the 1960s, his philosophical and theological thought acknowledged that influence and began to find a way to deal with it. What did that beginning look like? From very early in his academic career, Fackenheim’s interest in philosophy and in Judaism centered on the relationship between faith and reason. In one way of interpreting this project, Fackenheim’s thought was from this early moment oriented by the question of the limits of philosophy and the limits of philosophical rationality. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s and into the 1960s, there are indications that this issue of the limits of Western philosophy took various shapes for Fackenheim. If the question was whether philosophy could assimilate and comprehend all of human experience, then the answer, as Fackenheim saw it, was whether it could do so with religion, with God as the subject of revelation, with evil, and indeed with the utterly unique, existential agent. I would suggest that in these early postwar decades Fackenheim’s deep interest in Kant, Schelling, and Hegel, in German Idealism, and in Kierkegaard was all about testing the capacity of philosophical reason—its universality and its eternality—in terms of these realities.10 And ultimately, of course, it was the recognition that came in the period 1966–1967, that after Auschwitz even Hegel would no longer remain a Hegelian, that crystallizes Fackenheim’s transforming commitment to the limitedness and the historicity of philosophical thought. In these years, then, Fackenheim is struggling to find a way to hold together a recognition of one’s own human limitations with a sense of human responsibility. Given the circumstances, it also was a struggle to balance hope and despair. Levinas noted various horizons beyond which loomed an exteriority that philosophy could not grasp. For Fackenheim, there are primarily two such others, God and Auschwitz. For surely God as Thou, the Divine Presence, is fundamentally beyond the grasp of traditional Western philosophy, the malaise of which Fackenheim, in those early years, called “subjectivist reductionism.”11 One need only look at the essays in Quest for Past and Future, the second chapter of God’s Presence in History, and much of Encounters between Judaism and Modern Philosophy to see that there are, for Fackenheim, two great challenges to the limits of philosophical reason, the one the Divine Presence, the other the utterly impenetrable evil of Auschwitz.12 Often, in later years, however, Fackenheim noted the remarkable way that his thought had to change to deal with the latter. With regard to God and the Divine Presence, it was a matter of exposing certain empiricist prejudices of nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophy in order to make room for revelation.13 But with regard to Auschwitz and radical evil, what was required was to avoid rejecting it, mitigating it, and thereby incorporating it, and since

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that meant exposing oneself and one’s thought to Auschwitz, it meant accepting the historicity of philosophy itself and religious thought as well. One could not judge philosophy by testing it against evil in general, for any worthy philosophical system had found some way to incorporate such evil in general within its bounds. One was forced instead to test philosophy again and again against evils in particular and indeed against this particular evil. And this meant that the very question of Auschwitz and philosophy became, for Fackenheim, the question of honestly exposing philosophy and Judaism to that event. Moreover, these tasks could not be carried out separately; indeed, in a sense, they had to be carried out together. After Auschwitz, to ignore that event is already to respond to it. So, to attempt to understand it, to accept it, and to resist its evil—all are to respond. Human existence, when viewed historically and temporally, always finds us situated in worlds in part defined by events of moment that become, as episodes in our past, unavoidable, as long as the memory and the evidence are not erased or forgotten. Fackenheim, once he commits himself to the historicity of philosophy and religious thought, places the philosopher and the theologian after Auschwitz and focuses on their responses, and not only these, to be sure, but also historians, everyday Jews, Christians, Germans, and others. To respond honestly to Auschwitz in all its concreteness, to respect the memory of those who died as its victims, to respect too the human and Jewish values it degraded and sought to annihilate, the philosopher must become aware of philosophy’s limits and acknowledge what lies beyond. And since there is no requirement, logically or conceptually, that either philosophy or Judaism must survive, it might be that Auschwitz has destroyed both, if it were not for the fact, as Fackenheim sees it, that the ground of post-Holocaust human existence—philosophy and Jewish life—is not the fact of Auschwitz itself but an imperative or a norm that arises out of the self-exposure to it. Do Levinas and Fackenheim, then, agree that ethics is primary? One should not be too quick to think so. They may seem to share an insight: that meaning is ultimately grounded in an event that is normative and directive and not factical and articulated via description and explanation. But for Levinas, the normativity of human responsibility for the other is a permanent condition of and standard for all human existence. For Fackenheim, the normativity of resistance is both a condition of and a standard for post-Holocaust existence, Jewish and otherwise. And while for Levinas this responsibility is infinite—the self is responsible for the other totally and indeed for all others, for Fackenheim the scope of one’s responsibility is hermeneutically and historically defined. They share the insight that meaning is grounded in normativity, but the character, role, and scope of that normativity differ dramatically. In his early thinking along these lines, from 1966 to 1970, Fackenheim formulated this insight about normativity in a condensed fashion. He said then that Jews, both believers and nonbelievers, heard a 614th commandment, that authentic Jews are not permitted to give Hitler any posthumous victories. A


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great deal can and should be said about this powerful and famous statement, at least to disperse the clouds of misunderstanding and confusion that surround it. But for us, now, this is sufficient: the 614th commandment combines two ideas—first, that post-Holocaust Jewish life gains its determinative meaning by responding to an imperative that arises from the exposure of Judaism to an honest grasp of Auschwitz and Nazi persecution, and second, that this meaning takes shape hermeneutically for the post-Holocaust Jew who interprets the imperative in his or her own way as a member of a particular Jewish community, situated in a particular way within the tradition and history of Jewish experience. What Fackenheim calls for, then, is responsibility as a Jew, on behalf of Jews and others and indeed on behalf of Judaism, as determinative for post-Holocaust Jewish existence. Levinas too identifies responsibility as the central character of human existence, but for him this responsibility is a matter of substitution for the other and for all others. For Fackenheim, too, responsibility—for the Jew, as most likely for others—is responsibility for others; it is owed to the victims and is responsibility for Jews, the Jewish people, the values of Judaism, and humanity. But in Levinas, in a sense, the ground of the responsibility, the other, is also its primary beneficiary. Not so for Fackenheim. To him, since we remain at the level of history and everyday experience, there is no single ground of responsibility for all. For the nonbeliever, the secular Jew, there is only an imperative, and Fackenheim refuses to speak about or identify a ground of response, when none is or could be acknowledged. He is fond of quoting Martin Buber, who himself cites Nietzsche, that there are times when one receives and one does not ask who gives. For believers, on the other hand, Fackenheim notes the will, indeed, the hope that such an imperative to respond, to remain a humane, loyal, and committed Jew, comes from a Divine Commanding Presence. Hence, as he once put it, for the believer, there is not solely a commandment but a commander as well. And later, in To Mend the World, as Fackenheim turns to the question of possibility, whether such an imperative can in fact be performed, he also here remains historical and particular. For Levinas, the command of the other requires responsibility, and at the same time its accusation identifies the self and initiates its freedom. For Fackenheim, just as there is no timeless, ahistorical ground of the necessity of responsibility, so there is no timeless, ahistorical ground of freedom for the possibility of its performance. Only by examining, exploring, and elucidating the responses of victims does one finally arrive at a unique event of resistance—at the same time, an event that incorporates an awareness that is surprised, horrified, reflective, and assured of its commandedness—that becomes now for the post-Holocaust respondent the ground of freedom, of the possibility of going on as a responsible person. One might think that for Fackenheim, whose sensitivity to the horrors of Auschwitz is so powerful, God would become even more distant for the post-Holocaust Jew. And given this distance, perhaps Fackenheim and Levinas

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would agree about God. In fact, however, the relationship with God, although contested and then recovered, nonetheless remains, for Fackenheim, philosophically the same, while psychologically and historically it is troubled and conflicted. Levinas’s God is doubly distant, a radical Absence, always past and never present. If Fackenheim’s God is absent, then it is for historical and not philosophical or theological reasons. Recall that Levinas’s other is the “trace” of the Absent God, which is an “illeity” that is doubly distant from the I, for it is itself beyond what is itself already beyond. For Fackenheim, on the other hand, God is understood historically, either as a feature of the Jew’s everyday experience or as a philosophically understood divine being. Strictly speaking, Fackenheim himself has little sympathy for the impersonal divinity of natural theology or the naturalism of modern secular culture. He argues that the only defensible and responsible understanding is of God as a Thou, a Presence, as conceived, in his view, by Buber and Rosenzweig.14 Hence, in a post-Holocaust world, the Jew, if a believer, should hope for the renewed Presence of God but should be troubled about that Presence, given the Divine Absence at Auschwitz.15 For some nonbelievers, God may be, at least for now, inaccessible, while for others, believers, the once-Present God is the object of a troubled, uncertain hope. After Auschwitz, the very existence of God may be contested, but an openness to God can be recovered, if not without difficulty, also not without hope. Perhaps, then, a chief distinction between Fackenheim and Levinas concerns God. For Levinas’s conception of God as distant, as an “illeity” beyond the other, yet present, as it were, as a trace in the face of the other, is clearly not Fackenheim’s Divine Presence, a Buberian Thou. If Fackenheim’s God is distant for some in a post-Holocaust world, then that God is not distant for all. And the distance is historically grounded; it is not a permanent feature of the human condition. But while these two conceptions do differ, they do so only insofar as they are tied to a more fundamental difference. Fackenheim is a more historical thinker than Levinas, and in a deep, not a superficial, sense. Levinas’s Platonism, while rooted in experience and then, indeed, beyond experience, is still a kind of Platonism.16 Fackenheim’s Divine Presence encounters the human in history, and from the human side, revelation is received as a free act of an experiencing, situated self. Hence, revelation depends upon both Divine initiative and human receptivity, and the latter depends richly on the historical situation of the self. For Levinas, life in the world varies, and yet at all times our social experience approximates to or deviates from the ideal of unconditional, unlimited responsibility of the I for the other. There, in a permanent structure, the particular other holds the I hostage, accuses it, and calls it into question, and in its very revelation to the I, the Divine Absence, out of its immemorial past, leaves its trace. God, that is, is distantly, indirectly, but undeniably present to the I in the face of the other and, in everyday life, its social and moral relationships, but insofar as that face-to-face encounter is


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not a historical episode but rather a transcendental structure—both constitutive and ideal, that distant, indirect revelation also is a transcendental feature of human society, human language and thought, and ethical life. For both thinkers, then, life can be lived either close to or distant from God; for both, religious life can be genuine or distorted, manifest or obscured, if not outright rejected. And for both, dark times may look the same, times of suffering and despair, of alienation and a failure or dereliction of human concern. But deeply, the meaning of these conditions differs for the two, and the difference hinges to a great degree on what history ultimately means to each. Levinas is certainly sensitive to the way that the suffering during the time of Auschwitz has great significance for Jews and for others as well;17 Fackenheim too recognizes the special significance of that suffering and that evil. But for Levinas, the suffering signifies human abandonment of the universal, abiding responsibility that we all have for each other; for Fackenheim, the suffering signifies nothing beyond itself; its existence and its legacy require and perhaps intensify the obligation we have to live with a sense for human dignity and humanity. Moral and religious obligations arise in many ways, are grounded differently for different groups and communities and cultures; Auschwitz threatens them all. Only by accepting the historicity of all human existence can one do justice to Auschwitz as an unconditional evil, and once we do, the obligation to resist its purposes and oppose its legacy is as much our own responsibility as would be the willingness to capitulate to it. And this issue leads us to the question, what role does Auschwitz play for each of these thinkers? Nazism and the death camps may be a motive, if not the single most powerful motive, for their challenges to the limits of philosophy. But does the Holocaust function more directly in their probing of those limits? Does the Holocaust play a philosophical or theological role in their thinking and not solely a psychological one? Are both Fackenheim and Levinas post-Holocaust philosophers and thinkers in the same sense? Levinas often testifies to the fact that the Nazi destruction and the Holocaust were never far from his mind as he engaged in philosophical as well as Jewish thinking.18 Still, the Holocaust is a particular, historical episode that reveals, as Levinas himself notes, the abandonment of responsibility for the Jewish people and others; it was a time when human institutions failed to come to the aid of human suffering. It was a divine hiding of face experienced as a human failure of responsibility in the face of unimaginable destitution and suffering, and in scope it was extreme.19 But it was one such incident in a century rife with them, and while it, as an emblem of Jewish persecution and suffering, represented something about the fate of the Jewish people and its historical task, it served to underline, in Levinas’s eyes, a universal, permanent teaching. If Auschwitz and Nazism motivated Levinas to seek and to uncover an ethical ground to human existence, then it is much harder to say what it might have contributed to its philosophical or extra-philosophical disclosure and articulation.

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For Levinas the Holocaust dramatized the need for a philosophical account of human existence that exposed its fundamental moral normativity and its rootedness in our responsibility for one another. Also, insofar as Levinas came early on to see Heidegger’s fundamental ontology and his account of Dasein as deficient in various ways that at least permitted his complicity with Nazism, one might see Nazism and the Holocaust as substantively implicated in his responses to Heidegger with regard to the identity of the self, relationship with the other, one’s relation to death, and more. Still, while all of this may be true, the Holocaust does not have the same impact on Levinas’s thinking that it does on Fackenheim’s; it does not, that is, register in the undeniability of historical situatedness and all that implies for the normativity that underlies human existence. We can see this best if we turn to Fackenheim’s response to the Holocaust. For Fackenheim, the seriousness owed Auschwitz, its victims and its horrors, is of a different order. Arguably, Nazism and then the horrors of the death camps have always been the compelling motive for Fackenheim’s commitment to rabbinic studies, to Jewish theology, and to philosophy—always, from the early 1930s to this day. But it was only during the period 1966–1967 that he was able to confront this radical evil with complete honesty and sufficient responsibility. Only then, as he has since put it, did he feel able to take seriously both the Holocaust and God. If part of the response to Enlightenment rationalism and the tradition of German idealism was a fideist commitment to a God and a faith that engaged the individual from beyond reason and philosophy, then it was only after 1945 that Judaism, philosophy, Christianity, and all Western culture were called upon to cope with a radical evil also beyond their limits and capacities. Auschwitz, in short, is historically unprecedented and philosophically and theologically epoch making. It tests the limits of our concepts, our language, and our theoretical and practical paradigms, and it does so because of its unprecedented evil and from out of its historical particularity. System, totality, reason, thought—these cannot contain either the scandal of the divine or, once it had occurred, the scandal of this particular evil. The features that make this event radically evil force this further radicality, that it lies beyond our comprehension but it does not lie beyond our responsibility. Indeed, the latter is as necessary as the former is impossible. Here then, in the domain of the historical and in the particularity of Auschwitz, we find the mark of the greatest difference between Fackenheim and Levinas. It is not simply a matter of method, the transcendental phenomenology of the one contrasted with the dialectical and hermeneutical thinking of the other, although this distinction is one of importance.20 Nor is it a matter of their philosophical origins, significant and revealing as this difference is. Nor does it arise because of the primacy Levinas gives to the ethical or the special role of the other. Nor does their difference emerge most significantly from their distinctive attempts to keep philosophy separate from Jewish thought and yet to bring them together in productive ways. No, what distinguishes


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these two thinkers is the role of Auschwitz and the role of history in their respective thinking and writing. Even in the shadow of Auschwitz, Levinas remains closer to Husserl than Fackenheim does to Hegel. Or, in Heideggerian language, Fackenheim has a greater allegiance to the ontic grounding of human existence, Levinas to its pre-ontological grounding; Fackenheim to its historicity, Levinas to its temporality; Fackenheim to the primacy of the existentiell (existenziell), Levinas to the primacy of the ethical. Here is a difference perhaps, but is this difference decisive? Is it possible that these two routes taken do not diverge in any essential way? Or might they, in some way, yet be brought together? To form a whole that does justice to the parts without denying their distinctiveness but drawing strength from both? Could it be that for Fackenheim what the Holocaust challenges is the very responsibility to the other that Levinas has uncovered as foundational, primordial, and determinative? Fackenheim recognizes that the post-Holocaust life should be one of recovery and repair, but the articulation of its content is a hermeneutical one. It involves recovering oneself by recovering selectively from the past. Could it be that the abiding teaching of that past, as Levinas has argued, is that of responsibility for the poor, the widow, and the orphan?21 Could Auschwitz challenge us all to recover some measure of our infinite responsibility for all others, for all humankind? Whenever a moment of radical evil were to occur, it would put into question the recovery of this teaching and challenge the survivors of atrocity and suffering to interpret this teaching in new and creative ways. How might Levinas and Fackenheim respond to such a suggestion? I imagine that both might find something appealing about such a proposal—on the one hand, its respect for the horrors of Nazism and the death camps and for the suffering of its victims; on the other, its commitment to hope, respect, and humanity. But at the same time, if urged to express their deepest sympathies, I am inclined to think that each would find fault with this proposal as well, for it hides a deep divide between them. This much we can conclude, however—that as the twentieth century neared its end, these two thinkers shared a common worry in distinctly powerful and moving ways, which is their legacy to us all. NOTES 1. See various essays, especially “Philosophy and the Idea of the Infinite,” and the book and commentary by Adriaan Peperzak, To the Other (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1993). Both Emil Fackenheim and Emmanuel Levinas engage in a critique of traditional Western philosophy, and although they do so in different ways, this critique of Western philosophy is a good place to begin to assess their thinking and to compare their work. For Fackenheim, this critique is primarily aimed at Hegel, but it also includes as targets Spinoza, Heidegger, and Kant. For Levinas, it is aimed first at Husserl and Heidegger but also includes Plato, Descartes, and

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German Idealism. These differences notwithstanding, it is important to clarify whether Fackenheim and Levinas challenge the Western philosophical tradition in the same way. 2. To Levinas, Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology rightly recognizes the intentionality of consciousness as its subject matter but in its attempt to be rigorous and foundational stops short at the transcendental ego. And Heidegger’s transcendental ontology is right to transcend the intellectualism, the emphasis on theory, description, observation, and explanation, of Western philosophy but is still too grounded in the experience of Dasein and truth as disclosure of Being to Dasein and through Dasein. Even these monumental achievements are too restricted for Levinas, not primordial or deep enough; neither acknowledges the underlying mystery, the genuine otherness of the other. Even as Levinas challenges his mentors and revises their ontological and phenomenological pictures of human life and experience, as he rehearses the emergence of individual existing things from the dark, foreboding space of Being he calls “there is”; even as he explores the worldly resources that provide nourishment and enjoyment to the I and watches the I’s needs extend into infinite desire; Levinas plunges further and further beneath and beyond the parameters of Western metaphysics as it has grasped and comprehended human existence, until he reaches a moment beyond “being,” beyond experience, appearance, comprehension and thought, a moment or aspect that is ultimate and primordial. 3. Here I am indebted to a distinction that Robert Bernasconi uses, for different purposes; it is cited too by Tamra Wright. One commentator who emphasizes the transcendental character of Levinas’s thought is Theodore DeBoer; see The Rationality of Transcendence (Amsterdam: J. C. Giohen, 1997), especially Chapter 1, “An Ethical Transcendental Philosophy.” 4. The primary account is in Totality and Infinity. 5. The crucial essay is “Substitution,” later incorporated into Otherwise Than Being (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1998). 6. An essay that deals explicitly with the themes of meaning and sense has that title, “Meaning and Sense.” There is an excellent account of this role of the face-to-face in Theodore DeBoer, The Rationality of Transcendence, Chapter 1. 7. Indeed, Levinas’s face-to-face provides just that kind of orientation for human existence that makes it meaningful and purposeful that Rosenzweig takes to be a special virtue of Rosenstock’s conception of revelation as orientation, as the ground of an absolute determination of here and there, above and below, in the historical process. 8. See “The Trace of the Other,” “Meaning and Sense,” “Substitution,” and other essays. Later, the essays in Of God Who Comes to Mind, especially “God and Philosophy.” For discussion, see Morgan, Discovering Levinas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), ch. 7. 9. In addition to The Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973) are the essays translated by Richard Cohen in Discovering Existence with Husserl (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998). 10. Even Metaphysics and Historicity is part of this project. In it Fackenheim asks whether the very notion of the particular existing self as a process of self-


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constitution can be accommodated to philosophical system, and he answers that it can. 11. See especially “On the Eclipse of God,” in Quest for Past and Future (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1968), reprinted in The Jewish Thought of Emil Fackenheim, ed. Michael L. Morgan (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1987); originally in Commentary (June 1964). 12. Technically speaking, Fackenheim also takes the particularity of the concrete, existing individual also to escape systematization. In this regard, he is indebted to Schelling, Kierkegaard, and Rosenzweig. 13. This encounter is most clearly described in “Elijah and the Empiricists,” which first appeared in The Religious Situation: 1969, ed. Donald Cutler (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), and was then reprinted as Chapter 1 of Encounters between Judaism and Modern Philosophy (New York: Basic Books, 1973). 14. Here I am thinking of many of the essays in Quest for Past and Future, the second chapter of God’s Presence in History (New York: New York University Press, 1970), the essay “Martin Buber’s Concept of Revelation” (originally in Schilpp and Friedman, The Philosophy of Martin Buber, and reprinted in The Jewish Thought of Emil Fackenheim, and in Jewish Philosophers and Jewish Philosophy, ed. Michael L. Morgan [Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1996]), and finally the third chapter of To Mend the World (New York: Schocken Books, 1982). 15. Auschwitz challenges the Jewish and human confidence in the meaningfulness of human existence. One can hope that our commitment to such meaning will be confirmed in the future as it has been in the past, but in the wake of the Holocaust, that hope is itself troubled and uncertain. Cultivating a receptivity to the Divine Presence, remaining open to it, is Fackenheim’s way of talking about this troubled hope that such direction and orientation is still worthy of our commitment. 16. Husserl’s Platonism, while conceived as a radical empiricism of a sort, is still as much a form of Platonism as it is of empiricism. The natural attitude is bracketed; phenomenology is ultimately a theoretical inquiry into ideal structures of meaning that underlie experience, and in Husserl’s vesion it ends in disclosing a transcendental subjectivity and then transcendental intersubjectivity. To be sure, Levinas modifies the Husserlian method and avoids, most dramatically, its subjectivism and its intellectualism. But he retains its Platonism and its sense of universality. Unlike Fackenheim, Levinas’s account of the epiphany of the face, of responsibility for the other, and of substitution is all transcendental and, while utterly particular in one sense, totally universal. 17. I am thinking especially of the role of suffering in the project of the Jewish people, as Levinas characterizes it in essays such as “Loving the Torah More Than God” and “Useless Suffering.” This is a common theme in Levinas’s Jewish writings. 18. He says this in Totality and Infinity, comments on it in various essays, suggests it in Jewish writings such as “Loving the Torah More Than God” and “Useless Suffering,” and notes it often in his Talmudic readings, and late in life, in “Signature,” he underlines the point. 19. Can Levinas countenance radical evil? Or only degrees of failure of human responsibility? Would Fackenheim make the same charge against Levinas that he

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has leveled against Buber, that he uses the notion of an “eclipse of God” because he can make no room for a radical evil that is unredeemed and unredeemable? On evil as excess for Levinas, see “Transcendence and Evil.” 20. Associated with method, the issue is one of a very fundamental kind, where the limits of Western philosophy expose a metaphysics, a conception of religion and ethics. For Levinas, that ethical metaphysics is universal and transcendental, a primary or primordial structure that underlies and orients all human existence. Even Levinas’s acknowledgment of the primacy of the other, of the unique presence of the infinite, has its totalizing character. For Fackenheim, on the other hand, that normative religiosity is itself historical and particular, revealed in a variety of contexts, to particular agents situated in particular communities in a post-Holocaust world. Levinas’s challenge to totalization is permanent, extraordinary, but qualified; Fackenheim’s challenge is unqualified and radical but historically grounded. Both are philosophers in the extreme, but the extremes differ. For Levinas, even the victim in Auschwitz is responsible for Hitler, for his henchmen, for all the SS, and for all Germans; for Fackenheim, some victims resisted, others succumbed, but none were morally bound to the Nazi criminals, even if they were bound morally to oppose them. For Levinas, there is no radical, absolute evil; for Fackenheim, there is and has been. 21. That this ethical teaching is one domain of response to the Holocaust for Fackenheim is clear; see the chapter on ethics in What Is Judaism?, which explicitly refers to this biblical phrase and the issue of responsibility and goodness.

CHAPTER 7

The Holocaust and the Foundations of Future Philosophy Fackenheim and Strauss

SOLOMON GOLDBERG Those who do not share Emil Fackenheim’s hopes for philosophy are unlikely to appreciate To Mend the World. The drama of the book rests on an idea of philosophy—essentially Hegelian1—that takes seriously the possibility of complete knowledge: nothing is beyond philosophy’s purview. A sense of philosophy’s scope and eminence not only motivates Fackenheim’s proposal to comprehend the Holocaust through the lens of philosophy at the book’s beginning but also makes so moving his partial disavowal of philosophy at its conclusion, where we learn that philosophy, which would penetrate the depths of all that is, cannot fathom this unprecedented event. Leo Strauss, likewise, holds philosophy up to the highest standards. Just as for the ancients, whose standpoint he strives to recover, so for Strauss the title “philosopher” encompasses all the intellectual and moral virtues of being human. No higher distinction could be conferred upon a person since philosophy, according to the classical view, is the loftiest enterprise a human being can undertake. Indeed, like Socrates, Strauss understands the pursuit of philosophy not only as the attempt to answer the basic human problem of how to live but also as the best solution to that very problem. Fackenheim and Strauss thus share the view that philosophy should address our fundamental existential concerns. However, because they disagree about the nature of philosophy, they identify different concerns as fundamental. 75

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This disagreement about the nature of philosophy appears unmistakably in their respective responses to the Holocaust, that is, to its status as a philosophical issue. Whereas Strauss, who never wavers from his commitment to reviving the wisdom of the ancients, does not find in the Holocaust a novel problem that philosophers must now tackle urgently, Fackenheim, who argues for the necessity of new foundations for post-Holocaust thought, considers the Holocaust not only a philosophical question but, in fact, the philosophical question. It is in the light of this dispute about the place of the Holocaust in future philosophy that we must view Fackenheim’s dedication of To Mend the World “to the memory of Leo Strauss.” With this gesture, Fackenheim expresses, I believe, his respect for Strauss’s philosophical discernment while intimating his rejection of Strauss’s philosophical project. Significantly, Fackenheim’s dedication of To Mend the World mirrors Strauss’s dedication of his Spinoza’s Critique of Religion “to the memory of Franz Rosenzweig,” by which Strauss, likewise, not only indicates his admiration for Rosenzweig2 but also hints at his doubts about Rosenzweig’s assumption that a complete return to ancient thought is impossibly naïve.3 In other words, both dedications concern the enduring validity and relevance of ancient thought: just as Strauss repudiates Rosenzweig’s unconditional affiliation to modern philosophy, Fackenheim rebuffs Strauss’s unreserved allegiance to ancient philosophy. The parallel not only in the wording of the two dedications but also in the philosophical issue that both dedications raise leads me to suspect that Strauss is Fackenheim’s principal philosophical adversary in To Mend the World. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the book’s second section, “The Problematics of Contemporary Jewish Thought: From Spinoza beyond Rosenzweig,” which makes explicit a confrontation between Spinoza and Rosenzweig that Strauss largely implies. When Strauss’s Die Religionskritik Spinozas originally appeared in 1930, few if any could have detected the philosophical significance of its dedication due to the simple facts that Rosenzweig is not mentioned anywhere else in the book, and that Spinoza figures only indirectly into Rosenzweig’s thought. In fact, it was not possible to perceive clearly the grounds on which Strauss associates Rosenzweig’s return to Judaism with Spinoza’s rejection of it until Strauss released the English translation of the book with a new preface. Even then, however, the need to demonstrate that Rosenzweig successfully overcomes Spinoza’s critique of religion was hardly obvious, for the purpose of Strauss’s preface, indeed his entire book, is to make one doubt whether Spinoza successfully overcomes the ancients. That is, if the traditional philosophical standpoint remains intact, then the importance of establishing that Rosenzweig answers Spinoza’s challenge disappears. Said negatively, one need not show that Rosenzweig’s late or postmodern defense of revelation disposes of the questions raised by early modern philosophy unless one already accepts that modern philosophy has superseded once and for all the idea of revelation advocated by premodern philosophy.

The Holocaust and the Foundations of Future Philosophy

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While Strauss’s doubts about modern philosophy take him back to Maimonides, Aristotle, and Plato, Fackenheim’s confidence in its ascendancy leads him to Hegel, Heidegger, and Rosenzweig. Fackenheim divulges his repudiation of Strauss’s basic thesis when he stages in the second section of To Mend the World the quarrel between Spinoza and Rosenzweig. Now, given his rejection of Strauss, one might be surprised that Fackenheim’s interpretations of Spinoza and Rosenzweig rely heavily on Strauss, whose influence Fackenheim openly acknowledges.4 But one certainly could not find it surprising that, at decisive points in his discussions of Spinoza and Rosenzweig, Fackenheim dissents from Strauss’s view. The basis for this dissent lies, as I have already hinted, in Fackenheim’s different understanding of the historical and philosophical relation between Spinoza and Rosenzweig. Fackenheim contrasts Rosenzweig to Spinoza, whereas Strauss pits Spinoza and Rosenzweig together in common opposition to traditional Judaism in general and to Maimonides in particular. The ground of this difference is not that Fackenheim has somehow overlooked the opposition Strauss presents, but rather that Fackenheim takes as a given the inevitability, and hence to some extent the superiority, of the modern (i.e., the Spinozistic) position. As Fackenheim says, “Spinoza could reject revelation but not refute it. On his part, Rosenzweig can reject Spinoza’s rejection and accept revelation. He cannot, however, return to the premodern proofs, for these Spinoza has long refuted.”5 Arguably the strongest evidence that Fackenehim accepts the inadequacy of the ancient view resides, however, in the simple fact that all four of the philosophers dealt with extensively in To Mend the World are modern. Undoubtedly, Fackenheim would admit that we can still learn from the ancients; however, what we cannot do, as the earlier quote about Rozenweig’s rejection of Spinoza’s rejection of revelation suggests, is retrieve the premodern outlook without a tremendous intellectual sacrifice. Strauss, as it were, rejects Fackenheim’s rejection, returning to the premoderns to prove his faith in the superiority of the ancients. Strauss, in other words, considers open the question whether Spinoza, or, for that matter, any of the other modern critics of religion, ever refuted entirely the premodern basis for accepting the possibility of Creation, revelation, or miracles. Accordingly, Strauss demands the reconsideration of “the quarrel between Enlightenment and Orthodoxy.”6 Now if Strauss is right, that modern philosophy has merely discredited but not disproved the grounds on which ancient philosophy stands, then we must reexamine Fackenheim’s argument that past philosophy cannot confront the Holocaust and his subsequent call for new foundations of post-Holocaust thought, for he limits past philosophy to a couple of its modern variants. While one may suspect that ancient thought is no more capable of fathoming the Holocaust than is modern thought, Fackenheim never establishes the former’s futility. Perhaps this omission changes nothing essential. But if we draw out the implications of Strauss’s position, then we must wonder whether,

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in demonstrating only modern philosophy’s limitations vis-à-vis the Holocaust, Fackenheim has not perhaps indicated the necessity of a return to the thinking of the ancients. Support for this inference might be adduced from the claim, still somewhat fashionable, that the Holocaust itself was possible only on the basis of modern philosophy and its technological outlook.7 But even if one hesitates to assent to the seemingly extreme conclusion that modern philosophy’s inability to confront the Holocaust necessitates the recovery of ancient philosophy, then one can still, following Strauss, take as unresolved whether ancient thought is not perhaps superior to modern thought in decisive respects not only generally but also specifically in its ability to provide if not a foundation then at least an orientation for post-Holocaust philosophy. Accordingly, in the following discussion, I examine from a Straussian perspective the premises on which Fackenheim establishes a post-Holocaust philosophy.8 The question of a post-Holocaust philosophy allows for a seemingly simple formulation: What are we to do now? So phrased, however, it does not sound different than the question philosophers have always asked; the question is, as it were, timeless. What distinguishes the meaning of this question at any one time as opposed to any other is, of course, the interpretation of the “now” and of what it refers to. Strauss and Fackenheim differ on this point. In Strauss’s writings, “the present crisis” refers invariably—that is, both before and after the Holocaust—to the crisis of liberal democracy.9 Although this identification of the problem apparently takes a political situation as the defining characteristic of the present, Strauss locates the origin of the crisis in philosophy. Philosophy in its present form is no longer able to justify liberal democracy as the best political order.10 More problematic still, the successive waves through which modern philosophy has passed have relegated virtually to oblivion the question of the best type of regime.11 The disappearance of this question is, according to Strauss, the “present” crisis, a present beginning sometime toward the end of the nineteenth century with Max Weber, on the one hand, and Nietzsche, on the other. For Fackenheim, in contrast, “now” refers to history after the Holocaust and the establishment of the modern State of Israel. Notice that besides the obviously different temporal definition of “now,” Fackenheim points to historical phenomena, the Holocaust and Israel’s founding, rather than to philosophical thought as the origin of the present crisis. Moreover, or rather more precisely, Fackenheim speaks not of a crisis but of a rupture. The difference between a crisis and a rupture plays no small part in his argument concerning the future of philosophy. In fact, Fackenheim’s use of the term rupture is the key to understanding his conclusion not only about Strauss but also about all future philosophy. At the beginning of the section of To Mend the World, titled “On Philosophy after the Holocaust,” Fackenheim quotes a comment by Strauss that originally appears in a discussion of the crisis of liberal democracy but that


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Fackenheim interprets as a veiled allusion to the Hitler regime. The quote from Strauss runs: “It is safer to understand the low in the light of the high than the high in the light of the low. In doing the latter one necessarily distorts the high, whereas in doing the former one does not deprive the low of the freedom to reveal itself fully for what it is.”12 Commenting on this passage, Fackenheim claims that it expresses a “grandiose philosophical failure.” What is the grandiose philosophical failure of which Strauss is supposedly guilty? He relates to the philosophical tradition as if a rupture within that very tradition had not occurred, a rupture that therefore presupposes the necessity of an act of recovery. After the Holocaust, we can no longer appeal to the highest potentials, neither moral nor intellectual, that human beings can display without reevaluating this view based on the new evidence that reveals the perhaps never fathomable depths for potential human lows. The “devastating truth” of the Holocaust, Fackenheim explains, has produced “a rupture of the tradition known as philosophia perennis.” To be sure, this rupture “does not invalidate Strauss’ insistence that to understand the ‘high’ in terms of ‘low’ is necessarily to distort it.” However, Fackenheim continues, “after the unique rupture that has occurred, the high is accessible only through an act of recovery, and this must bridge what is no mere gap but rather an abyss.”13 In order to understand Fackenheim’s conclusion about Strauss’s failure, and therewith his conclusion about the failure of all “philosophy after the Holocaust,” it is necessary to identify the three premises from which To Mend the World begins. They are: 1.

The Holocaust is an unprecedented event.

2.

History has philosophical importance.

3.

Past thought, both philosophical and Jewish, is compelled to reckon with the Holocaust if it is to preserve its intellectual probity and existential authenticity.

From these premises, Fackenheim develops his argument that no previous philosophy can respond to the Holocaust, because no previous philosophy ever had to confront an evil of its magnitude. Hence, also, his conclusion that thinking must be placed on new, empirical foundations: thought, which previously explained the meaning of existence and dictated how one ought to live, must now take its cue from life itself. The Holocaust raises such an awful problem that, as Fackenheim asserts, “answers . . . could not be constructed by thought, but only given by life itself.”14 On the one hand, without a willingness to witness the Holocaust world, philosophy becomes irrelevant; on the other hand, with a sense of horror commensurate to Nazi evil, philosophy risks complete paralysis. And yet, Fackenheim informs us, philosophy need not end up either irrelevant or paralyzed if it learns from its exposure to the Holocaust world

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that life has already resisted absolute despair in the face of Nazi evil. Life, in short, supplies a foundation for future philosophy. Now only the first of Fackenheim’s three basic premises—regarding the uniqueness of the Holocaust—is addressed expressly within To Mend the World.15 While the debate on this question continues to be rehearsed, it seems to me that the case for the Holocaust as an unprecedented event has been argued so frequently and so persuasively that there is no need to restate here all of the reasons. However, even if one does not think the matter has been settled, we may take this premise to be unproblematic, for reasons I shall make clear shortly. In contrast, the other two premises are not only insufficiently grounded, but, moreover, it is entirely unclear how they ever could be. By no means am I proposing that these premises are therefore erroneous. But, as I have already suggested, I do think that a proper evaluation of Fackenheim’s conclusions requires at the very least that we consider them from a Straussian perspective, especially if Strauss is Fackenheim’s implicit philosophical opponent. Of the three premises of Fackenheim’s book, the only one that demands extensive attention is the second, which says that philosophy must regard history seriously. We need not dwell on the third premise—that philosophy must confront the Holocaust or become meaningless—because it depends on the other premises, and the first premise—that the Holocaust is unprecedented—Strauss seems perfectly willing to accept. Indeed, on this point, consider that although Strauss never discusses as such the evil of “the Holocaust world” (to use Fackenheim’s phrase), he notes the singularity of the logic of the Nazi regime within human history. “The Weimar Republic was succeeded by the only German regime—the only regime ever anywhere—which had no other clear principle than murderous hatred of the Jews, for ‘Aryan’ had no clear meaning other than ‘non-Jewish.’ ”16 One should not overlook either how emphatic (“only . . . ever anywhere”) or how prescient this assessment is in that Strauss says this in 1962, a time before any of the now-familiar debates about the event’s uniqueness. The disagreement between Fackenheim and Strauss begins, then, over the question of philosophy’s interest in history. In considering Strauss’s view of history, one must avoid the misconceptions that some commentators have spread. Contrary to two widespread perceptions of Strauss, I believe it a mistake to see him either as a sophisticated hermeneuticist or as a representative of the philosophia perennis. He is not the latter, because philosophia perennis expresses an essentially traditionalist position and, therefore, is opposed to Strauss’s antitraditionalist understanding of philosophy.17 Although Strauss maintains the existence both of an eternal order of things and of eternal problems,18 he does not insist—or even imply—that there is an eternally valid doctrine, as do those who espouse versions of philosophia perennis.19 On the other hand, he does not rightly belong among the hermeneutic school since, although he speaks of a return to the wisdom of the ancients, he believes that


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the distance separating us from them is merely perceived. No special act of historical recovery is necessary in order to return to the ancients other than a critique of the modern prejudice about this apparent historical distance20; in other words, what is needed is merely a critique of the historicist premise upon which contemporary hermeneutics is based. Strauss’s argument against historicism is that, insofar as the natures of politics and philosophy are concerned, nothing is essentially different between the ancients and us: as long as humans have an interest in the best possible life, ancient philosophy has something to teach us.21 Let me briefly expand on how Strauss understands the essence of politics and of political philosophy, since from our appreciation of his views on the political we can derive his position on the relevance of history for philosophy. According to Strauss, all action aims either at changing or at preserving a situation. Action directed toward change is guided by a desire to bring about something better, whereas preservation hopes to avoid the occurrence of something worse. Efforts for the sake of change and preservation thus assume ideas of better and worse, which in turn must have in view an idea of what is ultimately good, however remote or hazy this idea may be. In other words, Strauss explains, every action has an immediate objective that a single actor or group of actors has judged to be better than other possible objectives that could have been pursued under the circumstances. The basis for this judgment must be some idea of the good, regardless of the clarity of this idea to the individual or group. In Strauss’s view, then, politics exists wherever there are conflicting opinions among members of a group about better and worse and, therefore, tacitly about what the ultimate objective of communal life ought to be. Of course, Strauss continues, in every community or society there are always diverse thoughts about the good. These thoughts mostly have the character of opinions or, said otherwise, their certainty remains dubious. Contrary to what one might assume, these differences of opinion should not deter the search for an unqualified, fundamental good. On the contrary, Strauss contends that these differences of opinion are the precondition for the philosophical enterprise, for only when confronted with a multiplicity of opinions does the need arise to replace opinions about the good with knowledge about the good. This distinction between opinions and knowledge marks the emergence of political philosophy. Political arguments thus point to political philosophy, or to the need for political philosophy. On this basis, Strauss concludes that political philosophy is necessary at all times, or as long as there is political debate. Until people no longer need to judge between better and worse, and between the ideas of the good that these judgments necessarily invoke, political philosophy will be an indispensable and valuable pursuit. As the attempt to replace opinions about political phenomena with knowledge of them, political philosophy is not only necessarily preceded by opinions about politics but also dialectically bound to them. Herein lies

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the importance of history for philosophy, according to Strauss. Opinions are essentially historical, for they express the views of a particular society at a particular time. Philosophy not only emerges in response to these opinions but also strives to overcome them. However, even after its ascent from the cave of historical opinions, philosophy does not scorn life in the cave. On the contrary, the philosopher is compelled to return to the cave to educate the potential philosophers. This he can do only by employing the language of the cave, that is, by means of an appeal to particular authoritative opinions. On the basis of what has just been said about Strauss’s interpretation of the philosopher’s connection to the political community, I can now summarize his position on the philosophical relevance of history. Neither specific historical events nor the historical process as a series of events concerns philosophers, since these are transient. Instead, the true object of philosophical contemplation is the eternal order behind the historical process.22 Indeed, in the classical conception of philosophy advocated by Strauss, the eternal order makes history possible and as such can in no way be affected by history. Philosophers’ reflections on the historical circumstances in which they live thus largely belie their true philosophical interests. I say “largely” because, according to Strauss, philosophers are willy-nilly required to participate in the historical world to which they belong. Moreover, since they cannot stay detached from the societies in which they live, whether due to their benevolence or their sheer interest in survival, they must discover the appropriate means for communicating with the surrounding social world. The appropriate means, Strauss argues, would combine appeals to authoritative opinions and the subtle encouragement away from these opinions. In short, philosophers require historical awareness not for their metaphysical speculation, which is their primary interest, but for their political well-being and their social wants, which are inescapable yet secondary concerns. Here we must not fail to distinguish between the philosophical speculations that lead the philosopher beyond the political community and the philosophical proofs that could adequately ground the political community. Strauss is relatively silent on the latter. This silence says a great deal about Strauss’s idea of philosophy: philosophy remains for him love of wisdom, because it has not yet become actual wisdom. Now the fact that philosophy cannot tell us unequivocally the best way to live but only recommends persistence in our search for what is best implies that adequate foundations for Strauss’s basic philosophical premises are still wanting. Strauss concedes this want in his debate with Alexandre Kojève, who, like Fackenheim, accepts the Hegelian thesis about history’s philosophical relevance contra the thesis of Plato and Aristotle.23 On the surface, the debate between Strauss and Kojève concerns the question of the relationship between tyranny and wisdom. However, as Strauss notes, behind the debate’s overt topic stand two opposed views about Being and, consequently, about the philosophical


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relevance of history. One view, endorsed by Strauss, says that Being is immutable and eternally identical to itself. The other view, advocated by Kojève (and implicitly accepted by Fackenheim in To Mend the World), states that Being realizes itself in the course of history. These two views, which reflect two fundamentally different ideas of philosophy, do not allow for any mediation. And, if neither of them is able to show its outright superiority to the other, then, Strauss admits, we are left with a choice between two essentially contrary ideas of philosophy. Yet in spite of their disagreement about the relevance of history for philosophy, Fackenheim and Strauss surprisingly agree to a certain extent on the premise that philosophy must confront the Holocaust. Making this agreement so unexpected is the fact that Strauss’s position in his debate with Kojève seemingly implies the opposite stance. At the conclusion of his response to Kojève, Strauss says that, despite their conflicting hypotheses about Being, he and Kojève commonly turn their “attention away from Being and toward tyranny,” because “those who lacked the courage to face the consequences of tyranny . . . were at the same time forced to escape the consequences of Being precisely because they did nothing but speak about Being.”24 The reference, though not explicit, is obviously to Heidegger. Less clear than to whom Strauss is referring is what Strauss means by distinguishing those who turn their attention toward tyranny from those who, lacking courage, did nothing but talk about Being, for this statement seems to contradict the position Strauss sanctions just a few lines earlier. There he claims: “on the basis of the classical hypothesis, philosophy requires radical detachment from human interests.”25 In other words, philosophers attend to Being, not politics. There is a way to reconcile the apparent contradiction between Strauss’s statements, which, however, is not the same thing as removing the difficulties from his solution to the human problem.26 Strauss’s point here seems to be that philosophers are, as human beings, simply incapable of turning their backs entirely on the community to which they belong; that is, they cannot speak only of Being at those times when they also should be speaking of tyranny. This is not only because of their humanity in the simple or universal sense but, furthermore, because of their humanity in the highest sense, that is, as philosophers. To employ Kantian terminology in a very un-Kantian way, one could say that philosophy requires certain conditions for its possibility. These conditions are not abstract structures concerning the facticity or historicity of human existence but rather concrete historical facts, such as whether one lives under a liberal or an illiberal regime. Tyranny by its nature frustrates the development of the conditions that allow philosophy to exist. Since it threatens to make impossible being human as such and in its highest sense, philosophers must speak out against tyranny. Philosophers are, therefore, unable to dispense with their concern for human affairs not merely despite but precisely because of their concern for what is beyond human affairs.

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In suggesting what I think Strauss means by his veiled and brief criticism of Heidegger, I have not removed the gap separating Fackenheim’s and Strauss’s positions about the future of philosophy but merely reduced it. Differences remain. Fackenheim’s conclusion that Strauss is incapable of confronting the Holocaust head on is undeniable. Strauss’s view of politics takes its bearings (firstly, if not finally) from everyday discussions about the good and the bad. This orientation to the ordinary prohibits understanding the extreme.27 Consequently, he cannot accommodate within this framework the question of radical evil in general, or of the Holocaust in particular. Moreover, Strauss is susceptible to the reproach that one cannot speak about tyranny generally, when one should be speaking about the Holocaust specifically.28 On the other hand, Strauss feels no compulsion to accommodate either the general question of radical evil or the specific question of the Holocaust. If philosophy looked at the ordinary from the vantage point of the extreme, then it would never comprehend the ordinary, simple senses of “good” and “bad” that characterize everyday political life, and therefore would never ascend to the true nature of things or to the Good itself. Nonetheless, although there is no hope that philosophy in Strauss’s sense could fathom the Holocaust, this conclusion does not negate philosophy’s relevance to human affairs. On the contrary, in dire times it is all the more crucial that philosophers continue speaking about the eternal difference between the noble and the base. In a lecture Strauss gave in Jerusalem, he asserted: “The biggest event of 1933 would rather seem to have proved, if such proof was necessary, that man cannot abandon the question of the good society, and that he cannot free himself from the responsibility for answering it by referring to History or to any other power different than his own reason.”29 The lesson Strauss takes from the Holocaust concerns neither history nor radical evil but rather the necessity of the question of the good society and the use of human reason. Thus for him philosophy’s future looks no different than its past. The Holocaust does nothing to change these eternal concerns of philosophers. On the other hand, these eternal concerns must never allow philosophers to ignore the demands of the present, especially when in the present people have forgotten the necessity of these eternal concerns and, therewith, their humanity too. Let us conclude by asking Fackenheim and Strauss the most timely and most timeless philosophical question: What are we to do now? Neither, we have observed, answers this question by supplying an ultimate ground on which future philosophy can be firmly established. But all is not therefore lost. For besides finding out the kind of answer neither can or does give, we have learned that each responds to this basic philosophical question by directing us back to the ideas and experiences of the political community—from its simple concerns about existence and survival to its highest aspirations for justice and Tikkun—because these ideas and experiences are necessarily the basis from which philosophy proceeds. In other words, even if Fackenheim and Strauss


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cannot establish philosophy’s final cause, they do instruct us on its first step: the foundation of future philosophy is politics. NOTES 1. It might seem more correct to characterize Fackenheim’s position as post-Hegelian rather than as Hegelian. One should not underestimate, however, what Fackenheim says not only about To Mend the World’s “systematic purpose” (New York: Schocken Books, 1982), 3, for which Hegel is certainly the model, but also his allegiance—even after the Holocaust—to Hegel’s dictum that life comes before thought. Thus though there may be “doubts whether Hegel himself today could be a Hegelian” (120), it is unclear whether either Hegel or Fackenheim is capable of being anything else. 2. Leo Strauss, “A Giving of Accounts,” Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity: Essays and Lectures in Modern Jewish Thought (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 460. 3. Leo Strauss, Philosophy and Law: Essays toward the Understanding of Maimonides and His Predecessors (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1987), 8 ff; Leo Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 30 ff. 4. On Spinoza, see the footnote on page 45 of To Mend the World; on Rosenzweig, see the footnote on page 89. 5. Fackenheim, To Mend the World, 74. Cf. 6: “By ‘Jewish faith’ I understand . . . a commitment to revelation; and by ‘revelation I understand . . . not propositions or laws backed by divine sanction, but rather, at least primordially, the event of divine Presence.” 6. Strauss, Philosophy and Law, 8. 7. Fackenheim, To Mend the World, 180 ff. 8. In order to make it clear that I am concerned with the reasoning by which Fackenheim substantiates his conclusions in To Mend the World, I have chosen to discuss his position in terms of its basic premises. One could object, however, that his argument is not based in the first place on “premises” as such but rather on “experiences,” specifically the concrete instances of resistance he analyzes in part IV, section 9, of the book. I concede the point. Nonetheless, even if Fackenheim turns away from thought toward life, he does so only briefly, as he then proceeds to argue that life can—indeed, must—now teach thought, which his book seeks to resurrect after the Holocaust causes its collapse. 9. Cf. Kenneth L. Deutsch and Walter Soffer, eds., The Crisis of Liberal Democracy: A Straussian Perspective (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987). 10. Leo Strauss, “What Is Political Philosophy?” What Is Political Philosophy? and Other Studies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959); Leo Strauss, “Natural Right and the Distinction between Facts and Values,” Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953). 11. Leo Strauss, “The Three Waves of Modernity,” Introduction to Political Philosophy (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1989). 12. Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, 2. 13. Fackenheim, To Mend the World, 262 ff.

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14. Ibid., 15. 15. Ibid., 9–13. 16. Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, 3, emphasis added. A similar statement also can be found in “Why We Remain Jews,” Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997), 321. 17. Cf. Strauss’s discussion of the distinction between the authority of the ancestral and of nature: “The Origin of the Idea of Natural Right,” in Natural Right and History, 91 ff. See also Strauss, “Introduction,” in Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 9. Here he argues that “the shaking of all traditions” makes it possible “to understand in an untraditional and fresh manner what was hitherto understood only in a traditional or derivative manner.” 18. Leo Strauss, “Restatement,” On Tyranny (New York: The Free Press, 1993). Compare 212 with 196. Also see Strauss, “Natural Right and the Historical Approach,” in Natural Right and History, 23. 19. Strauss, “Natural Right and the Historical Approach,” in Natural Right and History, 20. 20. Ibid., 33. 21. Strauss, “Introduction,” in The City and Man, 10 ff. 22. Again, according to Strauss, this view differs from philosophia perennis in that it does maintain the existence of an eternally valid doctrine that has been passed on historically. For a brief statement on how Strauss understands the connection between eternity and history, see “Letter to Helmut Kuhn,” The Independent Journal of Philosophy 2 (1978). 23. Alexandre Kojève, “A Note on Eternity, Time and the Concept,” in Introduction to the Reading of Hegel (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980); Alexandre Kojève, “Tyranny and Wisdom,” in On Tyranny (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2000). 24. Strauss, “Restatement,” On Tyranny. 25. Ibid. 26. For an idea of how Strauss views the possibility of solving the human problem, see “Pleasure and Virtue,” in On Tyranny. 27. In Philosophy and Law, in a discussion of the quarrel between the ancients and moderns, Strauss claims that the orientation to the extreme characterizes the modern approach to understanding politics, whereas ancient political philosophy takes its bearings from the everyday. See 111 ff., note 2. 28. Although significantly Strauss is not mentioned in the section of To Mend the World, titled “Unauthentic Thought after the Holocaust,” Fackenheim could, for the reasons I have suggested, justify including Strauss there among those who escape into generalities. 29. Strauss, “What Is Political Philosophy?”, 27.

CHAPTER 8

Fackenheim and Strauss CATHERINE H. ZUCKERT In his introduction to this collection, Emil Fackenheim names Leo Strauss as one of the Jewish thinkers who most influenced his own development. Fackenheim was never a student, much less a follower of Strauss, but he, nevertheless, repeatedly insisted upon acknowledging his intellectual debt.1 At the same time he clearly stated the places and ways he dissented from Strauss.2 Since the points upon which Fackenheim and Strauss disagreed are truly fundamental, a reader might be led to wonder how they remained friends and retained their mutual esteem—or wherein Fackenheim’s debt to Strauss consisted. In this chapter I shall attempt to show that there was a ground of agreement even more fundamental than the differences between them. STRAUSS’S INFLUENCE ON FACKENHEIM In many of his writings Fackenheim emphasized that his own studies of Jewish thought received a decisive impetus and direction from his reading of Strauss’s book Philosophie und Gesetz. Rather than treat Jewish thought as the subject matter of historical scholarship, as was done in the Hochschule fuer die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin, where Fackenheim went to study in 1935, Strauss asked whether what Maimonides or Spinoza or any other thinker he studied said was true. Fackenheim thought that was the only question truly worth asking. Strauss shaped Fackenheim’s understanding—at least his initial understanding—of the dilemma facing Jews in the modern world, especially the world of modern philosophy. That is, Fackenheim accepted Strauss’s analysis of the fundamental antagonism between the modern Enlightenment, represented for 87

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both Strauss and Fackenheim primarily by the work of Baruch Spinoza, and Jewish orthodoxy.3 Following Strauss, Fackenheim observed that on the basis of the principles of the French Revolution, Jews were offered the full rights of citizenship—first in France and later in Germany—but they were able to accept and exercise the rights of citizenship only if they gave up special privileges they had enjoyed (along with a great deal of oppression and discrimination) as Jews under the old regime, for example, to decide criminal cases according to their own law in their own communities.4 In other words, to become citizens of a liberal democracy, Jews had to become “men in general” who had a particular “Jewish” (Protestant-like) faith; they could no longer obey or have their lives primarily defined by the Jewish law. Modern Enlightenment and Jewish beliefs and practices appeared to be fundamentally opposed; but, Strauss asked, was there another form of Enlightenment, the medieval Jewish enlightenment, in which reason and revelation were combined in such a way that a philosopher did not have to surrender his reason in order to remain Jewish? Having written a critical analysis of Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, Strauss turned in Philosophie und Gesetz to examine the writings of Moses Maimonides.5 Following in Strauss’s footsteps, Fackenheim wrote his dissertation on medieval arabic philosophy at the University of Toronto. Convinced that revelation not only needed to be but in fact had been explicated by human reason or “philosophy” in the course of Jewish history, however, in the 1940s Fackenheim turned back to study the branch of modern philosophy that emphasized the historical character of the revelation of truth. He concentrated on “the figure one has to choose as an alternative to Plato. That figure is Hegel.”6 THE DIVERGENCE BETWEEN FACKENHEIM AND STRAUSS Fackenheim and Strauss disagreed about the relative merits of medieval and modern philosophy, because they disagreed about the character of the truth. For Strauss, the truth—whether from reason or revelation—was and would always be eternal. For Fackenheim, the truth is and has shown itself to be revealed historically. Strauss indicated what he found fundamentally lacking or unsatisfactory about modern philosophy in the preface he appended to the 1965 reissue of Spinoza’s Critique of Religion. Strauss began the explanation of his own “return,” or teshuva, first to medieval and ultimately to ancient, pagan philosophy by recalling the problem he had confronted as a young Jew in Weimar Germany.7 He and his like were not accepted by Germans as equal citizens of the modern liberal state. Strauss thus became a Zionist, but he quickly recognized that strictly political Zionism did not consider what was most distinctive in the Jewish tradition; it was not “connected with divine punishment for the sins of our fathers or with the providential mission of the chosen people” (141).

Fackenheim and Strauss

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Religious Jews would “regard as blasphemous the notion of a human solution to the Jewish problem. [They] may go so far as to regard the establishment of the state of Israel as the most important event in Jewish history since the completion of the Talmud, but [they] cannot regard it as the arrival of the messianic age, of the redemption of Israel and of all men” (143).8 Although “the Jewish problem” could not be “solved” on a collective level, Strauss concluded, there did appear to be a solution on the level of the individual who had “severed his connection with the Jewish community in the expectation that he would thus become a normal member of a purely liberal or of a universal human society.” He could return to “the community established by the Jewish faith and the Jewish way of life—teshuva (ordinarily rendered by ‘repentance’) in the most comprehensive sense” (144). At this point, however, the problem became intellectual. What if the individual was unable to believe that the Torah was the Word of God? Intellectual probity appeared to forbid young Jews from sacrificing their intellects even for the sake of satisfying a vital need. Perhaps, Strauss suggested, what appeared to be impossible, to believe in orthodoxy, was only difficult. It was necessary to investigate the “truths” or reasons modern Jews thought they could not return to orthodoxy. Contrary to popular belief, some such as Hermann Cohen argued that the truth of Jewish orthodoxy is not challenged by the findings of modern natural science or historical research. This popular belief is based on a misunderstanding of religion as “a body of teachings and rules which . . . the human mind would reject as subrational were they not proved to be suprarational by . . . a reliable tradition which also vouches for the reliable transmission of the very words of God, and through miracles.” If the truth of revelation is seen to be rational, then there is no need to rely on tradition or miracles and hence no scientific or historical “disproof” of religious claims. That does not mean, of course, that everything that is said to be “revealed” is true, but only the rational parts of it. “The truth of traditional Judaism is the religion of reason, or the religion of reason is secularized Judaism.” But, Strauss objected, the same claim could be made for secularized Christianity; and, however close, secularized Judaism and secularized Christianity are not identical. Even more important, “If the truth of Judaism is the religion of reason, then what was formerly believed to be revelation by the transcendent God must now be understood as the work of the human imagination” (145–46). Rather than attempt to rationalize religion, Strauss’s friend Franz Rosenszweig had concluded, an understanding of the limits of reason would enable his contemporaries to return to the faith of their fathers. “Reason has reached its perfection in Hegel’s system.” Thus “the essential limitations of Hegel’s system show the essential limitations of reason and therewith the radical inadequacy of all rational objections to revelation” (147). In contrast to all previous philosophers, Hegel had claimed to bring the search for wisdom or “philosophy”

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to its completion in knowledge, science, or wisdom. That wisdom consisted in the Aufhebung, the overcoming of the division and distinction between the “subject” (human interior consciousness) and “object” (external world or reality) in the Absolute Idea. That “absolute” understanding could find expression in art, religion, or philosophy; all three ultimately said the same. But, critics such as Rosenzweig responded, “Surely the living and loving God is infinitely more than a subject and can never be an object.” Like all previous philosophy or “old thinking,” Hegel’s “science” proved in the end to be reductionist and hence false to human experience. “God’s revealing Himself to man” is “not merely known through traditions going back to the remote past and . . . now ‘merely believed,’ ” critics of both Hegel and modern historical science or the “higher criticism” insisted. His “call” is “known through present experience which every human being can have if he does not refuse.” Unfortunately, Strauss thought, Rosenzweig’s new thinking was counteracted by another, deeper form in the works of Heidegger. If traditional philosophy had to be superseded, Heidegger saw, then the meaning of the fundamental concepts of God, man, and world we had inherited from it also would have to be rethought. It would, indeed, be necessary to go back to the beginnings of the Western philosophical tradition in Greece and rethink them. But Heidegger’s rethinking of the meaning of “man” or Dasein and “world” in Being and Time did not result in a compassionate or a religious understanding. On the contrary, Heidegger found, the truth of human existence is discovered only in the “being-toward-death” at the root of a generalized anxiety. Like the construction of human society, the search for God is fundamentally a search for an artificial form of security. In other words, Strauss emphasized, there are different interpretations of the “absolute” or fundamental human experience. To see which was true, fundamental or absolute, it is necessary to determine which is free from an admixture of traditional “reductionist” philosophy. In fact, neither Heidegger nor Rosenzweig passed that test. As Friedrich Nietzsche had observed, the denial of the biblical God demands the denial of biblical morality. Heidegger had wished to free his thought of all such “theological” or “metaphysical” traces, but he described human existence in Being and Time in terms of “anguish,” “conscience,” and “guilt.” Indeed, Strauss thought, “[T]he fundamental awareness characteristic of the new thinking” proved not only in Heidegger but also in Rosenzweig to be “a secularized version of the biblical faith as interpreted by Christian theology.” According to Rosenzweig’s “new thinking,” one has to begin from the experience of the Jewish people and not, like the Kantian form of the old philosophy, from the primary condition of its possibility. If that is the case, Strauss argued, then it is necessary to start with what is primary or authoritative for Jewish consciousness, with God’s Law or Torah and not with the Jewish nation. As Rosenzweig himself observed, Jewish dogmatists of the Middle Ages


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such as Maimonides had done just that. Rosenzweig himself began with the nation. But Strauss objected: [I]f the Jewish nation did not originate the Torah, but is manifestly constituted by the Torah, it is necessarily preceded by the Torah. . . . The dogma of Israel’s chosenness becomes for Rosenzweig “the truly central thought of Judaism” because . . . he looks for a Jewish analogon to the Christian doctrine of the Christ. (152) Like the “liberals” who sought a “religion of reason,” Rosenzweig had selected parts, but only parts, of historical Jewish experience as parts of his “absolute experience.” His experience of God, man, and world was admittedly not the same as that of the people who came before him. The “absolute experience” was not truly absolute or fundamental. Contrary to those (following Nietzsche) who had thought that intellectual probity made it impossible for modern people to believe in the biblical God, Strauss concluded from his examination of post-Nietzschean thought, there was no alternative consonant with intellectual probity but a return to orthodoxy. But, Strauss then observed, a return to orthodoxy was not possible unless Spinoza “was wrong in every respect.” In a brief but improved summary of his critique of Spinoza’s critique of religion in the preface he wrote thirty years later, Strauss then showed that Spinoza was not wrong in every respect. Spinoza understood the harsh political verities better than his modern critics. Spinoza also appreciated the superior excellence of a philosophical to a simply moral or political form of human existence. Spinoza erred insofar as he fundamentally grounded both his politics and his philosophy on an act of will. Rather than return to orthodoxy, in his own later writings Strauss thus attempted to revive the ancient understanding of political philosophy, which did not base politics or philosophy on an act of faith or will.9 Strauss began his summary critique of Spinoza by reviewing Hermann Cohen’s stinging damnation. In adopting and even extending the critique of Judaism made by Christians, Cohen charged, Spinoza had demonstrated an abominable lack of loyalty to his own people. Strauss admitted that Spinoza “accepts the entire Christian critique of Judaism,” indeed, that he even goes beyond it by appearing to disparage Moses and to idealize Jesus. But, Strauss argued, Spinoza had to appeal to Christian prejudices in his attempt to persuade Christians to join together with Jews on an equal basis as citizens of the new liberal universalist state. Spinoza appeared to endorse Christian prejudices against Jews for the sake of benefiting Jews. Unprotected by any state, the Jews had become victims. If the Jews were not assimilated into a liberal state, Spinoza urged, then they should form their own. Rabbinic Judaism had effeminized them. Spinoza’s “Machiavellian” scheme in which the humanitarian end seemed to justify every means was “as much beyond good and evil as his God.”10

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Nevertheless, Strauss thought Spinoza’s understanding of the “harsh political verities” was superior to, that is, truer than, Cohen’s moralizing pacifism. Strauss agreed, moreover, with a certain version of Rosenzweig’s critique of Cohen for not recognizing his own debt to Spinoza. “Cohen took it for granted that Spinoza had refuted orthodoxy as such.” But Strauss pointed out: The genuine refutation of orthodoxy would require the proof that the world and human life are perfectly intelligible without the assumption of a mysterious God. . . . Spinoza’s Ethics attempts to be the system, but it does not succeed. . . . The Ethics starts from explicit premises by the granting of which one has already implicitly granted the absurdity of orthodoxy and even of Judaism as understood by Cohen or Rosenzweig. (169–70) In his Theologico-Political Treatise Spinoza did not assume his premises. He began with the premises of believers and tried to refute them. But Spinoza had not succeeded in proving his own premises or even refuting those of the orthodox. “If orthodoxy claims to know that the Bible is divinely inspired, that Moses was the writer of the Pentateuch, that the miracles recorded in the Bible have happened . . . , Spinoza has refuted orthodoxy. But the case is entirely different if orthodoxy limits itself to asserting that it believes the aforementioned things.” To found claims about the unfathomable will of an omnipotent God on belief does not undermine orthodoxy. “Spinoza cannot legitimately deny the possibility of revelation. But to grant that revelation is possible means to grant that the philosophic account and the philosophical way of life are not necessarily, not evidently, the true account and the right way of life: philosophy, the quest for evident and necessary knowledge, rests itself on an unevident decision, on an act of the will, just as faith” (171). Reason always constituted the major obstacle to belief in revelation, Strauss observed, but the opposition between reason and revelation took a new form in modern times. In antiquity, “Epicurean” rationalism sought to free the mind from religious fears; it was taken, especially by Jews, to be a denial of God for the sake of maximizing pleasure. Modern atheism had a different origin and goal. Whereas Epicureanism fights the religious “delusion” because of its terrible character, modern unbelief fights it because it is a delusion: regardless of whether religion is terrible or comforting, qua delusion it makes men oblivious of the real goods . . . , and thus seduces them into being cheated of the real, “this-worldly” goods by their spiritual or temporal rulers who “live” from that delusion. Liberated from the religious delusion . . . , man recognizes as his sole salvation and duty not so much “to cultivate his garden” as . . . to plant a garden by making himself the master and owner


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of nature. But this whole enterprise requires, above all, political action, revolution, a life-and-death struggle: The Epicurean who wishes to live securely and retiredly must transform himself into an “idealist.” (171) Because that assertion of human will in the attempt to master nature had proved itself deadly—in its political even more than in its scientific or technological form—Strauss thought it was necessary to rediscover the limitations of human knowledge, will, and power that were emphasized by both ancient rationalism and scriptural revelation. Especially in the form of the Socratic search for wisdom, ancient philosophy did not claim to possess the complete knowledge that would disprove the possibility of revelation. It did claim to be able to show human beings not merely how to preserve themselves by joining with others in political associations but how to live well. Fackenheim did not follow Strauss in returning to the ancients, because Fackenheim disagreed with Strauss on two points. First, Fackenheim observed, neither Strauss nor Plato could give an adequate account of evil—especially radical evil as it appeared in the form of the Holocaust. Kant did explicitly provide a philosophical account of “radical evil,” and so Fackenheim looked to Kant in his attempt to explicate the meaning of the crisis of Judaism in our time.11 Second, Fackenheim thought Strauss underestimated the importance of the continued existence of people who were conscious that they were Jewish. After visiting the Soviet Union in 1977, Fackenheim concluded that Strauss had overestimated the degree to which communist repression had and could destroy the continuity of Jewish life. Although Jews who grew up under the Soviet dictatorship had been denied any Jewish education, they knew that they were Jewish and wanted to learn what they meant.12 Whereas Strauss urged his readers to return to nature, especially to a recognition of the limitations imposed on human beings by our mortality, Fackenheim wanted his readers to take history more seriously. Strauss thought that Heidegger represented a superior version of the “new [historical] thinking” to that of Rosenzweig, because Heidegger saw the need to reexamine the notions of man, world, and God taken from the “old thinking.” For all his emphasis on Ereignis, the event (or, one is tempted to say, advent) of the complete hiddenness of Being in our time, Fackenheim insisted, Heidegger was not able to give an adequate account of the most important event in our time.13 Believing, like Strauss, that the future existence of the Jewish people depended upon their establishing a state to protect them, Fackenheim also agreed with Strauss’s defense of Spinoza from the criticism of both Cohen and Rosenzweig. Nevertheless, Fackenheim argued in opposition to Strauss and in partial agreement with Rosenzweig, the character of the Jewish people can be understood (and thus preserved) only in light of their historical experience. “Jewish religious self-understanding is itself historical: Jewish religious existence

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is between Creation (or Fall or Exodus) and the Messianic future.”14 In the work he dedicated to the memory of Leo Strauss, at least in part because it constituted his attempt to respond to Strauss, Fackenheim thus urged Jews to return to a modified form of Rosenzweig’s “new thinking.” In To Mend the World, Fackenheim began his own account of the “extremes of Jewish modernity, that is, secularism and a postsecularist commitment to revelation” (23), with a recapitulation of Strauss’s critique of Spinoza. Like Strauss, Fackenheim argued that in his Theologico-Political Treatise Spinoza became, in the words of Hermann Cohen, the “accuser of Judaism par excellence before an anti-Jewish world” in order to convince Christians as well as Jews to join together in a modern liberal state. In a “Machiavellian” argument, Spinoza made the “Old Testament, the scapegoat for everything he finds objectionable in actual Christianity.” In other words, he blamed his own people and their holy writ in an attempt to reform the larger community’s understanding of its own faith and politics so that it would accept the Jews as citizens, too, peacefully and equally.15 But, explicitly going beyond Strauss’s analysis, Fackenheim observed that Spinoza also was the author of the Ethics, and it was the understanding of the possibility of a complete unity between the human mind and “God or Substance” Spinoza announced there that made his thought fundamentally anti-Jewish. If “God or Substance” alone is, then all that ought to be already is, and the beginning of wisdom is neither fear nor hope—both geared to the future—but rather the transcendence of both, by means of the insight that everything actual or possible other than Substance already is in Substance. Thus with a single blow Spinoza disposes of Creation—the ultimate precondition of the revelation taught by his Jewish forefathers; redemption—its ultimate consequence; and hence he also disposes of revelation itself. (To Mend the World, 51, emphasis in original) Spinoza did not refute revelation, Strauss and Fackenheim agreed, so much as he denied or rejected the truth of revelation. Strauss and Fackenheim disagreed, however, about the reasons Spinoza rejected revelation and the significance of the failure of his project. According to Strauss, Spinoza did not think that revelation was true; he thought, moreover, that galut Judaism had effeminized the Jews so that they had become victims of others. In order to defend themselves, the Jews needed a state. In contrast to Spinoza and Strauss, Fackenheim never understood “the Jewish problem” to be fundamentally a political problem. For him the question had always been the truth of Judaism. Spinoza denied the first of the two truths Fackenheim thought were fundamental to Judaism: the irrevocable difference between man and God. In contrast to Hegel, Spinoza might be said to have agreed that there is only one true God (the second fundamental truth of Juda-


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ism), but Spinoza’s God ultimately was indistinguishable from the fundamental Being, Essence, or Substance of the pagan philosophers. Like Hegel, moreover, Fackenheim thought the unity of mind and substance or God advocated by Spinoza was too abstract.16 Fackenheim thus endorsed Rosenzweig’s response to Cohen’s critique of Spinoza’s philosophy as “ ‘deeply unjust,’ not because it was not objective enough but rather because it was not subjective enough.” Strauss did not think that the validity of the critique had anything to do with the time at which Rosenzweig lived; he thought it was based on Rosenzweig’s taking over of Spinoza’s critique of orthodoxy. Fackenheim accepted Rosenzweig’s critique in its own terms. Indeed, he thought, Rosenzweig could never have “become the greatest Jewish philosopher since Spinoza” if Rosenzweig had “attempted, along with a return to premodern Judaism, a return to the premodern world and its philosophy” (61). That is, Rosenzweig would never have become the greatest Jewish philosopher since Spinoza if Rosenzweig had followed the path of Leo Strauss! The reason Fackenheim dismissed Strauss in favor of Rosenzweig becomes clear in two footnotes.17 There, Fackenheim reports that in a talk entitled “Why We Remain Jews: Can Jewish Faith and History Still Speak to Us?” Strauss expressed his admiration for the Aleynu prayer but stated that it would be inappropriate for him to repeat it, because he himself did not believe it. “Thus the most powerful Jewish philosopher since Rosenzweig came to testify that the new thinking is intellectually inescapable” (To Mend the World, 89n). It was not possible for him to return to orthodoxy, because he did not believe it. If it was not possible to return to orthodoxy, as Strauss had argued in his preface, Fackenheim concluded, then there was no alternative to the “new thinking.” In his preface Strauss had argued that a return to orthodoxy was possible only if Spinoza was wrong “in every respect.” As we have seen, he did not think Spinoza was. Strauss did not return to orthodoxy, but he also did not embrace the “new thinking.” He did not embrace it in the first instance because he thought Rosenzweig had substituted the existence of the Jewish people for that which defined and made that existence possible—the Torah. Fackenheim defended Rosenzweig’s substitution on the grounds that it alone made it possible for him to provide an “unfanatical,” which is to say, a nondogmatic and nonparticularistic version of the truth of Judaism. This bold thinker did not hesitate to ascribe religious significance to the very existence of the Jewish people, quite apart from its beliefs, hopes, actions—simply by virtue of the fact that this people is. . . . Rosenzweig’s turn to the Jewish covenant was, of course, a return to a premodern doctrine. It was to be accomplished, however, by a modern, post-Spinozist way of thinking. Premodern “old” Jewish thinking accepted the covenant on the authority of the Torah,

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and was necessarily incompatible with the old Christian thinking whose authority is the Christian Scriptures. Spinoza’s “old” thinking refuted all premodern authorities and rejected (although it did not refute) each and every revelation. On his part, Rosenzweig could reaffirm the Jewish revelation only by means of a shift from the centrality of the Torah itself to the centrality of an Israel witnessing to the Torah, a shift that removed the necessity of conflict between a “new” Jewish and an equally new Christian thinking, while at the same time reaffirming as strongly as ever the difference . . . between Jewish and Christian existence. (81, emphasis in original) Nor, Fackenheim thus insisted, in opposition to Strauss, had Rosenzweig collapsed the difference between Judaism and Christianity in his “new thinking.” On the contrary, The Star of Redemption ended with an argument that Jews know that truth in their heart, received from birth like the heat of a sun, whereas Christians learn the truth by following its “rays” to their source. Jews are born; anyone and everyone becomes a Christian through baptism. As Strauss observed, Rosenzweig’s “new thinking” grew out of and hence presupposed the failure of Hegel’s system. His “new thinking” was opposed to the “reductionism” of the “old” that “dissipate[d] man and God into world (ancient period), man and world into God (medieval period), God and world into man (modern period).” His “new thinking” did not simply deny or negate the old, however. On the contrary, the new thinking views the old as being . . . an experiment at once necessary and predestined to disclose, once it had exhausted (in Hegel) all its possibilities, its own inevitable failure. This experiment was necessary because philosophical thinking is an activity of uniting. It had to fail because this process of uniting, if truly radical, abstracts “naked unities” from the richness of contingent actuality. (64) Unlike Strauss, Fackenheim did not think Rosenzweig had simply taken over the three elements Hegel claimed to mediate. On the contrary, he insisted, Rosenzweig had established a new relation of mutuality between God and man—and not man in general but particular individuals and peoples—of a love that was not yet consummated but that pointed to such a consummation in the future. The “old thinking” asked whether Creation is an arbitrary act extraneous to the divine Essence, or whether it was a necessary part and result of His activity. Rosenzweig saw that [a] “transcendent” God (who creates by a whim extraneous to his Essence) would rival the Epicurean gods—pagan gods!—in “apa-


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thy”: He would be indifferent to the world. A God “overflowing” into the world would be “immanent” in it, thus robbing it of its independence. In contrast to both, the “far” God forever moving toward “nearness” creates an independent world and affirms it in its otherness. And only in a world thus affirmed can revelation take place. (75, emphasis in original) The absolute experience of such a revelation cannot be verified—in itself or by its correspondence—with a certain interpretation or way of life. It can only be witnessed to. “The witnessing itself, however, must have empirical-historical facticity” (79). This is the point at which Fackenheim thought that Rosenzweig’s explication of the meaning of revelation became incomplete. What if the Jewish people, the witnesses, were no longer to exist? Because Rosenzweig did not live to experience the Holocaust, he did not perceive either the need to establish a Jewish state or the need to face the radical challenge of history. In the face of the Holocaust Fackenheim, like Strauss, turned back to Spinoza’s suggestion that the Jews needed to establish their own state. Unlike Strauss, however, he denied that Spinoza understood the reasons such a step was necessary adequately. According to Spinoza, “No one can ever so utterly transfer to another his power and, consequently, his rights as to cease to be a man; nor can there ever be a power so sovereign that it can carry out every possible wish.” In our time, Fackenheim observed, the absolute and “most violent” tyranny Spinoza thought impossible has become actual. As the Muselmänner Primo Levi saw in the camps “an anonymous mass . . . of nonmen who march and labour in silence, the divine spark dead within them” show Nietzsche’s “last man” has become a reality. “ ‘Human nature’ after the Holocaust is not what it was before. Thus . . . historicity—whether a curse, a blessing, or something of both—emerges as inescapable” (99). If historicity is inescapable, however, so is a confrontation with the thought of the man who insisted not merely that human existence but that truth itself is radically historical. Could Rosenzweig’s new Jewish thinking, suitably modified, stand up against the challenge of Heidegger? In To Mend the World, Fackenheim sought to show that it could. “With regard to stern sobriety,” Fackenheim initially conceded to Strauss, “it must seem that Being and Time surpasses the Star of Redemption” (149). Whereas Rosenzweig attempted to show how Eternity enters into history, Heidegger emphasized and analyzed the finitude not only of man but also in his later works of Being itself. Even though Heidegger argued that both human existence and Being are essentially historical, Fackenheim pointed out, Heidegger’s thought remained remarkably lacking in reflections on the historical events of his own time. When appointed rector of Freiburg University in 1933, Heidegger declared that “The Fuehrer himself and he alone is German reality and its law, today and henceforth” (167–68). Heidegger quickly became disillusioned with the regime and in a statement that was not published until after the war, he complained:

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“World wars” and their “totality” are already consequences of the prior loss of Being. They press toward securing a constant form of using things up. Man himself is drawn into this process, and he no longer conceals the fact of being the most important raw material of all . . . ; he remains the subject of all using-up . . . in such a way that he lets his will be dissolved. . . . The moral outrage of those who do not yet know what is the case often aims at the arbitrariness and claim to dominance of the “leaders” [Fuehrer]. (180) Abominable as Heidegger’s political choices and sympathies were, Fackenheim did not fault him or his thought primarily for his brief association with the Nazis—any more than did Strauss.18 The problem with Heidegger’s historical thinking was that it gave him no basis for distinguishing between the “technological” effects of the use of the nuclear bomb in Hiroshima (against a nation that had explicitly declared war on others) from the ovens at Auschwitz (whose victims had not stated a hostile intention, much less killed anyone else). For Heidegger, the United States, the Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany all represented examples of the “technological frenzy” that was transforming everything, including the human beings purportedly doing the transforming, into “standing reserve” to be put to another use. The “truth” of this technological frenzy was the “oblivion” or non-necessity of Being, order, or intelligibility. It could and was being disclosed to the human beings who opened their eyes or minds to it. It could not be resisted—nor could or did it justify resistance. It did not even explain the fact, much less the significance, of the people who did—the Allies who successfully resisted and destroyed the racist frenzy of the Nazis, in the first instance, but, even more importantly, the inmates of the camps who resisted the attempts to deny them all human dignity. Like Strauss, Fackenheim understood the Nazis to be a certain kind of modern “idealist” intent on imposing their own will or “ideology” upon the world.19 Like Heidegger, Fackenheim thought their near success showed that there is no natural order that withstands such nihilistic, willful attempts. For that reason, Fackenheim concluded, there can be no return to premodern thought. There is no philosophia perennis. We have no alternative but to engage in a new kind of thought—newer, more original even than Rosenzweig’s “new thinking.” The Holocaust revealed an infinite capacity for evil in human beings. That capacity cannot be merely “understood” or comprehended, much less “transcended,” without giving sway to it. It must be resisted—first in thought, but then “in overt, flesh-and-blood action and life” (239). Strauss did not pay sufficient attention to the horror of the Holocaust, Fackenheim suggested, because Strauss insisted upon seeing the low in light of the high rather than the high in light of the low. The high should not be reduced to the low, Fackenheim agreed; but when the high, when the relation between God and man as well as the very possibility of truth or a rational


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understanding of the world, had been ruptured, as it had been by the fact of the Holocaust, it was necessary to recognize the fact of the rupture, the break or the abyss, in order to rebuild a bridge across it.20 “Perhaps” it would be possible philosophically to “recover” what “once was” by showing that it was not merely a fleeting experience. “Perhaps the . . . recovery . . . [could arise] from a new reading of the old great texts of Western philosophy. . . . It may also find new meaning in the person and the teaching of Socrates” (277). But Fackenheim doubted the adequacy of what he took to be Strauss’s response to the current crisis—both philosophical and political. Fackenheim was convinced instead of the necessity of engaging in a philosophical inquiry into the meaning of the events of our time. “Socrates . . . was on trial for his life . . . for initiating the philosophical quest.” It was no longer necessary to initiate philosophical inquiry; it was necessary to perpetuate and apply it. Fackenheim thus thought an otherwise unknown teacher of philosophy named Kurt Huber represented a better example of the role philosophy should play in the midst of the modern crisis. On trial for his life as a result of resisting the Nazis, Huber insisted that both the Kantian principle, that no man must be regarded merely as a means, and the Fichtean assertion, that each German should act as if the destiny of his nation depended upon his own acts as an individual and was, therefore, his responsibility, should be applied to people living in the twentieth century as well. For Strauss, both Kant and Fichte helped constitute the revolutionary modern “idealism” that resulted in the elevation of the “idea of man” and his will. For Strauss, Socrates represented not merely the beginning of philosophy, understood primarily as a quest, but the recognition that underlies it. Socrates was the man who knew only that he did not know. He could not, therefore, deny or reject the truth of revelation. He did not necessarily believe. He sought to discover the best way of life on the basis of reason alone. Because he knew that he himself did not possess the requisite knowledge, he sought it. He was always willing to reopen the question or reconsider his previous opinions. He did not seek to impose his will on others or to show that human beings were and ought to be free from external restraint—natural or divine. The ancient form of rationalism represented by Socrates would not support the modern form of idealism that would rather will nothing than not will at all. It would provide human beings with guidance concerning the best way to live.21 THEIR ULTIMATE CONVERGENCE In light of their fundamental differences about the question of what it means to be Jewish, whether the truth is eternal or historical, and on the merits of modern philosophy, we must be somewhat surprised to see how close Fackenheim and Strauss came in their understandings of the most pressing

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current tasks—both for Jews and philosophers. According to Fackenheim, “a Jew today is one who, except for an historical accident—Hitler’s loss of the war—would have either been murdered or never been born” (295). According to Strauss, “It is impossible not to remain a Jew. . . . There is nothing better than the uneasy solution offered by liberal society, which means legal equality plus private ‘discrimination.’ ”22 In other words, what it is to be a Jew is defined, in the first instance, by others. Jews may, of course, organize and define themselves. Israel is a blessing, but the establishment of Israel does not save all Jews from discrimination or settle the disputes between religious and secular. To be Jewish is, moreover, by no means something to be ashamed of. It is something to inquire into. Both Fackenheim and Strauss proposed their own new readings of the Bible. Both agreed that the State of Israel could not exist today without the preexistence of Torah.23 Both agreed on the need to ask once again what the meaning of the Jewish “heritage” or “wisdom” is. In the wake of the demonstrated failure of Hegel’s attempt to show that everything that is is fundamentally rational, both Fackenheim and Strauss agreed on the limits of reason and the need, therefore, to engage in philosophy, that is, in the search for wisdom. They agreed, indeed, that reason and revelation must enter into a new sort of dialogue. According to Fackenheim, the collapse of Hegelianism gave rise to two extreme reactions—Soren Kierkegaard’s “leap into faith,” on the one hand, and Karl Marx’s completely secular or material remaking of man in history, on the other. “[P]hilosophic thought . . . must locate itself between the extremes; and if it can dwell in this precarious location and is not torn asunder, it is because the extremes show a new willingness to be vulnerable” (127). “More disillusioned regarding modern culture than [Hermann] Cohen was,” Strauss wrote in his essay on “Jerusalem and Athens,” we wonder whether the two ingredients of modern culture, of the modern synthesis, are not more solid than that synthesis. . . . Since we are less certain than Cohen was that the modern synthesis is superior to its premodern ingredients, and since the two ingredients are in fundamental opposition to each other, we are ultimately confronted by a problem rather than by a solution.24 For Strauss as for Fackenheim, the current crisis—philosophical even more than political—was not simply or even primarily a problem for Jews. He too undertook his reexamination of the history of political philosophy, explicitly in the light of the horrible events of the twentieth century. Strauss would, I believe, have sympathized with Fackenheim’s conclusion of To Mend the World: “In this book we have made no attempt to demonstrate the commitment to transcendence, whether within Judaism or without it. . . . At the same time, we have found not a single reason . . . for rejecting that commitment” (322). As a Socratic philosopher, Strauss did not accept or reject that commitment. As he stated in “Progress or Return”:


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No one can be both a philosopher and a theologian, or, for that matter, a third which is beyond the conflict between philosophy and theology, or a synthesis of both. But every one of us can be and ought to be either . . . the philosopher open to the challenge of theology, or the theologian open to the challenge of philosophy. (117) In the same essay, Strauss pointed out that “every disagreement presupposes some agreement” (104). Just as Fackenheim dedicated the book in which he attempted to respond to Strauss to the memory of Strauss, so Strauss had dedicated his book Spinoza’s Critique of Religion to the memory of Franz Rosenzweig. The greatest compliment a philosopher can make to another is to take his arguments seriously by responding seriously to them. And both Fackenheim and Strauss were passionately concerned with the fate and future of their people. Both Fackenheim and Strauss were passionately concerned with the fate and future of philosophy. NOTES 1. He went so far as to dedicate his most systematic book To Mend the World: Foundations of Future Jewish Thought (New York: Schocken Books, 1982) “To the Memory of LEO STRAUSS” (v). 2. A revision of a lecture delivered on March 26, 1985, at the Faculty House of the Claremont Colleges first published in The Claremont Review of Books 4 (1985): 21–23 and reprinted in Emil L. Fackenheim, Jewish Philosophers and Jewish Philosophy, edited by Michael L. Morgan (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 97–105. 3. Cf. Emil L. Fackenheim, Encounters between Judaism and Modern Philosophy: A Preface to Future Jewish Thought (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 4. 4. Cf. Leo Strauss, “Preface to the English Translation of Spinoza’s Critique of Religion,” Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, translated by Elsa M. Sinclair (New York: Schocken Books, 1965), reprinted in Kenneth Hart Green, ed., Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity: Essays and Lectures in Modern Jewish Thought by Leo Strauss (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 137–54; The French Revolution and Human Rights, edited by Lynn Hunt (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 93–101. 5. See Philosophy and Law, translated by Eve Adler (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 21–39; Leo Strauss, “Quelques remarques sur la science politique de Maimonide et de Farabi,” Revue des Etudes Juives 100 (1936): 1–37, translated by Robert Bartlett, Interpretation 18 (Fall 1990): 3–30. 6. Fackenheim, “Leo Strauss and Modern Judaism,” in Jewish Philosophers and Jewish Philosophy, 102. 7. All page citations in the following discussion of Strauss’s preface are to Green, ed., Jewish Philosophy, 137–77. 8. “Finite, relative problems can be solved,” Strauss stated, “infinite, absolute problems cannot. . . . In other words, human beings will never create a society which is free from contradictions. From every point of view it looks as if

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the Jewish people were the chosen people, at least in the sense that the Jewish problem is the most manifest symbol of the human problem insofar as it is a social or political program” (143). 9. Rather than reject revelation as irrational like Spinoza, Strauss’s embrace of a non-will- or faith-based form of ancient philosophy enabled him to give a more reason-based account of Torah as well. Cf. “On the Interpretation of Genesis,” and “Jerusalem and Athens,” in Green, ed., Jewish Philosophy, 359–405. 10. “Spinoza lifts his Machiavellianism to theological heights. Good and evil differ only from a merely human point of view” (Preface, 157). 11. Cf. “Kant and Radical Evil,” University of Toronto Quarterly 23 (1954): 339–53. 12. Fackenheim, “Leo Strauss and Modern Judaism,” Jewish Philosophers and Jewish Philosophy, 105. 13. Strauss agreed but drew different conclusions. Cf. “Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism,” in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, ed. Thomas L. Pangle, 30–31 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989); and “Philosophy as a Rigorous Science,” in Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, 30 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983). 14. Encounters, 87, emphasis in original. 15. Fackenheim, To Mend the World, 38–45; Strauss, preface, 368, “How to Study Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise,” in Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing, 142 ff. (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1952). 16. “Hegel . . . blames him for being an ‘acosmist’ (who saves God but loses the world, and hence man as well)” (Fackenheim, To Mend the World, 51). 17. Fackenheim, To Mend the World, 89n, 264n. 18. Cf. Leo Strauss, “Philosophy as Rigorous Science,” 30. 19. Cf. Fackenheim, To Mend the World, 183 ff. 20. Ibid., 262–63. 21. Cf. “Progress or Return?”, in Jewish Philosophy, 121–22. 22. “Why We Remain Jews,” in Jewish Philosophy, 317. 23. Concluding To Mend the World, Fackenheim stated: “It is an age-old truth that just as Israel has kept the Torah so the Torah has kept Israel. . . . In our time we must ask whether this ever happened that, after two millennia, a people was returned to its language, its state, its land. Without a Book—this Book—this return could not possibly have taken place” (328). 24. “Jerusalem and Athens,” in Jewish Philosophy, 399.

PA RT 3

Response


CHAPTER 9

Emil Fackenheim Theodicy, and the Tikkun of Protest

DAVID R. BLUMENTHAL

APPRECIATION That which is between is that which binds; a bond which holds, heals; and gives unity, meaning. It is also that which separates, which divides; a barrier between. Being in the middle, it is that which is remote from both, beyond reach; in-between. A “sign” is between. It is the bond which binds, the barrier which separates, and the in-between. A sign embraces, rejects, and is beyond reach; simultaneously. “It is a sign between Me and the children of Israel forever” (Ex. 31:17). Me . . . you . . . and the sign, in-between.1 Emil Fackenheim has been an ’ot, a living sign, in between history, amcha (the ordinary Jew), and the sources of Jewish tradition. While his contribution to the field of philosophy, especially to Hegel studies, has been of capital importance,2 his contribution to the field of Jewish theology, properly speaking, has been to speak the theology of the common Jew—to other Jews and to the world. Fackenheim has the philosophic tools to create a properly philosophical theology, but he has chosen not to make that his task. Rather, his mission 105

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has been to adopt the nonsystematic mode of midrash, combine it with the phenomenological method of philosophy and, then, to express the powerfully partisan and ofttimes confused theology of amcha (the common Jew).3 The transforming event of the modern period for the common Jew—but also for philosophers, theologians, ethicists, historians, politicians, doctors, lawyers and, indeed, for everyone—has been the shoah.4 Every attempt on our part to comprehend the shoah fails, for the shoah cannot be “overcome,” as Fackenheim has so clearly expressed it.5 This is a history that cannot be fully digested. However, as Fackenheim also has said, nothing may be immune to history. Therefore, as Jews, as people, and as scholars, we must derive some insights about human, Jewish, and divine existence from the shoah. The main insight Fackenheim draws from the shoah is the principle of resistance. He has taught that resistance is an ontological category, part of the structure of human being in the world. And, he has preached that resistance is the only ethical Jewish and non-Jewish response to the shoah: For if the wonder in which philosophy originates is turned into paralyzing horror by the “humanly impossible” crime of the criminals, its paralysis is mended by the wonder at the the victims who resisted a crime to which resistance itself was “humanly impossible.”6 The evil of the Holocaust world . . . is philosophically intelligible after Auschwitz only in the exact sense in which it was already understood in Auschwitz—and Buchenwald, Lublin, and the Warsaw Ghetto—by the resisting victims themselves. . . . No deeper or more ultimate grasp is possible for philosophical thought that comes, or ever will come, after the event. This grasp—theirs no less than ours—is epistemologically ultimate. . . . Resistance in that extremity was a way of being. For our thought now, it is an ontological category.7 The chief corollary of the principle of resistance is that one must avoid the escapism of trying to rise above the events in order to analyze them; rather, one must place oneself with the resisting victims. One must focus on them as they saw themselves, acknowledging the fullness of the assault on them and condemning, not analyzing, it. One must never allow the perpetrators to be portrayed as victims of social forces, or mass hysteria, or anything else; rather, one must stand in solidarity with, and in awe of, the resisting victims.8 It follows from the principle of resistance and the corollary of solidarity with the victims that we must lead a life of tikkun, of resistance, which itself must be rooted in action, not just in thought. For a Jew, this means four things: (1) A Jew must resist by not giving Hitler a posthumous victory. Rather, Jews must always remain faithful to their identity as Jews. This is Fackenheim’s famous “614th commandment.”9 (2) “Jews, after the Holocaust, . . . must be Zionist on behalf not only of themselves but also of the whole post-Holocaust

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world.”10 They must affirm the State of Israel, in its very Jewishness, and defend the uniqueness of Jewish existence everywhere. (3) Jews must share tikkun with Christians, trying to reestablish the trust that has been ruptured.11 And (4), all humans must live a tikkun of total resistance to evil—not dialogical openness but uncompromising and complete opposition to evil, no matter how radical.12 In all this, Emil Fackenheim has been an ’ot, a living sign, in between history, amcha, humanity in general, and the sources of Jewish tradition. The interpreter (Latin, interpres) is one who stands between the offers and negotiates the price (Latin, inter + pretium), or one who mediates between the parties (Latin, inter + partes). The interpreter is an intermediary, an agent; hence, a spokesperson, ambassador, or one who expounds a text, dream, law, or omen.13 Emil Fackenheim also has been an interpres, one who stands between the philosophical and Jewish traditions, in all their depth and history, and the intelligent reader. Not a chapter goes by without a reference to the midrash, the Talmud, Maimonides, the liturgy, Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, and many other Jewish sources. Further, not a page goes by without invoking Hegel, Kant, Decartes, Adorno, Heidegger, Spinoza, and many other philosophic sources. Nor has Fackenheim neglected Christian thinkers: Kierkegaard, Bonhoeffer, Barth, and other Christian sources. To be sure, the victims and the perpetrators, too, also have figured into the inter + partes, the interplay between sources of which Fackenheim has proven himself a learned and critical master interpreter. CRITIQUE It is, however, as a theological thinker that Fackenheim’s enterprise has, in my opinion, foundered. Consider the task of the theologian and Fackenheim’s role in its light14: “To be a theologian is to be on the boundary.” Fackenheim has done this. “To be a theologian is to be a voice for the tradition. It is to speak its words, to teach its message, and to embody its authority.” Fackenheim has done this, too. “To be a theologian is to speak for one’s fellow human beings, for we are infinite in our complexity, suffering, and ecstasy. It is to have listened to joy, confusion, and despair. It is to have heard praise, rage, and helplessness.” Fackenheim passes this test, too. “To be a theologian is to speak the ‘ought.’ It is not enough to explain, to explicate, and to exegete. It is to make a prior commitment to formulating a vision, and to preaching that vision as an ideal towards which humanity should, indeed must, strive.” In this too Fackenheim has succeeded.

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However, “To be a theologian is also to speak for God. It is to have a personal rapport with God, to have a sense of responsibility for God and for how God is understood and related to by our fellow human beings. It is to mediate between God, as one understands God, and those who listen. It is to create an echo of God in the other. “To be a theologian is to defend God, to put back together the pieces of broken awareness and shattered relationship. Great is the suffering of our fellow human beings, and deep is the estrangement between them and God. The theologian must be a healer of that relationship, a binder of wounds, one who comforts.” Here, Fackenheim has, in my mind, failed, for amcha asks the question, “Where was God during the shoah?”, and Fackenheim’s attempts at an answer are not adequate. His response on the subject of theodicy is equivocal. Among modern thinkers, Fackenheim engages Martin Buber most profoundly on the subject of the shoah and God. On the one hand, Fackenheim approvingly cites Buber’s question: In this our time, one asks again and again: how is a Jewish life still possible after Auschwitz? I would like to frame this question more correctly: how is a life with God still possible in a time in which there is an Auschwitz? . . . One can still “believe” in a God who allowed those things to happen, but how can one still speak to Him? Can one still hear His word? . . . Dare we recommend to the survivors of Auschwitz, the Job of the gas chambers: “Call on Him, for He is kind, for His mercy endureth forever?”15 Indeed, this question forms the refrain of Fackenheim’s work on the Tanakh and haunts his efforts to deal with the traditional Jewish calendar and liturgy: “How can we recommend to the survivors that they recite Hallel and similar psalms and prayers of praise?”16 On the other hand, Fackenheim cites and forcefully rejects Buber’s theodicy: Buber: “In this condition we await His voice, whether it come out of the storm or the stillness that follows it. And although His coming manifestation may resemble no earlier one, we shall nevertheless recognize again our cruel and merciful God.”17 Fackenheim: “. . . I find Buber’s ‘eclipse of God’ insufficient in response to the Holocaust. Still less adequate to me is a divine ‘cruelty’—if connected with the Holocaust.”18 Fackenheim rejects Buber on two grounds: First, Buber only calls speech to and from God into question, and not all significant speech19; second, Buber’s call to the survivors did not include the children of survivors and subsequent generations.20

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There are, indeed, good reasons for rejecting Buber’s eclipse theodicy, the most cogent being that while it is a beautiful metaphor for the loyalty of the people to God in spite of the historical facts and while it follows the biblical metaphor of God hiding God’s Face,21 the eclipse of God or the hiding of God’s Face is not a substantive response to the problem of theodicy; it is not an intellectually satisfying answer. For how does God hiding God’s Face answer the question of injustice committed by the divine? How can God being in eclipse resolve the problem of God’s abandonment of the people to evil and destruction? Rather, eclipse and hiding are ways of saying that we do not really know why God did this act. They are beautiful images that allow us to hide behind our lack of adequate answer. The weight of these images alone does not make the solution they propose to the theodical question intellectually clear or spiritually profound.22 Fackenheim, however, does not really reject Buber’s eclipse theodicy. In fact, when he comes to propose his own theodicy, Fackenheim does not stray far from Buber’s position, though he does include later generations. In the closing pages of What Is Judaism?, Fackenheim returns to the title of his earlier Jewish essay, God’s Presence in History, and he proposes his own answer to the theodical question.23 He proposes that “God is the eternal before and after.” He reminds us that those murdered at Auschwitz cannot be (ongoing) witnesses to God because they have been murdered and hence, as the midrash suggests, God ceased to be God in Auschwitz. Then, invoking the hiding of God’s Face, Fackenheim, citing Rabbi Kalonymos Shapira, writes: He hides His weeping in the inner chamber, for just as God is infinite so His pain is infinite, and this, were it to touch the world, would destroy it. Is it still possible for a Jew to break through to the divine hiddenness, so as to share His pain? . . . How is it possible to go on to the next line, od avinu chai, “our Father still lives”? It is possible and actual because, even then, the bond between the divine intimacy and the divine infinity was not completely broken; because God so loved the world that He hid the infinity of His pain from it lest it be destroyed.24 But how is this an answer to amcha’s question “Where was God during the shoah?” How does saying that God hid God’s infinite pain lest God do something even worse to the world provide an answer to the anguished cry of the people, then and now? Furthermore, this answer—that God’s own suffering somehow mitigates God’s previous unacceptable action—is familiar from Moltmann and, in both a Jewish and a Christian context, it is wholly unsatisfactory, for why should God’s post facto pain alleviate the seriousness of God’s previous deeds, why should that comfort amcha?25 In yet another attempt to approach this searing issue, Fackenheim points to texts that rupture our theological complacency, such as the first

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chapters of Lamentations and Psalm 44,26 though there are others he could have cited, such as Psalms 83 and 109. These he contrasts forcefully with texts that bespeak joy and gratitude, such as the verses from Hallel (specifically, Psalm 118) and Psalm 121, though again there are many more.27 But when he raises Buber’s question in his own form—“When was it right to compose—is it right to recite—Psalms 121 and 118? When to compose, to recite, Psalm 44?”—Fackenheim avoids the question. He does suggest that Psalm 118 be recited on Yom ha-Àtsma’ut (Israeli Independence Day) sotto voce,28 and he has noted that his father recited Psalm 37:25—“I was young and now I am old, and I have never seen a righteous man forsaken or his children begging for bread,” which is part of the Birkat ha-Mazon (Grace after Meals)—sotto voce, though Fackenheim himself recites it out loud.29 However, Fackenheim does not propose a systematic answer to the liturgical embodiment of the theodical problem. Perhaps more important, Fackenheim does not even entertain a proposition for when to recite Psalm 44, or any other rupturing liturgy. If praise, perhaps, must be tempered in the aftermath of the shoah, then when does amcha express its anger? In short, Fackenheim has not proposed a better alternative to Buber’s “eclipse of God” in his reliance on Rabbi Shapira, nor has he answered Buber’s question about prayer. Neither the theological nor the liturgical problem has been solved, as near as I can tell. RESPONSE The seeds for a renewed theology, one that will offer a better answer than Buber-Fackenheim to the theodical question, as well as respond to the liturgical problem, are to be found in the thinking of both men. “ ‘Who is a Jew?’ One who testifies against the idols.”30 The beginning of a post-shoah answer must, therefore, come from resisting the idol of escape, from testifying against the idol of denial. This means that a Jew must admit that the shoah, as an act of divine Providence, is unacceptable, that the shoah is unjustified. A Jew must start from the premise of Job, that because of God’s covenant with humanity, God simply may not commit injustice. Hence, any injustice, especially of the dimension of the shoah, must be just that: injustice committed by God. We do not know why God does what God does, but we are forbidden to rationalize it. We are forbidden to testify idolatrously that injustice was God’s will, however inscrutable.31 To claim that God acted unjustly and is hiding God’s own pain, or to assert that history eluded God for a moment because God was in eclipse, is to commit exactly this act of idolatry. Rather, “ ‘Truth has legs’ but ‘the seal of the Holy One, blessed be He, is truth.’ ”32 It is better to speak the truth—and, deep down, amcha knows this is the truth—that if there is a God of Jewish history, then the shoah was an unjust act. This stance of unremitting truth leaves us in the position of Job: angry with God, accepting of God, but outraged by God’s acts. Together with Job,

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we do not reject God, or God’s providential action in Jewish history, but we do not agree with it. As Fackenheim himself has so powerfully written33: The facts themselves are outrageous; it is they that must speak through our language. And this is possible only if one’s feelings are subject to disciplined restraint. The language necessary, then, is one of sober, restrained, but at the same time unyielding outrage. We owe it to the dead, to the survivors, to Jewish history, to the justice principles of the covenant, indeed to God Godself, to speak with “sober, restrained, but at the same time unyielding, outrage.” A theology that does anything else is shallow, false to the covenant, false to amcha, and indeed false to God. “Indeed—to go to the core—no road leads to any post-Holocaust theology, Jewish or Christian, from a theology armed with a priori immunity to each and every event that might threaten it.”34 How, then, shall we proceed? We must begin by avoiding the idolatry of denial and of evasion. We must admit the truth to ourselves and to God: the shoah was unjustifiable, ethically and theologically. It was a terror perpetrated upon us, by God. We, amcha, reject the thesis that God, in God’s Providence, allowed the shoah to happen in order to punish us for our sins, for what sin can one and one-half million children be a punishment?! We reject, too, the thesis that God was acting thoughtlessly, hiding God’s Face or pain, or in eclipse. Our God is active in our personal and national lives. We also reject the idea that God allowed the shoah to create the State of Israel—that would hardly be a reasonable or an ethical exchange. We, therefore, say that we do not know the reasons for the terror of the shoah, but we do know that it was a terror, within the scope of God’s Providence, and we admit this to ourselves and before God even as we tremble at such an admission. Elsewhere, working with the data from child abuse, I suggested that “abuse” is violent action against another that is disproportionate to all reason and justice. I then suggested that perhaps one should call God’s action in allowing the shoah “abusive.”35 In the years since I published that thesis, I have come to realize that the language, while accurate, appears to very many people as being too strong.36 I do not, therefore, insist on my terminology. But the point remains: God’s actions in the shoah, direct or indirect, are unacceptable under the terms of God’s covenant with us. They are, as Buber put it, the act of “our cruel and merciful God.”37 Mai nafka minah? What practical consequences does this admission of injustice by God have? It means, first, that we must study, again and again, the texts of outrage. We must read these texts with the shoah in mind, for we are, as Fackenheim has clearly noted, “the children of Job,”38 the heirs to the shoah. The most powerful of these texts is, in my opinion, Psalm 44, the text of national outrage par excellence. I have written about this text and composed a midrash on it.39 I urge every attentive reader to study this text and then

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to read it out loud, not with the pious voice of the sweet singer of Israel but with the outrage that cries out from that text. One should, then, study the medieval poems that pick up the theme of outrage against God by allusion to this psalm and the secular modern poems on this theme. There are many more such texts: Psalm 88, a deep expression of undiluted depression; Psalm 109, a poem of curses against a personal enemy; Psalm 83, a call for revenge against national enemies; the lines of anger appended to the Birkat Hamazon in the Pesach Seder; and many more.40 No course on the shoah should be complete without the study of these texts of outrage. Second, we must find a way to pray these texts. It is not enough only to study; a religious person must address God. A spiritual person must bring his or her outrage into the Presence of God. It is not enough to learn; we must address God directly on the subject of God’s complicity in the shoah. We must find liturgical methods and language for expressing our outrage directly to God. This is not easy, nor is it pleasant. This is not religion for those who wish to be comfortable. This is no opiate of the masses. This is not “Tradition” in some nostalgic Hollywood religion. Addressing God in a way that states our outrage is serious. Challenging God on a matter of God’s justice is a grave matter. Still, we owe it to God, to the Jewish people, and to ourselves to do this. We owe it to amcha—the dead, the survivors, and the heirs—to do this. Philosophy does not go far enough; living in the Presence of God requires a tikkun of address.41 One could begin by reading Psalm 44 out loud, in all its outrage, as part of a Yom Hashoah service. One might even have two readers, one reading Psalm 44 and another reading a selection from Elie Wiesel or Primo Levi. One also could use this psalm on Tish‘a B’av. Alternatively, one might use Psalm 124, which is really a song for survivors. One also could find and use in prayer the medieval and modern poems that express outrage at God’s acts in Jewish history. One also could compose prayers, not poems but prayers, for personal and communal use that embody our deep sense of betrayal mixed with trust. Finally, one could insert short modifications into the traditional rabbinic liturgy. Orthodox Jews will resist this as unauthorized tampering with the prayer book, but after the shoah even our liturgy might be usefully reconsidered.42 The answer to Fackenheim’s question “When to compose, to recite, Psalm 44?”43 then is yes, there is a time to compose a theology of protest, and to compose and use a liturgy of protest. There can be no other way. We have no choice if we are to be faithful to God and the tradition, to the dead and the living. However, this theology and this liturgy of protest cannot be our only address to God. We also must be able to follow the path of praise and blessing. In response to Fackenheim’s question “When was it right to compose—is it right to recite—Psalms 121 and 118?”44 and in response to Buber’s question “Dare we recommend to the survivors of Auschwitz, the Job of the gas chambers:

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‘Call on Him, for He is kind, for His mercy endureth forever’?” we respond yes, we must be able to praise God and also to protest to God, but we do not do both at once. We alternate praise and protest, for just as there is “a time to plant, and a time to uproot that which is planted . . . a time to break down, and a time to build . . . and a time to sew” (Eccl. 3:2–-7), so too there is a time to praise and a time to protest.45 Accepting a theology of protest and using a liturgy of outrage is difficult, but it is a true and faithful way of staying in the Presence of God and still confronting the theodical dilemma of the Jewish people after the shoah. In this, theological and liturgical protest becomes itself a form of, and a part of, a tikkun, of Fackenheim’s ontological category of resistance. REPRISE OF MIDRASH RABBA 39:1 Scripture is silent on the question of why Abraham left his homeland, family, and religion and followed God. The rabbis try to fill this gap at the beginning of the midrash on Lekh Lekha: Rabbi Yitshak said: This is like a person who was going from place to place and saw a palace that was in flames. He said to himself, “Can one say that this palace has no leader?!” The master of the palace looked down on him and said, “I am the master of the palace.” So it was with our father, Abraham. When he said to himself, “Can one say that the world has no leader?!” the Holy One, blessed be He, looked down on him and said, “I am the Master of the world.” As the commentators point out, this is a strange midrash. One would have expected the usual cosmological argument for the existence of God: that the beauty and order of the world implies a Being Who orders it, that design implies a Designer. That, however, is not the argument here. Rather, the argument put forth in the midrash is that destruction of perfectly good property implies an owner who permits it; put theologically, that disorder implies a Power that allows disorder. We might call this “the counter-cosmological argument for the existence of God,” or “the argument for God’s existence from destructiveness.” It is the argument from the destructive potential of the divine, not the one from the ordering potential of the divine that, according to Rabbi Yitshak, motivated Abraham to believe in God enough to leave his homeland, family, and religion and to follow God into the unknown.46 The argument is passing strange, but not to the children of Job. As heirs of the shoah, we are close to this midrash. Its lesson is not, as Fackenheim has noted, “If the house has an owner, why does He not put the fire out? Perhaps He can and yet will. Perhaps He cannot or will not. But if He cannot or will not, a Jew today must do what he can to put the fire out himself.”47 The

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lesson of this midrash is not auto-emancipation; it is not self-determination. Rather, the lesson of this midrash is that even desolation betrays the Presence of God, that even divine destructiveness can lead to faith. To this I, a postshoah Jew standing firmly in the tradition of my ancestors, would add: When God’s destructiveness is dealt with properly, through honest confrontation and liturgical protest, only then is one led to a deep faith rooted not in reason and order but in the courage of protest that grows out of destructiveness. NOTES 1. Adapted from D. Blumenthal, Facing the Abusing God: A Theology of Protest (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1993), 57. Hereinafter Facing. 2. Fackenheim extends Hegel’s attempt to force history into philosophy to include both the shoah and the State of Israel, though I am not really qualified to comment on that in depth. 3. E. Fackenheim, What Is Judaism? (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1987), 15. Hereinafter WIJ. 4. For many years I used the word “holocaust” to designate the destruction of European Jewry during the Second World War. I have since been persuaded that “holocaust” should not be used, for two reasons: first, it bears the additional meaning of “a whole burnt offering,” which is certainly not the theological overtone to be sounded in this context; second, the destruction of European Jewry happened to Jews and, hence, it is they who should have the sad honor of naming this event with a Hebrew term. The word “shoah” has been used for a long time in Hebrew to denote the catastrophe to Jewry during World War II and has even been adopted by many non-Jews as the proper designation. I now adopt this usage and acknowledge my debt to Professor Jean Halpérin of Geneva and Fribourg for the insight. It is my practice to capitalize only nouns referring to God, together with nouns usually capitalized in English. This is a theological-grammatical commitment to the sovereignty of God. Thus I spell “messiah,” “temple,” and so on. To infuse literature with ethics, I especially do not capitalize “nazi,” “führer,” “fatherland,” “third reich,” “national socialist,” “final solution,” “shoah,” “holocaust,” and so on, except in quotations. I am indebted to Hana Goldman, a plucky ten-year-old girl, who defied her teachers by refusing to capitalize “nazi,” thereby setting an example for all of us. 5. E. Fackenheim, To Mend the World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982; 2d ed., 1994), 135. Hereinafter Mend. 6. Mend, preface to the 2d ed., xxv. 7. Mend, 248, emphasis in original. 8. Mend, 225–49. 9. E. Fackenheim, God’s Presence in History (New York: New York University Press, 1970). See also WIJ, 46, on fidelity to Jewish existence. 10. Mend, 303. See also WIJ, chap. 11. 11. Mend, 306. See also E. Fackenheim, The Jewish Bible after the Holocaust (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), chap. 4 and 100–03, where Fackenheim extends this principle to Germans. Hereinafter JBible.

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12. Mend, 319, see also WIJ, chap. 8. 13. Facing, 237. 14. What follows is an intertext between Facing, 3–5, emphasis in original, and this article. 15. M. Buber, At the Turning (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Young, 1952), 61, cited in Mend, 196, emphasis in original. Hereinafter Turning. 16. All of JBible is devoted to this question. See 110, n. 33: “Buber’s question will inform the whole rest of this book.” 17. Turning, 62, cited in Mend, 197. This is the basis of Buber’s theodicy of the “eclipse of God” which is, like all eclipses, followed by a reappearance (see M. Buber, Eclipse of God [New York: Harper and Row, 1952]). 18. JBible, 110, n. 3. 19. Mend, 197. 20. JBible, 26. 21. It is my custom to use egalitarian language even when referring to God, except in liturgy or in quotations. On capitalizing words referring to God, see n. 4. 22. For critiques of Buber’s “eclipse of God,” see A. Cohen, The Natural and Supernatural Jew (New York: Pantheon, 1962), 153–55; W. E. Kaufman, Contemporary Jewish Philosophies (New York: The Reconstructionist Press, 1976), 75. 23. WIJ, 287–91. 24. WIJ, 291, emphasis in original. Note the conscious echo of John 3:16. 25. For a summary statement and refutation of the classical theodical arguments, see Facing, 165–66. 26. Mend, 250–51, and JBible, 55, respectively. 27. JBible, 98. 28. Ibid. 29. Speech delivered at Emory University, n.d., 15. 30. WIJ, 121. 31. We are certainly forbidden to claim that any historical act is outside of God’s Providence, as secularists and certain liberal Jews do when they claim either that there is no God or that God is not active in history. Such a claim is clearly heretical. 32. Aleph-Bet of Rabbi Akiva, second version, Batei Midrashot, ed. A. J. Wertheimer (Jerusalem: Ktab Wasepher, 1968), 2:404; Talmud, Shabbat 55a, cited in Facing, 237. 33. Mend, 28, emphasis added. 34. JBible, 24, emphasis in original. 35. See Facing, passim, especially chapters 15–17. 36. See my Web site http://www.js.emory.edu/BLUMENTHAL, under “Articles” for my work on the debate over these issues. 37. Turning, 62, cited in Mend, 197. 38. JBible, especially 92–94. 39. Facing, 85–110, with separate commentaries that interpret, extend, and read against the text. 40. See A. Laytner, Arguing with God: A Jewish Tradition (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1990). 41. For examples of what follows, see Facing, chap. 18.

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42. In Facing, 286–97, I made suggestions for such short insertions. They were based on the halakhic rule that, if one has done wrong, then one must ask forgiveness of the person one has wronged. This is called teshuva. By extension, since the shoah was unjustified and hence wrong, God ought to ask forgiveness of the Jewish people in some way. I, then, formulated that halakhic insight into short liturgical insertions. Orthodox colleagues have resisted the theology of teshuva as applied to God and have resisted even more the modifications of the liturgy. Non-orthodox colleagues have resisted both the theology and the liturgy I have created, mostly because they prefer a God Who is less engaged, less active, and more of an abstract Force or Power behind the universe. See my Web site on this, especially “Theodicy: Dissonance in Theory and Praxis.” 43. JBible, 98. 44. Ibid. 45. I have called this acting seriatim and have utilized the image of sailing into the wind. See Facing, chap. 5, and my Web site for more details. 46. See the commentary of Zeev Wolf ben Yisrael Iser Einhorn ad loc: “The matter of the analogy is that one who sees a beautiful and orderly building understands and admits that this palace has a master and that it was built by a wise artist. But, when ones sees a palace in flames, then one thinks that the master has abandoned the palace—until the master says, ‘I am the master of the palace and it is by my intent that it is burning.’ So the world testifies of itself that there is a preexisting Creator Who leads it in wisdom and grace. But, when the Creator saw that the wicked were destroying the world; that ruin and devastation were burning like a fire to ruin and devastate [everything] at the time of the flood and the tower of Babel—from this Abraham’s mind was confused [so that he thought] that the Master of the world had deserted it and that He did not, God forbid, want humanity to worship Him. Then, the Holy One, blessed be He, revealed Himself to him and said, ‘I am the Master of the world and it is with intention that this destruction and punishment is happening.’ ” This contrasts with Rashi, ad loc, who seems to have missed the point. 47. WIJ, epilogue, 292.

C HA P T E R 1 0

The Holocaust Is a Christian Issue Christology Revisited

RICHARD A. COHEN You shall not stand aside while your fellow’s blood is shed. —Leviticus 19:16

CHRISTIAN RESPONSIBILITY The purpose of this chapter is not to blame Christianity for the evil and horror of the Holocaust. Two simple and basic truths preclude such an attitude. First, the Nazis and their allies perpetrated the evil and horror of the Holocaust. Second, in contrast to the Nazi ideology of pitiless hatred and the concomitant glorification of brute force, the basic doctrines of Christianity are those of universal love and humility. Like Judaism, Christianity teaches love of the neighbor, and like Judaism, it is based on compassion for all of creation, especially for humanity, and even more especially for the downtrodden. Nonetheless, I believe that the Holocaust remains a peculiarly Christian issue. Of course, this claim sounds odd, because the Holocaust is usually cast as a Jewish issue. To be sure, Jews more than anyone else in these post-Holocaust days have perpetuated the memory of and have attempted to think through what occurred in those dark days of the 1930s and 1940s.1 The Jew117

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ish obsession with the Holocaust is hardly surprising or aberrant, however, insofar as the Jews were the primary and express targets of the Nazis and, as a people, they were the greatest victims of the Holocaust. Fully one-third of the Jewish people was mercilessly murdered in the Holocaust. Jews today not only remember their martyred dead; they still suffer—as a people, as families, as individuals—from the unhealed wounds of that nightmarish and unprecedented slaughter. Nevertheless, the manner in which the Holocaust concerns the thought of Jewish thinkers, from historical, moral, and theological points of view, remains universal. That is, the concern of the Jews for the Holocaust is the same as should be the concern of all religious persons and, more broadly, of all persons of goodwill for a horror on this scale. Many issues, from the complex historical, social, and political developments that gave rise to the Nazi party, the mechanics of its reign of terror, and the sociology and psychology of authoritarianism, to the theological question of God’s absence or presence, which is an instance of the larger problem of evil for religious consciousness, and many other related questions raised by the horror of the Nazi period and the Holocaust, are serious concerns for all thinking persons, religious or not. The Holocaust clearly raises issues relevant not only to questions of personal morality and faith but even more profoundly regarding the nature and purpose of society and social organizations, spirituality and religious organizations, states and political regimes and, indeed, all human endeavors. The evil and horror of the Nazi period remain concerns for all humanity, for all humanity concerned to retain its humanity, since it showed unmistakably for all to see of just what extremities of evil the human is capable. These issues and questions also are the concerns of Jewish thinkers, both in relation to the meaning of Judaism and more broadly in relation to the meaning of civilization as such. No one should wonder at the Jewish concern for the Holocaust. However, no one should forget that the Jews were the victims and not the perpetrators of the Holocaust. The case is different with Christianity. To be sure, the Holocaust is an issue for Christians and Christianity in the same way that any human evil is an issue for a committed moral perspective, religious or secular. Christianity claims for itself a special mission to the poor, the lame, the blind, in this way following the oft-repeated biblical dictum enjoining special care for “the orphan, the widow, the stranger.” In this way, however, the relevance of the Holocaust for Christianity is taken to be no different than it must be for all organizations and individuals of goodwill, whether Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, or humanists. No one can doubt that the Holocaust is an extreme, overwhelming, horrifying instance of evil, and it occurred only decades ago, in the midst of “advanced” civilization. But I do not think that such an approach captures the more important and deeper relation binding Christianity and the Holocaust. I even suspect that this universal and humane approach, important, necessary, and even noble as it is, may even serve, in the case of Christians

The Holocaust Is a Christian Issue

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and Christianity, to hide the deeper, more troubling, and darker relation that binds Christianity to the Holocaust. Before entering into theological considerations, let us first consider certain striking historical and sociological facts. They are well known. There is the matter of people and place, spiritual place. While Christians as Christians certainly were not (with certain terrible exceptions) perpetrators of the Holocaust, the Holocaust occurred in the most Christian part of the world. It occurred in the very heartland of Christendom. Of the multitudes of Nazis and their collaborators who carried out the Holocaust, every Nazi and every collaborator to a person (excepting only a limited number of Muslim collaborators) had been baptized a Christian. This means that every Nazi had Christian parents, attended Christian churches, heard Christian sermons, and went to Christian Sunday schools. We know that practicing Nazis would bury their deceased relatives with Christian ceremonies. Furthermore, the Roman Catholic Church, to name only one church, never—to this very day—excommunicated a single Nazi. We know, and not only from the careful research of Robert P. Ericksen and Susannah Heschel,2 that the Lutheran Church in Germany actively collaborated—both practically and theologically—with the Nazi regime. Even admitting the enormous difficulty of resisting any totalitarian regime, the conclusion one must draw from facts such as these is that, stated simply, during the Nazi regime Christianity and Christians failed in their own deepest beliefs. Present during the long denigration, dispossession, and slaughter of the Jews and the destruction of their schools and synagogues, Christians—as individuals and as churches—failed to love their neighbors. Christianity failed to help the weak, the lame, the blind, the orphan, the widow, and the stranger in its midst. It stood by, with almost universal silence, while in front of its eyes Jews were humiliated, robbed, crippled, blinded, orphaned, widowed, made strangers—and finally murdered in staggering numbers. In brief, when tested, Christianity failed. Let us not mistake this failure. It was in no way a temporary or an unguarded lapse. This failure was not only sustained, not only at home, and not only of monumental proportions, it struck to the very core values and beliefs—love, compassion, forgiveness—of Christianity as Christianity. It seems to me, in addition, that this failure cannot be adequately understood as a failure in the face of totalitarian terror, a failure of the church in relation to the state. Rather, as will be argued later, it is a very specific failure—a failure to protect Jews. If this is so, then what the Holocaust signifies for Christianity is that when put to the test, that is, not during secure and comfortable times but in the dark shadows of the Nazi empire, Christians and Christian churches did not live up to their most deeply held beliefs—not even remotely. This point can hardly be overemphasized insofar as it should serve as a stimulus for profound self-reflection, self-evaluation, and genuine repentance. Repentance does not simply mean a mea culpa, which is the start of repentance, but more

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profoundly it means the deeper work of deliberate and profound change—that it shall not happen again. When tested, Christianity failed, and it failed not in a small way but fundamentally, all the way to the heart and soul of its most basic doctrines and teachings. It is in this sense that the Holocaust is a Christian issue. The central question of the Holocaust is not a Jewish question, then, or simply an ethical question, nor even is it limited to sociological, historical, psychological, ontological, or epistemological questions, or a combination of all these questions. Rather, and more profoundly, the central question of the Holocaust is a specific spiritual question to be asked by a specific religion, namely, by Christians and Christianity: Why did Christianity fail? And this question, the deepest question, is reinforced by a second question, which in its own way is no less troubling: Why has Christianity to this day failed to face up to its failure during the Holocaust? The two questions are related, as will become clear in the following, such that answering the first question also answers the second. Certainly the Holocaust is an issue for self-reflection and concrete individual, social, and political repentance within Western civilization as a whole. Let this not be put into doubt. But this is for the same reasons or for very similar reasons that it is an issue for Christianity more specifically. Western civilization is thoroughly permeated by Christian values, by respect for the dignity of the human person and by the ideals of justice. These imperatives are hardly the exclusive property of the Greek or Enlightenment heritage, as some would have us believe, artificially bifurcating the West between Athens and Jerusalem. Christianity, however, in contrast to Western civilization and its varied self-interpretations, has explicitly and unequivocally highlighted the absolute value of love, compassion, and forgiveness. Love thy neighbor as thyself—is this not a core Christian belief? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you—is this not another? There is no need to rehearse Christian doctrines and fundamental beliefs, as they are well known. While it is no doubt true that Western civilization failed, it is even more profoundly true that Christianity—one of the primary moral forces of Western civilization in any event—failed. It is this latter failure that makes the Holocaust, or that should make the Holocaust, the most important issue, nothing less than the most important and profound theological issue, for post-Holocaust Christianity, that is, for Christians and Christianity today. First I offer a somewhat personal remark about the second question, that of Christian avoidance of the issue of the Holocaust. With a few notable and noble exceptions, Christianity and Christians have in fact shirked the issue of the Holocaust as a Christian issue. It is this unfortunate avoidance that provided the motivation for this chapter, by a Jew, to step in the breach. Inspired by the intellectual and theological boldness of Emil Fackenheim in his great work To Mend the World, especially section 13 of part 4, entitled “Concerning Post-Holocaust Christianity,” this chapter boldly—and humbly—goes where no Jews should and few Christian theologians have gone before. To grasp


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the Christian failure vis-à-vis the Holocaust it enters the exclusively Christian theological domain of Christology. Christology, while all-important for believing Christians and for Christianity, is not the spiritual concern of a Jew as a Jew. This chapter is thus written for the sake of Christianity. It is written because Christianity has thus far avoided its own task. Perhaps for this reason such a chapter may not be welcome or find a receptive audience. The author asks for no special consideration. Though directed to Christians and Christianity, this chapter does not originate in parochial or partisan motivations. It must be read critically, with all of the usual and correct skepticism and intellectual reserve. Readers should be aware, however, that the author is fully aware that the topic of Christology, such as it will be treated here, is spiritually dear to Christians and spiritually not my own. For this reason, I ask in advance that those who should have already stepped in take over after me with greater sensitivity and continue without me on their own. CHRISTIAN EXCLUSIVITY The Holocaust is a specifically Christian theological issue, not merely for the factual reasons cited earlier, however powerful and compelling these reasons are. While historical facts cannot be blindly divorced from theology if theology is to have any real application, the deeper reason the Holocaust is a Christian issue is indeed theological. In both fact and theology, anti-Judaism has been an essential part of Christianity, one of its most firmly held beliefs, from its earliest formation as a church onward. Edward H. Flannery, a diocesan priest, has articulated this theological perspective in an especially relevant way. He makes a distinction, which he admits is “difficult to draw,” that is precisely part of the problem in Christian theology that this chapter is attempting to address anew. He writes: A distinction—difficult to draw—must be recognized, however, between the ambiguous phenomenon of “Christian anti-Semitism” and “anti-Judaism,” which legitimately and essentially constitutes a part of Christian teaching apologetics. This latter is purely theological; it rejects Judaism as a way of salvation but not the Jews as a people; it entails no hatred—the lifeblood of anti-Semitism.3 Though this statement is important for its psychological no less than its theological implications, it is the latter to which I draw my attention. Whatever Father Flannery’s personal delicacy in this matter, his aforementioned distinction between “Christian anti-Semitism” and “anti-Judaism” is not simply “a distinction difficult to draw.” It is rather a distinction that both in fact and in principle Christians have been unable to draw. In this failure lies the central clue to the problematic role, to also speak delicately, of Jews and Judaism for Christianity. If Judaism is not “a way of salvation,” then Christians, out of love—the desire

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to see all people on the path to salvation—are profoundly obligated to convert the Jews to a genuine way of salvation, that is, to Christianity. Whether Christians saccharinely love Jews or callously hate them, whether they use brute force to persecute them or sweet example to seduce them, is finally irrelevant regarding the end result. The end result is the end of Judaism, and hence the end of Jews as Jews. Christianity has thus always harbored its own final solution for the Jews—in the name of love, for the sake of salvation. A smiling adversary can kill just as surely and effectively as a grimacing one. Christianity does not respect that Judaism is a path of salvation. The missionary zeal of Christianity is based on Christian theological exclusivity. What Flannery considers “legitimate” and “essential” Christian anti-Judaism is actually only a logical subset of the larger Christian theological claim to be the one and only path to salvation, whether through personal faith in Jesus or through membership in good standing in a church. It is not simply that Judaism is not a true path to God, but that there are no true paths to God outside of Christianity. Christian exclusivity is compounded in the case of Judaism and Jews, however, because Christianity also considers itself the successor to Israel, the “New Israel.” Jews, then, of all peoples, must witness to the truth of Christianity, because Jews, of all peoples, are to see in it the fulfillment of their own Jewish spirituality. Yes, pagans and Hindus and Buddhists and Confucians should see the light, the one and only light, but no one more than the Jews. The Old Testament leads not to the Talmud, as the stiff-necked Jews stubbornly believe, in their “spiritual blindness,” but to the New Testament, the saving grace of Jesus. Even under the alleged kinder, gentler rubric of “dual-covenant” theology, where Judaism, owing to its special covenant with God found in the Old Testament, is singled out as the one and only other legitimate path to God, Christianity creates a new problem for Judaism. This is because Judaism, like Hinduism, is a religion of tolerance with regard to other organized religions. Judaism has no doctrine of exclusivity. It believes that there are many true paths to God, as long as they are monotheistic and adhere to a minimal set of standards of righteousness (the seven “laws of Noah”). Christian dual-covenant theology, however, makes an exception only for Judaism. Judaism is therefore put in the awkward position of being singled out as an exception. Were it to accept this favor, then, it would at the same time become unfaithful to its own fundamental spiritual tolerance. To be sure, Judaism sees itself as a legitimate path to God, but at the same time, and for profound spiritual reasons, it sees itself as one among many legitimate paths to God. Singled out as an exception by Christianity, even with the greatest goodwill, it would be placed in the unenviable and, by its own lights, illegitimate position of being the object of resentment—like Christianity itself—of all other non-Christian paths to God and worse, by agreeing to this “dual-covenant” theology be unfaithful to its own basic tolerance. Deeper than Christian exclusivity, however, which applies to all nonChristian religions indiscriminately, Christian anti-Semitism is more specifically


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linked to the demonization of the Jews as “Christ killers.”4 Here we begin to see the link joining Christian exclusivity, Christian anti-Semitism, and Christology. The death and resurrection of Jesus is certainly the most central narrative-doctrine of the Christian faith, the belief that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ-Messiah,5 and through him and him alone humankind can be saved. Christians do not understand the death of Jesus as merely yet another unjustified death and martyrdom of one of God’s beloved creatures. During that same epoch thousands of Jews were crucified and otherwise slaughtered by the Romans. It was a dark time for Judaism, marked by the destruction of the Second Temple and the end of Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel. In the Christian drama, however, the focus is targeted on Jesus as the crucified Christ. Infinitely profound and unsettling, this event represents the sacrifice of God’s only son (Fili unigenitie, Jesu Christe). Jesus is the son of God as no one else has been or ever will be the son of God. In a profound spiritual sense, expressed in the doctrine of the Trinity, he is at once God and man. Hence his death represents the unique self-sacrifice of God, the complete healing, as Christian exegesis understands this event, of a spiritual sickness begun with the sin of Adam and Eve, and far from mended with Abraham’s near sacrifice of Isaac. The special character of Jesus, what quickly, in Christian theological history, became his divinity and assimilation with God, is the very reason, then, that the only way to salvation is through becoming a Christian. God does not commit the ultimate self-sacrifice lightly. It is the greatest and unsurpassable spiritual sacrifice. Temple sacrifices and Jewish prayers pale in significance. The spiritual benefit of the unique sacrifice of God’s only son is no less weighty: the one path to God. The greatest and unique sacrifice of God’s only son leads to the greatest and unique path of salvation, the exclusive path. Judaism, unlike all the other religions of the world, not only rejects this path today but also did so from the very start. Not to speak of the fact that Jesus himself was Jewish, the Jewish people were there when Jesus walked the earth and, according to the Gospel narratives, they denied his divinity. Even worse, they killed him. The theological consequences are enormous. In the cosmic drama of good and evil, in the holy history of damnation and salvation, only the devil can have sufficient power to oppose and delay the Kingdom of God heralded by Christ. The Jews, so certain authoritative Christian theologians concluded, must therefore be his agents, his minions, the arms of the devil himself.6 They are “Christ killers”—and no greater spiritual crime can be imagined. Such was the epitaph hurled at the Jews by their Christian persecutors for almost two millennia thereafter. A RESPONSIBLE CHRISTOLOGY: WHO KILLED CHRIST? For these reasons, Christianity and Christianity alone singled out Jews and Judaism for special derision. In this “teaching of contempt,” Judaism is not only

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not a path to God, like all other non-Christian paths to God, but it signifies the reverse of a path to God, the deliberate path of rejection of God. Acting on behalf of Satan, the Jewish denial of Christ is the cause, as early Christian theologians were quick to point out, for the delay of the divinely foretold coming of the Kingdom of God on Earth. Whatever other factors may have contributed, this is the primary theological reason the image of the Jew as Christ killer has gained so much currency throughout the popular history of Christianity and provided a fertile ground for the eventual Nazi destruction of European Jewry. What is the New Testament account of the death of Jesus? Because this account is well known, I state only its most salient features, leaving out details, nuances, and variations.7 According to the Synoptic Gospel account, the Romans arrested Jesus for sedition, passed judgement, mocked him, and crucified him. As for the Jews, their leading priests interrogated Jesus; Judas (who somehow unlike the rest of the disciples seems to retain his Jewish identity) betrays Jesus to the Roman authorities; and a crowd of Jews in Jerusalem cried out for his execution. Based on this narrative, there are three possible theological-exegetical ways to lay blame for the death of Jesus. One could blame the people of Jesus, the Jews, in which case the Romans are only acting on their behalf—the Jews cried out for his execution. Or, one could blame the Romans, who after all actually crucified him (crucifixion is not a permitted Jewish mode of capital punishment), in which case Jesus and in some sense his people, the Jews, are all victims of the brutal Roman political oppression. Or, finally, one could blame both Jews and Romans, each for their part in the death of Jesus, and thereby distribute the blame and guilt in various proportions. Despite these various options, all of which could be supported by the text of the Gospel narratives, and all of which could be firmly supported by theological justification, actual Christian theology has overwhelmingly preferred the first, blaming the Jews, from whence the Jews become “Christ killers.” Today, however, cognizant of certain negative Christian implications of the Holocaust, certain forward-looking Christian theologians have turned from the first to the second option, blaming the Romans. These theologians tend to emphasize a political rather than a theological interpretation of the historical (actually the Gospel narrative) events leading to the death of Jesus. But even if they do remain theologically oriented, this reading opposes the traditional demonization of the Jews as Christ killers, as found in the first reading, which blames the Jews.8 Of course, because they are Christians and Christian theologians, Jesus does not by means of this reinterpretation simply become a historical figure. He remains the Christ Messiah, the savior of humanity. But these theologians, recognizing the horror of the Holocaust and its Christian theological background, reject the theology of the demonization of the Jews. From this perspective, the first option, that the Jews are guilty, is considered a reactionary, offensive, and highly insensitive theological outlook. Their own


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perspective, that the Romans are to blame, in contrast, is considered liberal, sensitive, progressive, and politically correct. It is precisely here that I must disagree. While I prefer the second reading, blaming the Romans, over the first, blaming the Jews, the critical or negative thesis of this chapter is that both are inadequate. They are both inadequate, too, for the same reason: these readings blame somebody else for the murder of Christ. They both lay the blame elsewhere, whether on the Jews or on the Romans. Neither takes responsibility for the death of Christ. But what other possibility can there be? If neither the Jews nor the Romans killed Christ, then who did? Who else could be culpable and responsible for the murder of Christ? First of all, the careful reader should notice that a distinction is being made between the death of Jesus and the death of Christ. Of the former, the death of Jesus, there is no doubt that according to the unalterable Gospel narratives both the Jews and the Romans contributed to that murder. The Romans condemned and crucified Jesus, as they crucified thousands of other Jews. And the Jews, or at least one mob in Jerusalem at one moment in the presence of the Roman governor Pilate, cried out for the death of Jesus. And surely Judas, a Jew, betrayed another Jew, Jesus. The Gospel narratives are sufficiently clear on these points. But the death of Christ is another matter altogether. Unlike Jesus, who is presumably a historical personage, or, at minimum, a Gospel narrative figure, and as such a man who was born, lived, and died, Christ is from the first a theological figure. Christ is, of course, the Messiah, the anointed one, the redeemer and savior (“Christos” being the New Testament Greek translation of the Hebrew “Mashiach,” “annointed one”). Christ is he who for Christians is the “only begotten Son of God”; he who in spirit is one with God; he whose teaching is love of the neighbor, turning the cheek, giving aid to the weak, the lame, the blind; he who brings peace and spiritual salvation, in whose name alone one can be saved. Christ is that divine being, the incarnation of God, who teaches and shows the way to an all-embracing universal love of humankind. In a word, Christ, in contrast to Jesus, is a theological figure. Of course, Jesus and Christ are the same person; they are the same person viewed through two lenses: one through the plain narrative of the Gospels, and the other through Christian theology from Paul and the early church fathers to today. The positive thesis of this chapter is based on this distinction. It is: in contrast to the killers of Jesus, as depicted in the Gospel narratives, the true Christ killers were and remain the Christians themselves. Or, to state this differently, Christians and Christians alone recognize Jesus as Christ, and therefore Christians and Christians alone can deny Jesus as Christ. It was and remains impossible for the Jews or the Romans to kill Christ, since neither believed in nor recognized Jesus as Christ. Jews and Romans killed Jesus, such is the Gospel narrative. But Christians, those alone for whom Jesus is Christ, are the ones, and the only ones, who were and continue in fact to be responsible for

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the death of Christ. If the Jews and Romans killed Jesus, how then did and do the Christians kill Christ? Very simply, by not living up to his teachings, by acting contrary to the teachings of Christ. Unfortunately, it is a sad historical fact that Christians have all too often failed to live up to—or even in proximity to—the high ethical-spiritual teachings of Christ.9 In this way, in deed no less than belief, in works no less than faith—in the integral and reciprocal link joining works and faith—Christians have not had sufficient faith in Christ and thus have killed and continue to kill him. Here then lies the deepest Christological truth about Jesus. It was never Judas the Jew who betrayed Jesus. It was Judas as a potential Christian, Peter as a potential Christian, like all of Jesus’ disciples, who denied him as Christ, and hence, in this sense, killed him and continue to kill him. Parallel to the brutal but cleansing honesty of the Old Testament regarding the chronic backsliding of the Jews in relation to the high righteousness of their own Torah, one can in this way reach a new appreciation for the honesty of the Gospels regarding the weaknesses and failures of the earliest Christians in their repeated denials of Christ-Jesus. On the positive side, only those who can kill Christ can bring Christ to life. In this spiritual struggle—for and against Christ—lies the glory of Christian life. It is the lofty central drama of Christianity, to raise or lower Christ, to again crucify or to again resurrect him. This most personal struggle is at once an institutional struggle for the Christian churches, to keep the Christian revelation alive, to keep Christ alive, just as it is part of the universal struggle of humankind to achieve justice. The success of nonChristians in this same ethical-spiritual drama is no measure of the failure of Christians. In this drama, with so much at stake, the killing of Jesus by the Jews and Romans is only, as it were, a narrative backdrop. What this chapter is proposing, then, is that until Christians can say, sincerely, profoundly, faithfully, that “I myself have killed Christ, and I myself must bring Christ to life,” until then, Christians have no chance of becoming Christians genuinely.10 Pursuing this logic, this chapter must shift into the first-person singular. But in this case, authored by a non-Christian, it must put words into the mouths of Christians who have hitherto remained all too silent. How did Christians kill Christ, and how do they continue to do so? How did we Christians kill our own Christ? How did I as a Christian kill Christ? Precisely by not accepting culpability and not taking responsibility for his death, precisely by blaming others, whether Jews or Romans, or Jews and Romans. When did we Christians kill Christ? From the very start, with Judas, with Peter, with the disciples, all of whom were not sufficiently Christian, though they pointed the way to a Christian life. Christ is killed whenever and wherever blame for the death of innocents is considered someone else’s responsibility and not my own. How can Christians resurrect Christ? By following in his footsteps by accepting culpability and taking responsibility, by doing unto others as Christians would have done unto themselves, loving their neighbors as themselves.


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These are the imperatives, and this is the theological ground of the “commanding voice of Auschwitz,” about which Emil Fackenheim has written with so much intelligence, eloquence, and compassion. This, at bottom, is the special lesson of the Holocaust, where Christians in fact denied love, denied mercy, denied compassion, and denied justice and consequently killed Christ 6 million times over. The lesson of the Holocaust is a lesson for Christianity, a part of its holy history. Emil Fackenheim’s 614th commandment—not to give Hitler a posthumous victory—has nothing new really to teach the Jews,11 but it has much to teach Christianity and Christians. Unavoidably and unmistakably it teaches the first and most important exegesis of the first commandment of Christianity, of Christ: to love your neighbor as yourself you must first take responsibility for your neighbor. Evil and its rectification are not first the affairs of Jews or Romans, yesterday or today, or of any others, but of ourselves. The devil is not a mythological Gnostic being who comes from elsewhere; rather, he is our own complacency, our own indifference, and our own refusal to help the innocent, to rectify injustice, and to care for the suffering of others. Here is the new vision, the teaching of Christ: because we ourselves are guilty, we ourselves are responsible. To bring Christ back to life, to resurrect Christ, to be on the path of salvation, is to love the neighbor as oneself by taking full responsibility upon oneself. Salvation, then, like revelation, is this very process, the process of becoming Christ. EXCURSUS: CHAGALL Let me add, on a personal note, speaking as a Jew to Christians, that the central thesis of this chapter was inspired by the Crucifixion and Resurrection paintings of Marc Chagall, the most famous of which is probably the “White Crucifixion” of 1938. In these paintings, made from 1938 to 1948, Chagall depicts the Crucifixion. What is striking about these crucifixions, however, is that the man crucified, clearly Jesus, wears a loincloth that is a Jewish prayer shawl (tallis). Thus he is unmistakably a Jewish Jesus.12 And Chagall sets the crucified Jewish Jesus among figures of contemporary oppression: Nazis, Stalinists, and angry mobs (pogroms?). Art historian Monica Bohm-Duchen, in her excellent 1998 book on Chagall, is no doubt right in seeing in these paintings, and in the White Crucifixion, in particular, “a direct response to specific historical events: in the case of this work, the German Aktion of 15 June 1938 in which 1,500 Jews were dispatched to concentration camps; the destruction of the Munich and Nuremberg synagogues on 9 June and 10 August respectively; the deportation of Polish Jews at the end of October; and the outbreak of vicious pogroms, including the infamous Kristallnacht, known as the ‘Night of Broken Glass,’ of 9 November 1938.”13 These Crucifixion paintings graphically depict the concrete anguish of the Jews by means of the central figure and symbol of Christianity. When I first saw Chagall’s Resurrection and Crucifixion paintings I was repulsed and perplexed by them. I wondered why a Jew (Chagall, with his

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impressionable attachment to his hometown of Vitebsk in White Russia, was known as a Jewish artist) would work on such themes. Contrary to their sacred place in Christian religious imagination, for Jews the cross and the Crucifixion have always been, in both their Roman and Christian manifestations, dark symbols of murder, violence, and destruction, symbols of Jew hatred. But finally I came to a crucial realization: Chagall did not paint these pictures for Jews. Rather, they are for Christians. Already in 1938, and then throughout the many years of the Nazi mass murder of the Jews, Chagall was saying to the Christians of Europe: “Don’t you see? Don’t you understand? When the Nazis kill Jews they are killing Christ.” Thus I came to see that these paintings were no less political, no less spiritual, and no less powerful than Picasso’s “Guernica,” which graphically depicts the horrors of modern aerial warfare in order to make a visceral and powerful statement against it. But Christians were not to be spiritually inspired and morally invigorated by the powerful and concrete historical message of these paintings. No mass audience at all saw them. I wondered what might have been if Chagall’s paintings had been displayed and understood throughout Europe in the late 1930s and early 1940s. I have had this same feeling with regard to Charlie Chaplin’s brilliant 1940 motion picture The Great Dictator, which mocked Hitler and made him a laughingstock. My wonder was speculative: Had these paintings or had that movie been shown throughout Europe and been understood, could the Holocaust have happened? Could Christians have allowed their own Christ to be crucified again, and this time 6 million times? Well, it is an experiment that cannot be undertaken; the paintings were not shown, and hence they were not understood and, more profoundly, history, alas, cannot be replayed and undone. CONCLUSION If the Jews killed Christ, then they are forever marked like Cain, a people of evil, deserving contempt. If the Romans killed Christ, then one can still flee from their tyranny into a safe haven of sentimental spiritual salvation, as the Jews fled to the desert leaving Pharaoh’s Egypt behind and intact. In both cases, someone else, not the Christian, not the Church, is responsible—not me but them, not us but them. They are damned, but we are saved. But if, on the contrary, the Christians killed Christ, then Christians too can begin to accept culpability and take responsibility for their greatest sin.14 The true image of the Christian, then, is not the opposite of perfidious Jews or cruel Romans, of Pilate the Roman or Judas the Jew. Rather, and precisely, like all the disciples of Jesus, it is the image of Judas the Christian. It is the Christian who denies Christ, for no one else but Christians and Christianity can affirm or deny Christ. To be sure, Jews and Romans killed Jesus. Such is the unalterable narrative of the Gospels. When did the Christians kill Christ? When do they kill


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Christ? When they are irresponsible, when they absolve themselves and blame others for the sins of the world. First, when they demonized the Jews, which led to countless humiliations and slaughters, and finally to the Holocaust. Second, when, in response to Rome, they rendered unto Caesar what was his, which led to political apathy, abdication, escapism, and abandonment of the redemptive struggle for human liberation. Third, and finally, when they narrowed Christ’s love into hatred—for that is what it is, however sweetly presented—of all other spiritual paths not Christian. These are harsh words, indeed, but justified by their truth. Christian exclusivity, of which hatred of the Jews, however gentle, is but one version, even if a particularly odious version, remains today the great unresolved sin of Christianity against Christ. There is an alternative, however, for Christians and Christianity faithful to its own loving command to love its neighbors as it loves its own exemplary Christ. Quoniam tu solus Sanctus,/Tu solus Dominus,/Tu solus Altissimus, Jesu Christe: “For you only are holy, you only are Lord, you only are the most high, Jesus Christ.” With a deeper, more vigilant faith, these words can be understood and acted upon beyond the narrow confines of an imperial and ultimately murderous exclusivity. Who, after all, can doubt that for a monotheist faith God is unique, the One God, and that just as the same One Unique God is known and followed as “Allah” to Muslims and as “Y-H-V-H” to the Jews, he must be known and followed as “Jesus Christ” to Christians. This, it seems to me, is the burden and the task that Christian theology must take upon itself and come to grips with in the new millennium. If Christ is to be the “Prince of Peace,” as Christianity claims, then Christians must come to understand—in works and in faith—that true peace is found in the harmonization of differences, not in their elimination. As a start, I propose that Yom HaShoah—Holocaust Day—as a memorial to the Jewish dead, and as a remembrance of divinely ordained individual and social responsibility—become a religious holiday in the sacred calendar of all Christian churches. Yom HaShoah—a Christian day of remembrance, repentance, and rededication to the loving revelation of Christ Jesus. NOTES The material in this chapter was first presented as a paper on June 20, 2001, in Jerusalem at an international conference “The Philosopher as Witness: Jewish Philosophy after the Holocaust,” marking the eighty-fi fth birthday of Professor Emil L. Fackenheim. 1. One could cite an enormous literature of Jewish theological reflection on the Holocaust. An incomplete, short list of selected authors would include the following: Hannah Arendt, Steven E. Aschheim, Eliezer Berkovits, Eugene B. Borowitz, Martin Buber, Arthur A. Cohen, Marx Ellis, Emil Fackenheim, Amos Funkenstein, Roger S. Gottlieb, Irving Greenberg, Hans Jonas, Steven Katz, Lawrence Langer, Primo Levi, Emmanuel Levinas, Ignaz Maybaum, Bernard Maza, Michael L. Morgan, Jacob Neusner, Richard Rubenstein, Elie Wiesel, and Edith Wyschogrod.

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2. See Robert P. Ericksen, Theologians under Hitler (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985); Betrayal: German Churches and the Holocaust, edited by Robert P. Ericksen and Susannah Heschel (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999); Susannah Heschel, The Aryan Jesus: Protestant Theology in Nazi Germany (forthcoming). 3. Edward H. Flannery, S. J., The Anguish of the Jews (New York: Macmillan, 1965), 60. 4. See, especially, Franklin H. Littell, The Crucifixion of the Jews (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1986; originally 1975); Joel Carmichael, The Satanizing of the Jews (New York: Fromm International, 1992); Joshua Trachtenberg, The Devil and the Jews (New York: Harper & Row, 1966; originally 1943); James Parkes, The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue (New York: Atheneum, 1969); Malcom Hay, Europe and the Jews (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961; original title, The Foot of Pride, 1950). 5. I use this apparently redundant term Christ-Messiah to distinguish the Christian conception of the Messiah from the rather different Jewish conception of the Messiah. Elsewhere I will simply use the term Christ. 6. The locus classicus for this theological interpretation, and indeed its most vicious expression, is found in St. John Chrysostom (c. 344–407 CE), but it also is found in Augustine and many other authoritative and influential Christian theologians. It is almost amazing to find it in the writings of Jacques Maritain, whose wife was a converted Jew. From the safety of America, Maritain writes in 1937–1941: “The basic weakness in the mystical communion of Israel is its failure to understand the Cross, its refusal of the Cross, and therefore its refusal of the transfiguration.” In 1937–1941, with a wife the Nazis would have murdered! See Jacques Maritain, “The Mystery of Israel,” in The Social and Political Philosophy of Jacques Maritain, ed. Joseph W. Evans and Leo R. Ward, 202 (New York: Doubleday, 1965; originally 1955). More recently, in May 2001, in Damascus, welcoming Pope John Paul on his first visit to Syria, Syrian President Bashar Assad, a Muslim, made the following statement as part of a welcoming speech given in the pope’s presence: “They [the Jews] tried to kill the principles of all religions with the same mentality with which they betrayed Jesus Christ and the same way they tried to betray and kill the Prophet Mohammed.” Despicable as these remarks are, one does not know what to think about the pope’s silence, maintained to this day. See The International Jerusalem Post, May 18, 2001, p. 28. See also, in this regard, Saul Friedlander, Pius XII and the Third Reich, translated by Charles Fullman (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966). 7. For a detailed and nuanced account of each Gospel separately, see Samuel Sandmel, Anti-Semitism in the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978). 8. More and more Christian theologians are today sensitive to the history of anti-Semitism in the Church and throughout Christian history and are making efforts to overcome it theologically. In addition to Frank Littell, mentioned in note 4, let me add the names of A. Roy Eckardt, Charlotte Klein, Johann Baptist Metz, Franklin Sherman, and David Tracy. There are, of course, many others. One also should recognize, in this regard, the greatness of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, martyred by the Nazis. The list of Jewish thinkers (e.g., Emil Fackenheim, Saul Friedlander, Hyam Maccoby, Frank E. Manuel, Jacob Neusner, Samuel Sandmel, et al.) who


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have grappled with this issue—Christian theological anti-Semitism—is, unfortunately I think, perhaps as long. 9. This reference to failure in imitatio Christos does not just refer to the more obvious historical displays of impiety, such as the Crusades, Inquisition, rape and extermination of American Indians, and the like, but also, and no less importantly, it invokes the daily ethical-spiritual struggles of individual Christians. Kierkegaard perhaps overemphasized the purely “spiritual” dimension to becoming a “knight of faith,” but he was right—if one broadens the religious venture to include ethics as well as spirituality—to see in religion the task of becoming religious. In the twentieth century Mahatma Gandhi was perhaps clearer and more effective than anyone in joining spirituality to morality and justice. This inextricable link also was the basis of the concrete “spiritual” work of such figures as Martin Luther King Jr. and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. For such a point of view, faith and works are inseparable. 10. Another possible New Testament support for this perspective can be found in Hebrews 6:4–6: “For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God, and put Him to open shame.” Despite the word “impossible” here, interpreters have seen this to mean that revelation is an ongoing process. 11. Fackenheim’s 614th commandment can be found in several of his writings, e.g., Emil Fackenheim, Quest for Past and Future (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968); Emil Fackenheim, God’s Presence in History (New York: Harper and Row, 1970); Emil Fackenheim, The Jewish Return Into History (New York: Schocken Books, 1978). Against Fackenheim’s interpretation of the requirement “to not give Hitler a posthumous victory,” one could argue that this commandment is already covered, by extension, in the three traditional commandments regarding the wickedness of Amalek: “Remember what Amalek did to you” (Deuteronomy 15:17); “You Shall blot out the remembrance of Amalek (Deuteronomy 25:19); and “You shall not forget” (Deuteronomy 25:19), which are accounted Commandments 603, 604, and 605, according to Sefer HaChinuch’s compilation and numbering of the “taryag mitzvos,” the 613 Commandments. Consistent with this view, one also could argue, as does Michael Wyschogrod, in “Faith and the Holocaust” (Judaism 20 [Summer 1971]: 286–94, reprinted in A Holocaust Reader, edited by Michael L. Morgan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 164–71), that Fackenheim’s imperative is only a religious commandment for those Jews who are already believers. But unless one wishes to impose a belief in the privileged position of the Jews with regard to global holy history, one can only say that for the world at large the Holocaust is another instance—horrifying, terrible, unique—that should spur all humans of goodwill toward the larger imperative to combat injustice wherever and whenever it is found. Wysehogrod’s argument supplements and is consistent with the material in this chapter. Nonetheless, for reasons I have given, I hold that the Holocaust has a special significance for Christianity. 12. Of course, the Judaism of Jesus has been known to scholars since the groundbreaking work of Abraham Geiger (1810–1874); see Susannah Heschel,

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Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). Not surprisingly, by now in the scholarly literature there are almost as many different accounts of the Judaism of Jesus as there are interpretations of Judaism. 13. Monica Bohm-Duchen, Chagall (London: Phaidon Press, 1998), 227, 231. 14. In parallel fashion, the ancient Israelites, directly after receiving God’s revelation at Mount Sinai nonetheless, in less than two months, erected and worshipped a Golden Calf, thereby committing, they themselves, their greatest sin—for which the Jews have forever thereafter taken responsibility.

C HA P T E R 1 1

The Holocaust Tragedy for the Jewish People, Credibility Crisis for Christendom

FRANKLIN H. LITTELL The year 1967 was a critical one militarily, and it also is noted as a watershed year on the political and theological calendars of those who then were impelled to reach for a new level of understanding and cooperation between Jews and Christians. In 1967, for the third time, aggressive Muslim armies attacked in an attempt to wipe out Israel—the Jewish island in the ocean of Islam. This time the combined assault was accompanied by open public declarations of genocidal intent. The spirit was arrogant, but the material was weak. Nevertheless, the coordinated attack almost succeeded. 1967 In an insightful chapter in a collegial volume of essays on Emil Fackenheim’s work, Gregory Baum uses the Church’s familiar language to refer to the impact of this moment of history on Fackenheim’s life. The threat of a “second Holocaust” became the occasion of what Baum calls a “conversion” from Fackenheim’s previously rather unrestrained universalism. This use of the word “conversion”—so familiar to evangelical Christians—may not be as bizarre a reference to a Jewish teacher as it sounds at first note, for Baum concludes, “More than any other Jewish thinker, Fackenheim recognized a community of faith between Jews and Christians.”1 In such a background setting, why should Jews and Christians hesitate to borrow words from each other? 133

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In any case, perhaps aided by his many years of saturation in the writings of Hegel, at this time our colleague turned against the easy universalism so common among both Christian and Jewish intellectuals not trained in dialectic. He noted that in mentioning the Holocaust “Germans link it with Dresden, American liberals with Hiroshima, Christians deplore anti-Semitism in general.” He accused the Christians of “resort[ing] to theories of suffering-in-general or persecution-in-general” as an escape mechanism to avoid confronting the awful indictment of responsibility for the Holocaust.2 Yehuda Bauer has made a similar paradoxical point in insisting that precisely the Holocaust, in its specificity as a Jewish tragedy, becomes thereby a universal issue.3 His own personal “return to history,” with its emphasis upon particularity and earthly reality, was epitomized in Fackenheim’s now famous 614th commandment, Jews are forbidden “to grant Hitler a posthumous victory,”4 as he told our late friend Harry James Cargas, when he said that he was thinking especially of the children.5 THE CONTINUING PRESENCE OF ADOLF HITLER This saying, one of the best known and most weighty aphorisms since the discussion of the Holocaust began, is not only theologically challenging but its concrete relevance is clear to specialists in the social sciences. In many cultures and in many sectors of the world map, the German Führer remains as potent a presence as he was before his suicide. Scholars document that generalization, so shocking upon the first hearing. Social pathologists study the degree to which Nazi anti-Semitism has been blended into Arab League propaganda against “the Zionist entity” (Israel) and “the Great Satan” (the United States). In the United States, as is well known among the ignorant, “the Jews run things.” Historians, working in academic departments next door, report the extent to which regimes hostile to the Jewish people welcomed hundreds of fleeing Nazi criminals at the end of the German Third Reich in 1945. Thus under several dictatorships in the Middle East, the many centuries of Muslim religious and cultural anti-Semitism were capped by the malignant importation of a modern, lethal, ideological, political anti-Semitism that survived the defeat and even today arises like the phoenix from the ashes of the German Nazi regime. The only cesspools and sinks of morbidity equal to the Arab Middle East in religious and cultural anti-Semitism have been securely nestled until recently in Latin America. Latin America was the second major haven for SS and other genocidal criminals who emerged at the end of Bishop Hudal’s “rat line.” In Latin America, there reigned for centuries an anti-Semitic Roman Catholicism of the medieval type—“medieval” because the Inquisition since the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries protected the area from the influence of both the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation.

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Now this once intact culture, protected from both Erasmus and Luther, is in a state of dissolution. The once-powerful, coercive religious establishment has lost both intellectual primacy and unchallenged political authority. Government violence against subject peoples is still rife on that continent, of course, but the Church has become at worst a fellow traveler rather than as in former times the major motor of persecution and anti-Semitism. Even the persons of bishops and nuns are not safe from rogue violence. In Europe, once “Christian nations” have already entered a post-Christendom age; in Latin America, the current is moving rapidly in the same direction. The plight of the once-dominant Roman Catholic establishment is everywhere evident, although—as in much of Europe, with its Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox state churches—the Church authorities still pretend to represent the masses. In point of fact, on any given Sunday the largest church attendance—whether, for example, in Stockholm or in Buenos Aires—can be counted in Pentecostal or other radical Protestant congregations. As in Africa, many of these flourishing movements are Christian Zionist, or at least “Judaeophile.” Moreover, among the remnant of Roman Catholic believers still clinging to their heritage, authoritative statements issued by Popes John XXIII (“Pacem in Terris,” April 10, 1963) and John Paul II (“We Remember,” March 12, 1998) have turned faithful communicants away from the traditional Christian antiSemitism. This radical turn—almost a reversal—in the preaching and teaching of the largest Christian denomination is one of the most hopeful signs that ancient religious hostilities may yet be overcome, and long-standing wrongs may yet be corrected. CONTINUING MUSLIM ANTI-SEMITISM We are still looking for any comparable spiritual initiative from authorities in the Muslim religio-political establishments. Neither Nazi-style violent terrorism nor the ideological religious and cultural anti-Semitism—as endemic in Muslim teaching as it was once in an intact Christendom—has been repudiated. Indeed, the dictator of Syria recently repeated the anti-Semitic calumny in its most vulgar form—in the presence of the head of the Roman Catholic Church! Perhaps Assad, who inhabits a technologically modern but conceptually primitive universe (geistige Allgemeinheit), fears that a substantial section of world Christendom is showing signs of recovery from the malaise of centuries of resentment of the parent religion, Judaism, and of overcoming the hostility toward the people that—Hitler and his friends notwithstanding—still stands there in plain sight, alive and flourishing. This miracle of recovery—in the Christian idiom “resurrection”—is evident just a few decades after the most massive military force and malevolent dictatorship in human history was dedicated to the destruction of what the

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Hebrew Scriptures call “a people dwelling alone, and not numbered among the nations of the earth” (Num. 23:9). In truth, although threatened by enemies surrounding the center, the Jewish people in Israel and in the Galut are today stronger than at any time since the destruction of the Second Temple—stronger culturally, religiously, politically, economically, on the university scene—in the language of miracles, the Lord has delivered his people Israel. CHRISTENDOM’S CREDIBILITY CRISIS Today it is the Christians who are in trouble, who face a crisis in internal confidence and external credibility. The erosion of Christian political and cultural authority in European Christendom began early in the nineteenth century. It culminated in the massive defections to Marxist and Nazi ideologies, but it can be measured in the decline of Christian active participation decade by decade, from 1848. The Constantinian pattern of an intact, coercive collaboration between church and state, to which Fackenheim has devoted many critical pages, is still capable of producing negatives (note the persecution of religious minorities, e.g., recent persecutory legislation in such supposedly enlightened countries as Denmark and France!) but it is not building any cathedrals. For all the pomp and circumstance, the credibility crisis of Christendom remains, like a shameful family secret, rarely mentioned but on everyone’s mind. Of course some establishment spokespersons appear oblivious. In spite of warnings by the watchpersons on Western civilization’s walls, Emil Fackenheim among the most eminent, some official theologians are still able to spend their years discussing traditional formulae, as it were drawing their only supplies through long tunnels that reach far back to the time when on campus theology was the queen of the sciences and in the pews the laypeople were religiously docile and educationally unlettered. If the criticism seems unfair, then show me in what divinity school or theological seminary the Holocaust is given the curricular attention to match the measure of the crisis in belief. Across Christendom, many of the once-obedient, silent laypeople have now fled from the tunnels of Christendom and embraced other religions and ideologies. Equally marked is the crisis in vocations. Many more laypeople have participated in the silent emigration, even though still paying church taxes to the state churches. All who have stepped outside the tunnels and caves of traditional security have learned that in the world of modernity, great storms have gathered and struck with increasing force against the familiar, reassuring propositions. As Fackenheim summarizes it in To Mend the World (1982), with the Holocaust the Jewish people crossed over to the other side of the mountain: “Judaism” was no longer possible, apart from a flesh-and-blood people.6 The leaders of the Christian establishments still find it possible, though fol-

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lowed by eroding constituencies, to detour around the crisis in faith with traditional assurances. If a professing Christian, as distinct from a cultural “Christian,” leaves the safe and familiar, nothing is more traumatic than to have to confront the fact that in the heartland of European Christendom, millions of Jews were systematically murdered by baptized Christians—never rebuked, let alone excommunicated, by the churches’ leaderships. Even today the churches’ leaders, including some of those most admirable on other issues, attempt to escape by saying that the killers were “pagans” and the Nazi genocidal system was not “of us.” Thus we read in the recent encyclical “We Remember” that “the Shoah was the work of a thoroughly modern neo-pagan regime. . . . Its anti-Semitism had its roots outside Christianity.”7 In 1934, as the machine began to cut out the victims from the herd in preparation for branding, corralling, and killing, such rebukes were rarely heard from those who had once been installed in Church office with the vow “to uphold sound teaching and practice.” In 1934, 1936, or 1938, Church officials might truthfully have condemned Nazi criminality as “pagan” in both teaching and practice: to a considerable extent, the roots of Nazi anti-Semitism were in truth outside the Church. But for those who think concretely, timing is everything: against Nazi anti-Semitism, even during the battle itself, contrast the effect of the declaration of the primate of the Orthodox Church in Bulgaria (within one week) and the noneffect of the declaration of the Hervormde Kerk in the Netherlands (an excellent committee report, but over a year too late). Uttered seventy years later the assertion that the Nazis were really “pagan,” carrying the inference that the Church has always viewed Nazi anti-Semitism with clear eyesight, simply indicates the anxiety level arising within the Church. AGAIN 1967 The year 1967 also was a “wake-up call” for some of us on this side of the faith divide. We turned more vigorously to Christian-Jewish cooperative efforts and to support for Israel. We already had a loose interfaith network of college and university chaplains to build on (“ACURA,” Association for College and University Religious Affairs, founded in 1959), and we had the support of the National Conference of Christians and Jews (NCCJ). At that time the NCCJ was led by veterans of the Office of Religious Affairs in American Military Government in Germany (OMGUS), men who were deeply committed to Christian and Jewish cooperation. We were all, of course, experienced in preaching and teaching and passing resolutions against “racism and anti-Semitism.” But 1967 (the “Six Day War”), raising the possibility of a “Second Holocaust,” took us beyond academic civility, simple collegiality, and the art of framing and passing acceptable resolutions in assembly. We were awakened, as it were, from our removed, rather academic

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approach to the matter of Jewish survival, supposedly settled by the outcome of World War II. Of the American scene, it also should be noted that the harsh realities of the civil rights struggle and the growing intensity of internal conflict over the Vietnam intervention also helped some of us see clearly the limits of a purely pedagogical approach to public policy. We began in our thinking, writing, and action—as did Emil Fackenheim in this season—to take seriously the factor of power, used or misused by agencies of government, by terrorist groups, and by aroused citizens. At that time I took the initiative and personally wrote or telephoned 746 old allies from the Christian youth and student movements of the 1930s. By 1970, we had three organized centers of initiative. The first was “Christians Concerned for Israel,” which a decade later joined a number of like-minded initiatives to form the federation now called “the National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel.” In the first issue of our newsletter (CCI Notebook), we recommended that members read Emil Fackenheim’s “Jewish Faith and the Holocaust” (Commentary [August 1968]) and “The People Israel Lives” (Christian Century [May 6, 1970]). Among several dozen other Christian teachers who at that time left the ivory tower to stand by Israel were Coert Rylaarsdam (Chicago Divinity), George Williams (Harvard Divinity), James Wood (Baylor University), Paul Van Buren (Temple University), and Roy Eckardt (Lehigh University). The constituency was comprised of seminarians, pastors, and alert laity, and the aim was to effect public policy in ways favorable to Israel’s survival and well-being. The second initiative was intended to create a theological “think tank” among specialists aware of the need to rework and reverse much of traditional Christian preaching against “the Jews.” Ten Roman Catholic teachers and ten Protestant teachers agreed to meet periodically to present and discuss papers. The group was called “The Christian Study Group on Israel and the Jewish People,” and out of its dozens of meetings have come many articles and several important books. I chaired the group for the first three years, from 1970 to 1973, and was succeeded by Father John Pawlikowski of the Chicago Catholic Theological Union. The third initiative, which last drew around 500 participants from twentyfive countries, is now called “The Annual Scholars’ Conference on the Holocaust and the Church Struggle.” We always open the first weekend in March. During the last decade one of the most vigorous continuing encounters has been the Midrash group, with Jewish and Christian biblical scholars confronting together what Fackenheim has called “the naked text.” He has noted the difficulty and also the imperative for such joint reading.8 Can the abyss be closed? Even now, half a century later, this is not certain. Yet the attempt must be made. A moral-religious necessity and indispensable part of it are attempts at fraternal readings by

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Jews and Christians of at least fragments of the Book that belongs to both. We began the Annual Scholars’ Conference at Wayne State University in Detroit, with Hubert Locke,9 an African American minister and academic, a key member of the Host Committee. At the second conference, in 1971, both Yehuda Bauer and Emil Fackenheim were presenters. BASIC PREMISES The basic premise of these three initiatives, with some overlap each serving an essentially different constituency, is threefold. First, for Christians as well as Jews, the two watershed events of two millennia are the Holocaust and the restoration of Israel. Again our paths ran parallel: Emil Fackenheim connected the two events most memorably in his paper10 at a conference held in 1974 at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York City: “It is necessary not only to perceive a bond between the two events, but also so to act as to make it unbreakable.” To understand survivors, the connection is acute: in the Galut, many survivors are psychologically still “DPs,” exiles; in Israel, they have joined the pioneer community of redemption. Second, when limited to sectarian study and commemoration, both communities easily miss hearing and obeying the commanding Word. The Jews tend to slide into victimology, forgetting the sanctification of life (Kiddush ha-Hayyim), which—as our colleague emphasizes—among others, the ghetto fighters so nobly represented.11 The Christians, when deaf to the Word, tend to theological triumphalism on an intellectual flight into outer space. From supersessionism to Gnosticism, Christianity has been perenially tempted first to sever its roots in Judaism and then to abandon the working world altogether. I am constantly astonished to find out how many church groups manage to visit “the Holy Land” without once setting foot on eretz Israel! In contrasting Jewish faith and Christianity, Fackenheim has noted12 how readily the Christians abandon to the sovereignty of the profane the sanctity of the daily round and the material world of work. Sunday, the Christian Sabbath, when the Creator rested, becomes for them the only “good” day. Third, there can be no healing of the animosities and suspicions of centuries without joint study and action, without honest and self-critical analysis of conduct during the Shoah and commitment to Israel’s well-being. There are challenges for Jews of sensitivity as well as for Christians. Consider, for example, the misuse of sources and rank racism of Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners.13 Consider a recent sensationally unfair attack, ostensibly targeting Elie Wiesel but in fact aimed at Israel, published in book form from the Noam Chomsky-Marc Ellis margin of the map of Jewish sectarianism.14 To turn to positive actions, from the Christian side there are a few significant initiatives to share fraternally in Jewish history: I am thinking

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especially of Nes Amim, Aktion Sühnezeichen, Studium in Israel,15 Bridges to Understanding . . . one Dutch, two Germans, one American. To turn to correction of preaching and teaching, although progress is being made among smaller circles of teachers and scholars, the official leaderships and judicatories of the American Protestant churches move at a glacial pace. At least until the United Church of Canada adopts the splendid position statement “Bearing Faithful Witness,” in recent months being discussed in the congregations preparatory to decision by the General Council, no official Church statements on our side of the Atlantic are adequate. The new eminence of the United Church of Canada in Christian and Jewish interaction should be especially pleasing to our colleague, who remembers as I do the appalling antiSemitism (including bitter hostility to Israel) predominant in that denomination in the time of A. C. Forrest as editor and E. E. Long as general secretary.16 The 1980 Declaration of the Protestant Church of the Rheinland,17 the most thorough and relentlessly honest official post-Holocaust Church position on “the Relationship of Christians and Jews,” still stands far in front of other official Church declarations. Two lines of that declaration stand out in the context of our discussion here. They say that their action is moved in part by the insight that the continuing existence of the Jewish people, its return to the Land of Promise, and also the creation of the State of Israel are signs of the faithfulness of God toward God’s people . . . the readiness of Jews, in spite of the Holocaust, to engage in encounter, common study, and cooperation. Again, if we Christians and Jews—both religions being by any honest reckoning in the minority on every continent, in Europe and the Americas as well as around the globe—are to be healed, then we shall be healed by learning to walk together. This truth has profound implications for how we remember the Holocaust and how we regard Israel. A REVERSAL OF ROLES? Again, perhaps what is required is a reversal of roles. Since Constantine, the Jews have wandered and the Christians have settled in. In our time, the Jewish people have recovered their biblical mandate. The first great movement was the Exodus from exile to claim the Land; the second great movement is “the exodus from civilizations” (to use Eric Voegelin’s felicitous phrase), again to build up the Land of Zion. As George Williams—longtime professor of church history at Harvard Divinity School—often reminded us, the Jews were the only people entitled to take a unitary approach to Land, People, and State. In the beginning, the baptized gentiles (“Christians”), on the other hand, were instructed to cut loose from the bonds of the empire and become pil-

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grims on the face of the earth, living in anticipation of a better country. Their betrayal of their calling, so shamefully epitomized in World War I, was their abandonment of the pilgrim’s life and discipline, their uncritical identification and apologetics for the nationalisms of many Länder. Only a few Christians in the period 1914-1918 understood what had happened, but keen outside observers such as Nehru and Gandhi then noted that in fact those who once were called to be “strangers and pilgrims on the earth” in pursuit of a better country (Hebr. 11:13–14) were shrunken to the role of sanctifiers of mere patriotic cults. For scandalous contemporary illustrations of betrayal of calling there is a sufficiency. Milosevic’s excuses for the genocide of the Kosovars might suffice, if not the sentences of two nuns and a Roman Catholic bishop for participation in genocide in Africa. In the context of our theme, the ethical charge against the baptized gentiles is framed by their roles as perpetrators or spectators in the genocide of the Jews. The theological charge is brought against them because they allowed their spiritual pilgrimage as a people “called out” to end in the fetid swamp of völkisch Nazism. And, contrary to the racist interpretation, in this century of a decaying Christendom it has been a sickness infecting many other so-called “Christians nations” as well as “the Germans.” CONSTANTINIANISM: “THE FALL OF CHRISTIANITY” The initial betrayal was the union of church and state, sometimes called “the fall of Christianity,” in Constantine’s empire (313, 325 of the Common Era). Later, when a ruler of the stature of a Constantine or a Charlemagne was lacking, each little principality (Staatlein) attempted to justify its temporal policies and violent politics by parading a pious Christian language as cover for a crude self-interest both pagan and ruthless. Note this: As the Russian Orthodox Church hurries back to its privileges before the 1917 revolution, the establishment becomes dangerous not only for Jews: Methodists, Baptists, Pentecostals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and other religious minorities face discrimination and persecution—this time not from a coercive Marxist ideological establishment (Ersatzreligion) but from a retrograde Christendom. If someone should ask what the plight of the Baptists in today’s Russia has to do with the automatic anti-Israel pronouncements of the European Union, the answer is that he has failed to comprehend the awful contribution of a coercive “Christendom” to the Holocaust and other wicked misuses of political power to compel an outward show of spiritual and cultural conformity. Perhaps I may be forgiven a brief detour here to visit the most important single contribution of America to the science of good government: the repudiation of Constantinianism and the constitutional affirmation of Religious Liberty. The first positive political value is that it makes possible a relationship of mutual respect between citizens adhering to differing religions. Three years ago, in response to a doctoral Laudatio at Bochum, Fackenheim related the story of

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how Christian theologian Reinhold Niebuhr (who also was my mentor) refused to encourage a searching Will Herberg to convert—instead telling him to study his own heritage. This Herberg did, and in time he became one of America’s most creative Jewish theologians.18 Rather loosely, the American modus vivendi is sometimes called “separation of church and state.” What it means, however, is that government may not use (or misuse) religious bodies to accomplish political goals, and religious entities may not use government agencies to effect religious purposes. In the energy field between those two poles are many areas of possible cooperation between agencies that respect each other’s integrity. The teaching needs underlining, for there are today two errors widespread in America that are dangerous for both Jews and Christians. I will not speak of the relatively small caucus that talks about America as “a Christian nation” and if successful would jeopardize Jews and other religious minorities by pushing policies that imagine a return to the “Christendom” model. Much more dangerous, on the one side, are the militant secularists who seek to privatize religion and reduce it to the status of a personal idiosyncrasy. And on the other side is the culture lag of traditional thinking, a thinking that does not distinguish between toleration and Religious Liberty. Students of antiSemitism should be clearheaded: the privatization thrust, which in political theory reminds one of Rousseau’s ideal yoke of the solitary individual to the state without any intermediary communities, can readily turn to hostility to a people that refuses homogenization (Gleichschaltung); moreover, a regime that only tolerates in a season of benevolence, may persecute in a time of stress. Having one’s basic beliefs limited to an area of purely individual piety, confined as it were to a room soundproofed against communication with others, is as hopeless as seeking life’s true pitch in a church made tone-deaf by years of deference to the trumpeted orders of some political regime. Two-thirds of the world’s peoples are today governed by dictatorships, sanctified by some traditional religion or served by some modern ideology. I think it worth accenting that the style of the creative interaction, of the religious liberty of which I have been speaking, was the product of the convictions of men who were schooled in the principles of Radical Puritanism, of sectors of Christianity that were deeply “Judaeophile.” Quite literally, most of them looked to Jerusalem as the center of world history, and during the early decades of the American republic a number of church leaders made the long, difficult, and dangerous pilgrimage to see the biblical sites. The eternal magnetic power of Jerusalem and the newer attraction of a restored Israel today provide clear affirmative energy for Jews and believing Christians. Jews in the Diaspora and Christian pilgrims travel parallel paths, pointing toward the same center of action in history. CAN MEMORY OF THE HOLOCAUST BE LIFE AFFIRMING? We rejoice in Israel’s vitality. But how is our understanding of the Holocaust to be redemptive rather than morbid? I accept the reproach of friends who are poets and seers and deny that lessons can be drawn from the silence and

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the darkness, but I cannot live with that negative. Rather, it seems to me the continuing commandment (number 615?) is to avoid premature closure of the questioning, the debate, the search for articulate meaning out of the Holocaust. Fackenheim formulated this concern in a striking way in an essay on human responsibility for creation: “Die Schöpfung [ist] nicht nur eine vergangene Sache, vielmehr eine gegenwärtige Sache.”19 If nothing else, we can be sure that without vigorous affirmative interpretations, the deniers and other anti-Semites will fill the school wells with their poison. And we owe it to those who were murdered, and to our own children, to apply an early warning system on potentially genocidal movements and/or regimes.20 Emil Fackenheim writes in kindly fashion of those who call the Holocaust “unique,” including Roy Eckardt in his use of the expression “uniquely unique,” intended to move beyond the reproach that every historical event is unique. But I gather that—like Yehuda Bauer—he now prefers to use the term unprecedented which carries a hidden meaning: with the Holocaust, the genocide of a people is no longer without precedent. The crime that has been committed can be committed again. The word “precedent” carries the moral impact, and at second level it carries a warning. There is a debate, certainly, as to whether the Holocaust was without precedent. What of the Ottoman Empire’s choice of the Armenians as a target for destruction? There is a debate, too, as to how widely the term genocide, which owes its origin to the Nazi genocide of the Jews, may be applied without spreading confusion rather than enhancing clarity. We have a flood of books using freely either the term Holocaust or genocide or both to refer to such occasions as African slavery or the displacement of the native Americans (“Indians”). May the term genocide be applied to events before the word was invented by Raphael Lemkin (1901–1959), whose 100th anniversary of birth was celebrated in 2001 at the United Nations in New York? May the word “Holocaust” now—regardless of earlier and more general references—be helpfully used for anything except the Nazi lethal assault on the Jewish people? I think not. A word such as “democracy” has been blurred by the Nazi appeal to the mobs of populist demonstrations and the Communist authentication of policy by disciplined bloc voting. “Holocaust,” once a generic word, and even used in 1943 in a famous address by Abba Hillel Silver to refer to the 1904 Kishniev pogrom, now refers properly to the Nazi targeting and murder of Jews. Promiscuity in the use of the word “Holocaust” is to be avoided! CRASS DENIAL AND SUBTLE REPRESSION Most of us recognize open denial rather quickly, even when it is as sophisticated as the sleight of hand practiced by David Irving and exposed by Deborah Lipstadt. Soft denial is more difficult. A common manifestation of soft denial is changing the subject. For example, in a discussion the question comes up about some aspect of the Nazi Holocaust, and a voice immediately brings up the plight of Christians under Muslim assault in the southern Sudan or East Timor,

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or the annihilation of the Indian tribes by capitalist predators now rapaciously pillaging the rain forests of the Amazon River Valley. These are worthy topics, of course—in their time and in their place. As frequently interjected, however, they are diversionary, and they all too often cover a deep-seated anti-Semitic aversion to discussion of the crimes of Christendom against the Jews. Most intelligent people recognize anti-Semitism when offered by open deniers of the Holocaust or displayed in acts of public violence such as smearing synagogues with swastikas or burning crosses on the lawn of a Jewish family’s home. Like the good neighbors of Billings, Montana, a few years ago, we also can respond appropriately. Few, even among students and professors, are yet aware of the deeper levels of anti-Semitism, theological and cultural. Political anti-Semitism, deliberate in its calculation and lethal in its potential, dates from the 1880s, when the word was invented by Wilhelm Marr (1819–1904), and its use as a political diversion was launched in Tsarist Russia by Konstantin Pobedonostzev (1827–1907). To identify the anti-Semitism of the streets is easy, and to contain it—unless sponsored by a regime—is fairly simple. Far more difficult, and much more widespread in Christendom, is the anti-Semitism of the good people—those who condemn the vulgar manifestations and then turn “evenhandedly” and condemn Israel for using measures of self-defense that go unquestioned in the conduct of other nations. “Evenhandedness,” so loved by diplomats and corporate executives, has a history. For some of us it is redolent of the way good people, perhaps pacifists or American isolationists, in the late 1930s called for “evenhandedness” in respect to the Nazi Empire and the British Empire. Today “evenhandedness” and “equal time” are slogans that have penetrated the campuses and muddied the waters of rational discourse. In a fine new book, Holocaust Denial, John Zimmermann has dealt with those who demand “equal time” for positions without merit or evidence.21 If changing the subject is the devil’s first line of defense, then his backup position is to demand “equal time” and “evenhandedness” at every disputed barricade. There can be no “evenhandedness” in dealing with those who use children as their front line of offensive assault. Dictators cannot build either peace or security. As Natan Sharansky put it in May (2001), “Only leaders who are dependant on their own people and are interested in improving the situation of their own people can contribute to security.”22 IN CONCLUSION: A RETURN TO EMIL FACKENHEIM AND THE CHILDREN Noteworthy in Emil Fackenheim’s intellectual world is the place of the children. In The Jewish Bible after the Holocaust there is a beautiful meditation on Rachel mourning for her lost children.23 This concern for the children stands out in his interview in a film I made for BBC, The Shadow on the Cross, and in a video message I received from him when the Arab militants launched

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their recent “Children’s Crusade” against Jewish Israel. In his writings referencing the Holocaust, our colleague returns again and again to the plight of the children, for the children are sacrifices to the criminal intent of the perpetrators, and they also are the most helpless victims among the people who are to be denied a future. A recent report in the New York Times tells of the plight of several hundred thousand child soldiers used by foul regimes around the globe. To understand the Jewish commitment to the children, we have only to take a short walk from here to the hillside memorial to Janusz Korczak (1879–1942) and the children of the Warsaw Ghetto. In the low-grade war now being conducted by terrorists against Israel’s existence, the children are the first targets and the first sacrifices—whether on school buses or outside a Tel Aviv disco or sent to throw stones and move forward as a shield in front of those carrying automatic rifles and hand grenades. The child civilians are only the most vulnerable of those once categorized as “military noncombatants.” As Professor Rummel of the University of Hawaii has fully documented, in the Age of Genocide, war is no longer primarily a conflict between uniformed soldiers.24 Military historians date the turning point with Sherman’s march to the sea at the final stage of the American Civil War: destroying civilian life as such became the primary target of military strategy. By the time of the Holocaust, the deliberate targeting of civilians had become a major weapon of the aggressor. Before the First World War, civilian casualties were less than 10 percent, during and after World War I 20+ percent, and during and after World War II 80+ percent. To put it bluntly, if you want to survive in modern war, get into uniform! We return to the dialectical connection, in tactics as well as in the interpretation of history, between the Shoah and other modern genocides. It is the Holocaust that gave us the word “genocide.” It is the Holocaust that, like Mount Everest in the Himalayan Mountain range, provides us the standard by which all others are measured. It is the Holocaust that thunders “Am Israel chai!” out of the depths of Jewish despair. It is the Holocaust that forces earnest Christians to examine their betrayal of their calling and to go up to Jerusalem again—this time not for triumphalist purposes but to learn of their real beginnings, their present line of march, and their true destination. It is the Holocaust that now links the Jewish people to eretz Israel and it is the Holocaust that converts gentiles away from chauvinism and militarism and frees them to be Christians—pilgrims—again. NOTES The title of a paper I gave on June 18, 2001, opening a conference in Jerusalem in celebration of the eighty-fi fth birthday of Emil Fackenheim. 1. Gregory Baum, “Fackenheim and Christianity,” in Fackenheim: German Philosophy and Jewish Thought, ed. Louis Greenspan and Graeme Nicholson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), 177.

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2. Emil Fackenheim, “Jewish Faith and the Holocaust,” XLVI Commentary (1968): 2: 38. 3. Yehuda Bauer, Rethinking the Holocaust (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), xiii. 4. Fackenheim article in XVI Judaism (1967): 3: 269–73. 5. Henry James Cargas interview with Emil Fackenheim, in Voice from the Holocaust (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1993), 146–48. 6. Fackenheim, To Mend the World (New York: Schocken Books, 1982). 7. “We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah” (issued by the Vatican, March 16, 1998). 8. See Emil L. Fackenheim, The Jewish Bible after the Holocaust (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 18, 74–77. 9. See his important current book: Hubert G. Locke, Learning from History: A Black Christian’s Perspective on the Holocaust (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000), xv, 128 ff. 10. Emil Fackenheim, “The Holocaust and the State of Israel: Their Relation,” in Auschwitz: Beginning of a New Era?, ed. Eva Fleischner (New York: KTAV, 1977), 205–15, 209. 11. Emil L. Fackenheim, To Mend the World (New York: Schocken Books, 1982), 234–35. 12. Emil L. Fackenheim, What Is Judaism? (New York: Summit Books, 1987), 200 ff. 13. See essays in Franklin H. Littell, ed., Hyping the Holocaust: Scholars Answer Goldhagen (Merion, PA: Merion Westfield Press International, 1997). 14. Mark Chmiel, Elie Wiesel and the Politics of Moral Leadership (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2001). 15. See Emil Fackenheim’s TV address on March 6, 1988, commemorating the tenth anniversary of Studium in Israel; The Jewish Bible after the Holocaust, 100 ff. 16. See “The People Israel Lives,” LXXXVII The Christian Century (May 6, 1970): 18: 568n. 17. See my translation of the Rheinland statement, in XVII Journal of Ecumenical Studies (Winter 1980): 1: 211–12; also see “A Milestone in Post-Holocaust Church Thinking,” in XXVII Christian News from Israel (1980): 3: 113–16. 18. Separatabdruck of address at the Ehrenpromotion of Prof. Dr. Emil Ludwig Fackenheim, May 20 1998, Theological Faculty of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum, p. 24. 19. Chapter 6 in Breuning, Wilhelm, and Hanspeter Heinz, eds., Damit die Erde Menschlich Bleibt (Freiburg: Herder Verlag, 1985), 89. 20. Franklin H. Littell, Wild Tongues: A Handbook of Social Pathology (New York: Macmillan, 1969), 72 ff., 95 ff.; also see “Early Warning,” in III Holocaust and Genocide Studies (1988): 4: 483–90. 21. John C. Zimmermann, Holocaust Denial (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2000), xiv, 406 ff. With massive evidence of the crime committed, in their demand for “equal time” the deniers are like the Flat Earth people, or those who deny that President Kennedy was assassinated. See 141–42. 22. XIII Israfax (May 23, 2001): 235: 3. 23. The Jewish Bible after the Holocaust, 81 ff. 24. R. J. Rummel, Death by Government (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Press, 1994), passim.

C HA P T E R 1 2

Man or Muselmann? Fackenheim’s Elaboration on Levi’s Question

DAVID PATTERSON The Torah commands us to choose life (Deuteronomy 30:19). Making this choice does not mean that we no longer pass away from this earth. Rather, it means that in choosing life we understand death to be part of the process of sanctifying life, the testimonial outcome of a life steeped in Torah, prayer, and deeds of loving kindness. Understood as a movement from one realm into another, death is the culmination, not the negation, of life. It is not opposed to life as evil is opposed to good; rather, it is a task that confronts us in the course of life. Murder is evil; in itself, death is not. Standing by while people die is evil; in itself, dying is not. But the unthinkable evil—the evil that surpasses evil and paralyzes thought, the evil that is ultimate—is the death that is no longer death. For the death that is no longer death comes to a life that is no longer life; it comes in a time when good is no longer good, and evil is no longer evil. It comes in the time of the Shoah. Obliterated during the Shoah was not only Jewish life but also Jewish death, for to die as a Jew is to choose life even in death, speaking even in death the Name of the One who is the origin of life in a declaration of Shema Yisrael! What transpires in the Nazis’ imposition of death upon European Jewry is not only the end of Jewish life but the end of the Shema Yisrael that makes death the death of a Jew, for the Nazi murder machine, we recall Emil Fackenheim’s insight, was systematically designed to stifle this Shema Yisrael on Jewish lips before it murdered Jews themselves.1 To stifle the prayer’s holy word is to strangle the man’s holy image, and that was the Nazis’ definitive 147

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aim, as Fackenheim has rightly understood. The murder camp was not an accidental by-product of the Nazi empire, he insists. It was its pure essence.2 And the pure essence of the murder camp was the one in whom the divine essence had been murdered. Thus Fackenheim goes on to say that the divine image in man can be destroyed. No more threatening proof to this effect can be found than the so-called Muselmann in the Nazi death camp.3 Far more than an emaciated human being, the Muselmann is the manifestation of an evil that is ultimate, incarnate in a creature in whom the prayer has been silenced and whose death is no longer death. Informing Fackenheim’s insight into the meaning of the Muselmann is a passage from Primo Levi’s memoir Survival in Auschwitz, a work whose previous title If This Is a Man conveys more accurately the question posed in the original Italian title Se questo è un uomo. Here Levi describes the Muselmänner as the backbone of the camp, an anonymous mass, continually renewed and always identical, of non-men who march and labor in silence, the divine spark dead within them, already too empty to really suffer. One hesitates to call them living: one hesitates to call their death death.4 Where Fackenheim invokes the divine image, Levi refers to the divine spark. But what is this image or spark of the divine? It is the image and likeness of the Holy One. It is the holiness that inheres in the humanity of the human being. The Nazi, however, drains the divine spark that God has breathed into the Jew and destroys the trace of the holy that makes a human being a human being. In the title of his memoir, Primo Levi raises the question of what a human being is. Adding Fackenheim’s insight to Levi’s question, we come to a startling realization: the question of what a human being is is the question that defines the Nazis’ annihilation of the Jews. The murderers of Auschwitz, Fackenheim makes clear, cut off Jews from humanity and denied them the right to existence, yet in being denied that right, Jews represented all humanity. Jews after Auschwitz represent all humanity when they affirm their Jewishness and deny the Nazi denial.5 For it is through the Jews that the Torah’s teaching concerning the divine spark within every human being comes to humanity. To be sure, the teaching and the spark are of a piece, and the presence of the Jew in the world signifies both. Thus the presence of the Jew affirms the infinite dearness of the other human being, which means the Jew affirms man over against the Muselmann. Setting out to murder the Jew, the Nazi creates the Muselmann over against the Jew precisely by making the Jew into a Muselmann. That is what defines the Nazi, just as the Torah defines the Jew. And that is why Levi sees embodied in the Muselmann all the evil of our time in one image,6 the image emptied of the divine image. It is why Fackenheim sees in the Muselmann the Nazis’ most characteristic, most original product.7 The Nazis’ transformation of man into Muselmann is the singular phenomenon that constitutes the singularity of the Holocaust, and it makes the Holocaust decisive for all humanity, for

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the Muselmann is not merely the calculated result of torture, exposure, and deprivation. Far more than the victim of starvation and brutality, the Muselmann is the Jew whose very existence was deemed criminal, whose prayers were regarded as an act of sedition, whose holy days were subject to desecration. He is the Jew for whom marriage and childbirth were forbidden, for whom schooling was a crime, and for whom there was no protection under the law. He is the Jew both widowed and orphaned, forced to witness the murder of his family and rendered ferociously alone8 before being rendered ferociously faceless. Thus Fackenheim describes the Muselmann as a new way of human being in history.9 And yet Levi wonders whether it is a way of human being at all: “non-men,” he calls them. The question before us, then, is this: What do Levi’s question concerning a man and Fackenheim’s elaboration on the Muselmann tell us about the wound that the Nazis inflicted upon humanity and how to mend it? In order to address this question, we shall examine more closely Levi’s remarks about the Muselmann, as well as Fackenheim’s insights into the task of mending the world in the wake of this offense. Three key points in Levi’s exposition on the Muselmann are the Muselmann’s loss of a past, loss of words, and loss of presence. Three issues to consider with the help of Fackenheim, then, are mending time, mending language, and mending relation. These are the matters that define the opposition between man and Muselmann, which is the unprecedented opposition that not only defines the Holocaust but also implicates us in our own humanity. THE MENDING OF TIME All the Muselmänner who finished in the gas chambers, writes Levi, have the same story, or more exactly, have no story,10 that is, they have no storia, to use the Italian word from Levi’s text, a word that also means history. In this word that means both story and history, suggesting both tale and tradition, we catch a deeper glimpse of what the divine spark is made of: it is made of the human being’s tale and tradition. Where the divine spark is gone, the story is gone. If the Muselmann is one who has no story, then a man is one who has a story, both personal and communal. When God breathes the divine spark into the human being, he breathes his story, which is his Torah, into the human being. Thus the human being inherits the tale and tradition that make every human being’s story meaningful. Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson makes a distinction between speaking, saying, and relating, that is, storytelling. Speaking and saying, he explains, come from the surface, not from the depth of the soul. The mouth can sometimes speak what the heart does not feel. “Relating,” however, comes from the depths of a man’s being.11 And abiding in the depths of a man’s being is the divine spark that is made of his tale and his tradition. Receiving

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and relating our tales, we enter into a relation with the tales of others, of all humanity, and thus we make our humanity manifest, for the tale is the form that our memory assumes: in our memory lies our humanity. The Muselmann, however, has no tale, no memory. Like Elie Wiesel,12 Levi views the Holocaust as a war against memory, declaring that the entire history of the brief “millennial Reich” can be reread as a war against memory, as Orwellian falsification of memory, falsification of reality, negation of reality.13 As a negation of reality, the assault on memory is a negation of creation. If what took place at Auschwitz was an anti-creation, as Levi describes it,14 then it was the anti-creation of the non-man, of the Muselmann, undertaken through the erasure of story and the obliteration of memory. In the Muselmann—where the war on memory attains the absolute negation of human reality—the Nazis attain their most absolute victory, a victory over time itself. For the Jew, the horizons of time are delineated by a memory that exceeds the horizons of birth and death: a memory of the Exodus from Egypt and even Creation itself, as well as a memory of the future expressed in the memory of the Messiah, which means the eternal is manifest in memory. Where memory is absent, the eternal is absent, meaning is absent, and time is absent. For the Muselmann time is reduced to even less than the horizons of birth and death. As one whose death is not death, the Muselmann is outside of time. Radically indifferent to his own being, he embodies the radical neutrality of Being, of a duration that does not endure but is simply there, as timeless as Being itself. He is pure Dasein, which is the opposite of the neshamah tehorah, the pure soul that is the divine spark, for Dasein is the being there that is devoid of any being beyond, hence devoid of all divine being. Here we realize that the war against memory is a war against the immemorial. According to Jewish teaching, a human being who harbors a trace of the divine harbors a memory traceable to the immemorial. The immemorial is the Torah that precedes Creation itself (see, for example, Bereshit Tanchuma 1). The immemorial is the Good that chooses us prior to all time and every context, to make our choices meaningful and thus situate us in time. Obliterating the memory of the immemorial, the Nazis obliterate not only the divine spark that is made of memory but also the ethical Good that makes humanity matter. In doing so, they obliterate the divine image within themselves, for the soul suffers what it inflicts. In manufacturing Muselmänner, says Fackenheim, the Auschwitz criminals destroyed the divine image within their victims, and in doing what they did they destroyed it in themselves as well. In consequence, a new necessity has arisen for the ethics of Judaism in our time. What has been broken must be mended. Even for a Jew who cannot believe in God, it is necessary to act as though man were made in His image.15 What has been broken is memory. And when memory is broken, so is time; when time is broken, so is mean-

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ing. All three—memory, time, and meaning—are interwoven to create life, but the first of these is memory. When memory is broken, both identity and direction are lost; what remains are the walking dead, blank and aimless—the “shufflers,” as Isabella Leitner once described them to me, those who have no walk because they have no place to go. That is what a Muselmann is: one who shuffles and does not walk: locked into a non-place, he has no place to go, which is to say, he has no story. To act as though man were made in the image of the Holy One is to act as though life were a tale directed toward an outcome, as though life had meaning. To have a sense of meaning is to have a sense of mission and direction, a horizon that we have yet to meet and a task that we have yet to accomplish. The story that constitutes the past is transmitted for the sake of this meaning yet to be fulfilled. And as long as this yet to be is at work in life, memory exceeds the boundaries of birth and death. When memory exceeds those horizons, death is once again death, and dying is once again a task and a testimony bequeathed to our children. The one who has no story—the Jew whom the Nazis transform into a Muselmann in their war against memory—is the one who has no tradition. What must be mended, as Fackenheim rightly argues, is tradition.16 As we have seen, Fackenheim maintains that because the Nazi made the Jew into a Muselmann in whom the divine spark is dead, the Jew must live as if that divine spark were alive within him—as if he were in truth created in the image and likeness of God. This movement forward is a movement of memory back into tradition; it is memory’s summons of tradition back into a present, so that the present might once more be made of sacred history and thus aspire to a future. Here we realize that inasmuch as time is tied to meaning, time is tied to sanctity. The recovery of tradition, moreover, entails a mending of a human relation through which God may pass from a realm above into a reality between, where a tale related draws both listener and speaker into a relation. When the relation is lost, the above and between are lost: God and humanity are lost. Auschwitz signifies this single blow that works the double destruction of the human and the divine in the Jew made into Muselmann. It has always been the case that a Jew cannot bear witness to the divine image within the human being unless he believes his own testimony. In our time, however, Fackenheim notes, he cannot authentically believe in this testimony without exposing himself both to the fact that the image of God was destroyed, and to the fact that the unsurpassable attempt to destroy it was successfully resisted.17 The survivor’s endeavor to speak the memory precedes the summons to recovery; thus it is through the survivor, through his memor y, that the summons comes to us from beyond the sur vivor. Where is that beyond? It is couched in the texts and in the prayers of the tradition. Even Levi, who refused God in the face of Auschwitz, suggests that the tales of the Shoah might themselves be viewed as the tales of a new

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Bible.18 Pursuing one implication of Levi’s assertion, Fackenheim maintains that an encounter with the biblical text has become a necessity for postHolocaust Jewish thought,19 for the sacred text is a key to any recovery of the sacred tradition that has nurtured Jewish life for centuries. This existential necessity confronting the Jew lies in the nature of the Jewish relation to being. If being has meaning for the Jew, it is, in the words of Emmanuel Levinas, to realize the Torah. To refuse the Torah is to bring being back to nothingness.20 Either Torah or Auschwitz—that is the existential necessity confronting the Jew and underlying the recovery of tradition—either the man created by the God of Torah or the Muselmann created by the Nazi assault on God. After Auschwitz, there is no third alternative. Fackenheim repeatedly confronts us with this inescapable decision in the various expressions of his famous 614th commandment. He insists, for example, that Jews are forbidden to hand Hitler posthumous victories,21 and that every Jew confronts a commanding Voice heard from Auschwitz that bids him to testify that some gods are false.22 Simply stated, the 614th commandment is the commandment to restore the divine image.23 Whereas the one created in the image of the true God is man, the one created in the image of the Nazi false gods is the Muselmann. Void of any trace of HaShem, he is the one for whom a Kiddush HaShem or martyrdom is impossible. Fackenheim has shown that in making Jewish existence a capital crime, Hitler murdered Jewish martyrdom itself,24 but the matter runs deeper still: the murder of martyrdom lies not only in making Jewish existence a crime but most especially in making the Jew into a Muselmann. The recovery of tradition, and with it the recovery of the inescapable either/or, is a recovery of the possibility of martyrdom. Because the truth of the sacred tradition is a living truth, the death of the martyr is for the sake of life. Wherever this for the sake of arises, life is instilled with time. And where life is instilled with time, death is death, situated within its sacred contexts. In this connection Fackenheim comments on the image of the dry bones in the book of Ezekiel: in Ezekiel’s image, the dead have fallen in battle. The dead of the Holocaust were denied battle, its opportunity and its honor. Denied the peace even of bones, they were denied also the honor of graves, for they, the others, ground their bones to dust and threw the dust into rivers. To apply Ezekiel’s image of Jewish death to the Holocaust, then, is impossible. The new enemy, no mere Haman, not only succeeded where Haman failed, for he murdered the Jewish people, but he murdered also Ezekiel’s image of Jewish death.25 Without a recovery of Jewish death, Ezekiel’s dry bones can never regain the flesh and blood of Jewish life. Auschwitz is a cemetery without a single grave, and the Muselmann is the image of Auschwitz, more terrifying than Ezekiel’s image of dry bones, for Ezekiel’s dry bones have their midrash, whereas the Muselmann has none. Midrash was meant for every kind of imperfect world, says Fackenheim, but it was not meant for Planet Auschwitz, the anti-world.26 If midrash is to find its way from the anti-world into the world, then what is needed is the insertion

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of a kind of midrashic madness into the tradition recovered, a madness that brings about the very recovery. Midrashic madness, Fackenheim explains, is the Word spoken in the anti-world that ought not to be but is. The existence it points to acts to restore a world that ought to be but is not, and this is its madness. After Planet Auschwitz, there can be no health without this madness. Without this madness, a Jew cannot do—with God or without him—what a Voice from Sinai bids him to do: to choose life.27 With this madness, then, a Jew must choose life as a Jew, bearing Jewish children into the world, despite the fact that the identity that gives them life may well threaten their life, for in the Holocaust, Fackenheim points out, Jews were slaughtered not because they abandoned the Torah that gives them their identity but because their grandparents refused to abandon it.28 This mad embrace of tradition is a mad embrace of Torah: the mending of time requires the mending of the word, for time is in the word, not the other way around. Only where there is a word uttered between two is there a response yet to be spoken. THE MENDING OF THE WORD Drained of the divine image, the Muselmann is drained of the word. The Muselmann, one recalls Levi’s words, is part of a silent, anonymous mass of non-men29 who say nothing, not because they have nothing to say but because their words have been reduced to non-words—that is the void that they are. This mute and faceless mass is a river of non-being that flows contrary to the flow of all other rivers. Having flowed to what Levi calls the bottom, this river now flows upward, through the chimneys, where the silent, anonymous mass ascends into the silence of the heavens. Indeed, the silence of the heavens is precisely the silence of this anonymous mass. In contrast to the Muselmann who fades into this mute and massive anonymity, the human being created in the divine image is created in the image of the One who brings all things into being through his word, as we say in a familiar blessing. According to Jewish tradition, the human being is called a medaber, a speaker, because the capacity for speech defines the human being as the one created in the image of the Holy One. As a medaber, a human being may transcend the drone of the anonymous mass. Once he is rendered wordless, however, the man becomes a non-man: the Muselmann is the one from whose lips not the trace of a word is to be heard—that is why his eyes are empty of thought and sentience. Having the capacity for neither speech nor thought, the Jew made Muselmann is bled of what defines him as man. The point bears repeating: his silence is not the silence of a man who does not speak; the divine image dead in him is a dead silence. It is the singular silence of the concentrationary universe. Unlike many memoir writers who recall the savage screams that greeted them when they rolled into Birkenau, Levi says that when he arrived everything was as silent as an aquarium.30 Yes, the shouting and screaming, brutal

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and inhuman, were there. But so was the silence. Later, after he has become a denizen of the depths of Auschwitz, Levi declares that the essence of the Lager is hunger.31 But in this case, of course, hunger is not the sensation of having missed a meal or feeling like a bite to eat. It is no more the hunger between meals than the silence is a silence between words. Like the silence, this hunger is ubiquitous and definitive. The hunger and the silence—the silence of the hunger, the hunger of the silence, and the radical emptiness of both—constitute the essence of the camp and are incarnate in the Muselmann. That is why Fackenheim deems his silence a terrible silence,32 a silence that cannot be breached. Whereas man as medaber is a microcosm of creation, the Muselmann is a microcosm of the anti-creation, embodying what Levi calls the “mystique of barrenness,” where barrenness is a translation of the Italian vuoto, a word signifying the void.33 The anti-creation is the creation of nothing out of something, a return to the void of what strives to overcome the void. If man is created in the image of the divine, then the Muselmann is created in the image of the void. But this void is full—full of a silence that surpasses terror, and that is why it is terrible. Neither something nor nothing but in a category of its own—in the category that defines the Holocaust—this void is akin to what Levinas describes as there is. With the appearance of the there is, he explains, the absence of everything returns to us as a presence, as the place where the bottom has dropped out of everything, an atmospheric density, a plenitude of the void, or the murmur of silence.34 Elsewhere Levinas refers to the murmur of silence as the anonymous and senseless rumbling of being.35 As the one who assumes the form of the there is, the Muselmann does not encounter the murmur of silence or the rumbling of being that characterize the there is. Indeed, the Muselmann encounters nothing. Rather, the there is is what we encounter—or collide with—in the Muselmann, and that is where the mending of the word becomes an issue. It is not the Muselmann but we who are overwhelmed by the horror. Therefore, the emptiness to be overcome in the mending of the word is as much ours as it is the Lager’s. From the Muselmann it creeps into the survivor; from the survivor it creeps into us, as it crept from Levi into Fackenheim. Although not every inmate in the Lager is a Muselmann, not a single inmate escapes the look in those eyes that look at nothing. Despite its resemblance to the there is, one hesitates to call the silence that exudes from that anonymous mass the rumbling of being. And yet, in Survival in Auschwitz, we sense the rumbling of something in what Levi calls a perpetual Babel of languages never heard before.36 To be sure, the Muselmann has been made mute not merely through deprivation but through a fundamental assault on the word. He is unable to speak, because words have been reduced to what Levi calls a dreadful sound and fury signifying nothing.37 The Italian version of this phrase conveys more of this violence than does the English translation. Sound is a translation of fracasso, from fracassare, meaning to smash, chatter, crash; and signifying nothing is privo di significato, or destitute of meaning.

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The memory of the silence that oozes from the Muselmann and reverberates throughout languages never heard before is the memory of violence. The Muselmann is he who has suffered the most radical violence that can be done to a man: he is the Jew whom the Nazi has fashioned into a non-man, signifying nothing. He is simply there, a blank that cannot be filled in. Hence there is no word for what is done to him, no word to express this offense, as Levi says, no word for the demolition of a man,38 for the demolition of a man is the demolition of the word. It is the demolition of what imparts meaning to a man, and it begins with the demolition of the Jew. It is the Jew, as medaber, who affirms that the demolition of a man is the demolition of the word, beginning with the word that names the man—beginning with his name. The prelude to the anonymity of the Muselmann is the rendering anonymous of every man who enters the anti-world. How? By replacing the name with a number that signifies the anonymous in the anonymous rumbling of the Lager. They will even take away our name, says Levi.39 The tattoo is your new name, he says.40 A profound link between this assault on the name and the creation the Muselmann can be seen in a teaching from Nachman of Breslov concerning what befalls a man when he dies.41 As the man lies in his grave, says Rabbi Nachman, the Angel of Death comes to him to take him into the presence of the Holy One. But in order to rise from the grave and enter into the Divine Presence, the man must be able to answer a question: What is your name? But the Muselmann is denied even the question, for he is nameless; he is nameless because he is wordless. That is why his death is not death: the Angel of Death has nothing to ask him. What does the erasure of the name have to do with the extinguishing of the divine spark that both Levi and Fackenheim invoke? Inscribing the number on the body is part of emptying the body of its soul, which is the divine image of the Name. Indeed, Jewish tradition maintains that the name and the soul, the name and the person, are of a piece. In his commentary on Isaiah, for example, Abraham Ibn Ezra asserts that the term shem (name) is to be understood to mean the person himself.42 When the number takes over the name, the Nazis make the human being into an object consisting entirely of an exterior, all surface, void of any inner depth that would distinguish the individual as a being. The numbers tattooed on the arms, therefore, are opposed to being: they are the ciphers of indifferent nothingness that mark the Jew for his descent into the mute indifference of the Muselmann. Robbed of his name and marked with a number, the human being is robbed of what makes him a human being: the soul created in the divine image. Instead of the divine image, we have the image of the destruction of the divine image, the image of the Muselmann, who is himself the inescapable image of the Holocaust. Levi escaped the camp, but he did not escape the Muselmann, for the tattoo is the mark of the Muselmann. In Levi’s words, it means: you will never leave here.43 Through the needle, Auschwitz invades the flesh and stains the image of the human being; through the flesh, it enters

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his soul. The eclipse of the name, moreover, is tied to the breakdown of the body: showing the number in exchange for food,44 the prisoner declares his namelessness and his nothingness. Levi’s memoir seeks to recover not only the events of the past but all that a lost name might convey, and with it the significance of the loss. Here the man chooses memory over the number; the number was calculated to obliterate the name, because the name is full of memory—the memory of a life and a tradition in which others bore the same name. Stealing away the name, the number murders memory. Once the assault on HaShem is undertaken through the assault on the name, meaning is torn from every name, from every word, and language itself is undermined. In Levi’s memoir, a prominent symbol of the Lager’s perversion of language is the Carbide Tower at Buna, the tower they called the Babelturm, or Tower of Babel. Like the Tower of Babel, it represents not only the confusion of tongues but the collapse of humanity. Its bricks, says Levi, were called Ziegel, briques, cegli, kamenny, mattoni, téglak, and they were cemented by hate.45 As in the time of Babel, the tower’s bricks were not bricks, and the men were not men. For in the Midrash it is written, if a man fell [from the Tower] and died they paid no heed to him, but if a brick fell they sat down and wept, and said: Woe is us! When will another come in its stead?46 This is the confusion that leads to the question: What is a man? If the Lagers had lasted longer, writes Levi, then a new, harsh language would have been born,47 but it would have been a language with no room for the word man, a language in which man has been eclipsed by Muselmann, an anti-language that tears human from human in the tearing of word from meaning. If a man is a medaber, a speaking being, then his being inheres in a relation to another being. And here we come to a critical realization: If the substance of a human being lies in the story he or she relates, then a human being is made of relation. Since relation requires difference, the murder of relation comes with the collapse of difference into indifference. Indeed, if he signifies anything, the Muselmann signifies a radical, absolute indifference. Therefore, transforming difference into non-indifference is a key to the movement from Muselmann to man, a movement that would restore the human-to-human relation that constitutes our humanity. THE MENDING OF RELATION What has just been termed a transformation of difference into non-indifference is what Fackenheim refers to as a recovery from an illness,48 for the illness is the illness of indifference, both on the part of the Muselmann and on the part of those of us who are implicated by his image. In his elaboration on Levi’s question concerning man, Fackenheim summons us to attend to the Voice that even from the silence of Auschwitz commands us to be otherwise than indifferent. The Voice of Auschwitz, he writes, manifests a divine Presence which,

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as it were, is shorn of all except commanding Power. This Power, however, is inescapable.49 The recovery from the illness of indifference is a recovery of the sleepless gaze of the Holy One; and to be under that sleepless gaze is, as Levinas demonstrates, to be the bearer of another subject—bearer and supporter—to be responsible for this other [human being].50 The divine image that is the other in me stirs in the encounter with another human being, and I realize that he is the one who is in me, so that the human outcry becomes a divine commandment. Just as the story implicates us, the word commands us; to attain the mending of the word is to recover the commandment that bids us to become the bearer of another subject, the one responsible for this human being. Commenting on the examples of those who managed to resist the radical assault on their humanity, Fackenheim asserts, our ecstatic thought must point to their resistance—the resistance in thought and the resistance in life—as ontologically ultimate. Resistance in that extremity was a way of being. For our thought now, it is an ontological category.51 What makes this resistance ontologically ultimate is that it was commanded by a Divine Voice and not deduced from human ideals or a categorical imperative, which means that resistance in that extremity was not only a way of being—it was a revelation of the Holy One. And where the Holy One is revealed, there is ethical exigency. Therefore, says Fackenheim, the Tikkun which for the post-Holocaust Jew is a moral necessity is a possibility because during the Holocaust itself a Jewish Tikkun was already actual. This simple but enormous, nay, world-historical truth is the rock on which rests any authentic Jewish future, and any authentic future Jewish identity.52 In order to enter into the Jewish future that belongs to Jewish identity, there must be a mending of human relation. Like the Good that chooses us before we choose between good and evil, the ones who heed the Voice draw us into the relation that we must restore before we have restored it. Why? Because in the act of heeding the Voice, they make it heard, so that through their example we hear a Voice that precedes their example. Robbing the Jew of his story, however, the Nazi erases everything that is already there. Mending the relation, then, brings the Jew back to the issue of mending the memory and the word. By now it can be seen that the relation mended with the restoration of memory and the word is a relation both to God and to one’s fellow human being; it also can be seen that the creation of the Muselmann constitutes an assault on both. Through those who resisted the living death of the Muselmann the Jew receives the commandment to choose life and to live life as one of God’s Chosen, and not as an ethnic accident, for if the Jew is an ethnic accident and the Torah a cultural artifact, then the divine spark is mere metaphor. And if that is the case, then the only reality is the material reality of what is weighed, measured, and counted. One whose reality is no more than material, however, is locked into an impenetrable solitude and can have no relation to anything outside himself. Here the most radical image of the material man is precisely the Muselmann.

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Thus in Auschwitz the Jew who had attested to the truth of the divine image and the reality of God is radically reduced to raw material. As Fackenheim points out, that the dead had been human when alive was a truth systematically rejected when their bodies were made into fertilizer and soap.53 This comes about not just when the human is reduced to a merely material reality—to raw material—but when there is a tearing of the material away from the spiritual, that is, a rupture of the soul that emerges in the midst of human relation. I have no spiritual needs, no accountability before the Holy, runs the logic of the illness. Therefore, I have nothing to do with you, and you have nothing to do with me. Reduced to mere matter, the other does not matter. And the same applies to the self. This connection between the illness that destroys the other and the assault aimed at the self must be kept in mind when recalling Fackenheim’s insight that the Nazis not only loathed the Jews but set out to create within them a profound self-loathing. Self-loathing, he explains, is the aim of excremental assault,54 and it is a key contributor to the creation of a Muselmann. The purpose of covering the Jew with filth, in other words, is not to inflict the self with illness but to transform the self into illness through an increasingly radical isolation from the other. If Levi tells his tale to seek an interior liberation, as he states it,55 then it is a liberation attained by entering into a relation with another, with a reader. He does not open the wound of memory for the sake of self-gratification but in order to seek a recovery from an illness through a dialogical relation to another, for another, and in which his outcry over the demolition of a man signifies the dearness of a man. The essence of Jewish tradition lies in loving God with all your heart, all your soul, and all the more that you are, b’kol me’odekhah. All the more commands the mending of relation, for it takes us beyond the confines of ego in a movement toward the neighbor. God confronts man with the demand to turn to his human neighbor, and in doing so, to turn back to God Himself, Fackenheim states. For there is no humble walking before God unless it manifests itself in justice and mercy to the human neighbor.56 If there is a definitive link between idolatry and Auschwitz, as Fackenheim suggests,57 then it is because there is a definitive link between idolatry and the Nazi blindness to the neighbor. To a Jew, whom the Talmud defines as anyone who repudiates idolatry (Megillah 13a), every human being is his neighbor, for every human being is a ben adam, a child of Adam. A Jew is who he is, therefore, to the extent that he expresses his love for God through his caring relation to his fellow human being. The Jews may have been threatened with starvation, torture, and murder, but the real threat, the ontological illness, was in being transformed from a caring man into a radically indifferent Muselmann. The Nazis regarded the very being of the Jew as a disease, and so they inflicted upon the Jew the disease of a radical indifference toward all being. And yet, for some, that collapse into a living death was resisted. For all the resistance fighters inside and outside Nazi-occupied Europe, resistance was a

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doing, Fackenheim points out. For Jews caught by the full force of the Nazi logic of destruction, resistance was a way of being.58 And, as a way of being, resistance is a resistance to indifference, for the sake of another. To be sure, in his elaboration on Levi’s question, Fackenheim himself engages in this resistance that is a way of Jewish being, and therein lies the greatness of his thought as a Jewish thinker. It is a thinking attained despite the non-being of the Muselmann that would void all thought, for the Muselmann renders void the thinking that has shaped Western civilization. Nothing the speculative tradition has to offer, from Aristotle to Descartes, from Kant to Heidegger, can mend what was broken in the creation of the Muselmann. Though infinitely above the world and the humanity that is part of it, says Fackenheim of the God of Abraham, he creates man—him alone—in His very own image! The God of Aristotle does no such thing.59 And the god of Aristotle is the preeminent god of the philosophers, the indifferent god of a humanity that inevitably succumbs to indifference. As we have seen, the Muselmann is much more than a victim of starvation. In addition to the emaciation of his body, he suffers an emaciation of the soul. And yet, as an assault on the non-indifference that defines human relation, the assault on the soul is possible only for a being of flesh and blood, for the non-indifference that affirms the dearness of another is possible only among beings of flesh and blood. The being for-the-other that characterizes non-indifference comes not in elevated feelings, Levinas explains, but in a tearing away of bread from the mouth that tastes it, to give it to the other.60 To be sure, bread is bread only when it is offered to another; a human being is not what he eats—he is what he offers another to eat. The offering of bread to another person affirms the one in whose image that person is created, for he is the one who brings forth bread from the earth—to be offered to another. The act of offering bread to another, therefore, is a fundamental signifier of a humanity created in the image of the divine. In the process of creating a non-man or a Muselmann, bread is made into something else. It is the gray slab of breadbrot-Broid-chleb-pain-lechem-keynér that in this realm is their only money.61 Bread is not bread when bread is currency; meaning has been torn from this word bread, and with the tearing of this meaning from that word, human is torn from human. In his memoir Levi shows that when the meaning of the word bread is regained, human relation is regained, for in the end the moment came when one person offered bread to another. It really meant that the Lager was dead, writes Levi. I believe that that moment can be dated as the beginning of the change by which we who had not died slowly changed from Häftlinge to men again.62 Becoming a man again, he assumes his name again. Assuming a name again, he is summoned by name to come to the aid of other men, the sick who shouted his name day and night.63 Here Levi discovers that to be a man—to have a story and a name, a word and a meaning—is to be responsible: subjectivity is responsibility. The Commanding Voice of Auschwitz is a voice that

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calls upon me by name to snatch the bread from my own mouth and offer it to another. In the concentrationary universe, the Commanding Voice was at times swallowed up by the silence of the Muselmann. After Auschwitz, it cries out from the image of the Muselmann and commands us to be men. CONCLUSION Primo Levi’s question concerning what a man is turns out to be a question concerning what bread is, what meaning is, what memory is. It is the one serious philosophical question to come out of the Holocaust, and Emil Fackenheim is the one philosopher to take it seriously. Like Jacob at Peniel, he wrestles with the question of why it matters and what must be done. He wrestles with a dark angel to extract the blessing that is couched in the name of Israel, which is to say, Fackenheim has the courage to confront the Holocaust in the Holocaust, to confront the Jew in the Holocaust as a Jew. Because the Jew bears witness to the sanctity of humanity, the Jew is the one who must respond to Levi’s question. Never was a more exalted view of man conceived, Fackenheim comments on the teaching of Torah, than that of the divine image, and never one more radically antiracist. It was therefore grimly logical—if to be sure uniquely horrifying—that the most radical racists of all time decreed a unique fate for the Jewish people.64 That unique fate was not simply extermination—it was the transformation of the Jew into a Muselmann. And so we are left with an either/or that defines the Holocaust and decides our future, not only as Jews but as human beings: either man or Muselmann. Fackenheim has shown that only the teaching and tradition transmitted through the Jew targeted for this transformation can adequately respond to the question. And because the Jew is he who repudiates idolatry, Fackenheim has demonstrated that the question is one concerning idolatry. He has shown that with their supposition that idolatry has been surpassed, neither Christianity nor Enlightenment philosophy can resolve the question of man or Muselmann,65 for in their thinking, both are contrary to the Jewish thought required for a movement from Muselmann back to man. Indeed, both Christianity and the philosophy of the Enlightenment have proven their bankruptcy in this regard. With its doctrine of inherited sin, according to which to be born is to be in a state of sin, Christianity must regard the very being of the unredeemed Jew as essentially sinful and therefore empty of the pure soul that is the divine spark. As for the philosophy of the Enlightenment, with its insistence in the autonomy of a self-legislating self, it is deaf to the Commanding Voice of Auschwitz. Only Judaism is adequate to responding to the question of man or Muselmann, for only Judaism can affirm the absolute purity of the soul that is the divine spark within the human being, only Judaism can affirm the absolute link between the meaning of the word and the value of the human being, and only Judaism can affirm the absolute commandment to love thy neighbor, who is every man. And how

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shall the Jewish thinker join his thought to Judaism and accomplish this affirmation? Through the 614th commandment, which commands the recovery of the tradition, the recovery of the teaching, and the recovery of the relation to God and humanity. NOTES 1. Emil L. Fackenheim, God’s Presence in History (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), 74. 2. Emil L. Fackenheim, The Jewish Return into History (New York: Schocken, 1978), 246. 3. Ibid. 4. Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity, translated by Stuart Woolf (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 90. 5. Fackenheim, God’s Presence, 86. 6. Levi, Survival, 90. 7. Emil L. Fackenheim, To Mend the World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 100. 8. Cf. Levi, Survival, 88. 9. Fackenheim, Jewish Return, 246. 10. Levi, Survival, 90. See Primo Levi, Se questo è un uomo (Torino: Einaudi, 1989), 82. 11. Menachem M. Schneerson, Torah Studies (London: Lubavitch Foundation, 1986), 74. 12. Elie Wiesel, Evil and Exile, translated by Jon Rothschild (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), 155. 13. Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, translated by Raymond Rosenthal (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), 31. 14. See Primo Levi, The Reawakening, translated by Stuart Woolf (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1965), 128. 15. Emil L. Fackenheim, What Is Judaism? (New York: Macmillan, 1987), 180. 16. See Fackenheim, To Mend, 310. 17. Fackenheim, Jewish Return, 251. 18. Levi, Survival, 66. 19. Fackenheim, To Mend, 18. 20. Emmanuel Levinas, Nine Talmudic Readings, translated by Annette Aronowicz (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 41. 21. Fackenheim, God’s Presence, 84. 22. Emil L. Fackenheim, Encounters between Judaism and Modern Philosophy (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 167. 23. Fackenheim, Jewish Return, 251. 24. Ibid., 247. 25. Emil L. Fackenheim, The Jewish Bible after the Holocaust (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 67. 26. Fackenheim, Jewish Return, 265. 27. Ibid., 269.

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28. Fackenheim, God’s Presence, 73. 29. Levi, Survival, 90. 30. Ibid., 19. 31. Ibid., 74. 32. Fackenheim, To Mend, 135. 33. Levi, The Reawakening, 128. See Primo Levi, La Tregua (Torino: Einaudi, 1989), 250. 34. Emmanuel Levinas, Time and the Other, translated by Richard A. Cohen (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1987), 46. 35. Emmanuel Levinas, Ethics and Infinity, translated by Richard A. Cohen (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1985), 52. 36. Levi, Survival, 38. 37. Levi, Drowned, 93–94. See Primo Levi, I sommersi e I salvati (Torino: Einaudi, 1986), 72. 38. Levi, Survival, 26. 39. Ibid., 27. 40. Levi, Drowned, 119. 41. See Nathan of Nemirov, Rabbi Nachman’s Wisdom: Shevachay HaRan and Sichos HaRan, translated by Aryeh Kaplan, edited by Zvi Aryeh Rosenfeld (New York: A. Kaplan, 1973), 148. 42. Abraham Ibn Ezra, The Commentary of Ibn Ezra on Isaiah, translated by Michael Friedlander (New York: Feldheim, 1943), 73. 43. Levi, Drowned, 119. 44. See Levi, Survival, 27–28. 45. Ibid., 72–73. 46. Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer, translated by Gerald Friedlander (New York: Herman Press, 1970), 176. 47. Levi, Survival, 123. 48. See, for example, Fackenheim, To Mend, 310. 49. Fackenheim, God’s Presence, p.88. 50. Levinas, Nine Talmudic Readings, 168. 51. Fackenheim, To Mend, 248. 52. Ibid., 300. 53. Fackenheim, Jewish Return, 89. 54. Fackenheim, To Mend, 209. 55. Levi, Survival, 9. 56. Fackenheim, Encounters, 49. 57. Fackenheim, To Mend, 71. 58. Ibid., 223–24. 59. Fackenheim, What Is Judaism?, 109. 60. Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence, translated by Alphonso Lingis (The Hague, the Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 1981), 64. 61. Levi, Survival, 39. 62. Ibid., 160. 63. Ibid., 166. 64. Fackenheim, What Is Judaism?, 109. 65. See Fackenheim, Encounters, 192–93.

C HA P T E R 1 3

Emil Fackenheim, Irving Howe, and the Fate of Secular Jewishness EDWARD ALEXANDER

Far along in his book Kaddish, at page 514, Leon Wieseltier writes as follows: The Jewish culture in which I was raised was a survivalist culture. It was still dazed by the destruction in Europe. “I used to be highly critical of Jewish philosophies which seemed to advocate no more than survival for survival’s sake,” a Jewish philosopher wrote in the 1960s. “I have changed my mind.” He went on to make his reputation by proposing to add to the 613 commandments of the Torah one more commandment, “what I will boldly term the 614th commandment: the authentic Jew of today is forbidden to hand Hitler yet another, posthumous victory.” In its day, this spiritualization of the disaster did not seem grotesque. But it was not long before I began to hear critical voices claiming that survival is not the end of the subject. Survival for what? Survival as what? When I was young, I was excited by such questions. They pried me away from the permanent commemoration in which I lived. And they were good questions. Still, I know better now. The antinomy is not acceptable. Even in extremity, there was no such thing as survival for survival’s sake. There is no survival without meaning, and there is no meaning without survival.1 The Jewish philosopher rather elegantly praised in this passage from a book that says that philosophy is the most beautiful word in the English 163

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language is Emil Fackenheim. But if Wieseltier here shows just enough courage to dissent from the conformity of liberal-left dissent from Fackenheim’s famous formulation, then he does not show quite enough to name the Jewish philosopher cited, a significant omission when addressing a readership afflicted with historical amnesia. Wieseltier is the literary editor of the New Republic; and in the world of New Republic writer and readers, the world of (mostly) liberals, especially Jewish ones, assent to the 614th commandment is a sentiment deemed suitable only to Jewish cab drivers, accountants, and dentists. This world also was the world of Irving Howe, a frequent contributor to the New Republic, a close friend of Wieseltier’s, and somebody who was wont to ask hard questions about the “why” of Jewish survival. In this as in other respects, Fackenheim and Howe seem to have been hopelessly remote from one another: German-Jew versus American Jew; theological-philosophical mind versus literary-political one; advocate of Jewish sovereignty versus celebrant of Jewish powerlessness; and above all, perhaps, what Fackenheim in To Mend the World called the ultimate and most significant of all divides, that between religious and secular Jew.2 The contrasts in personal history and circumstances are too obvious to require detailed enumeration. In 1938, in the wake of the pogrom the Germans mockingly named Kristallnacht, a twenty-two-year-old Fackenheim, then a rabbinical student, was sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, from which he was released in February 1939, three months before he fled Germany for Great Britain. Before he left, his former high school Greek teacher told him, “You must promise me to return. Germany will be destroyed, and we shall need you to help rebuild her.” The young Fackenheim, after but a moment’s deliberation, said: “After what has happened now I know that the Jewish people will need me more. I agree that Germany will be destroyed. But the rebuilding will have to be done by others.”3 Howe, four years younger than Fackenheim, was in 1938 a dilatory student at the City College of New York (CCNY), deeply involved in Trotskyist politics and almost entirely oblivious to the problems of German Jews, to say nothing of the Jewish people in general. There is even, I think, a sharp contrast between their current reputations. Fackenheim’s insistence on the moral centrality of Holocaust memory, for Christians as well as Jews, his declaration that “a Judaism which survived at the price of ignoring Auschwitz would not deserve to survive,”4 and above all his insistence that any authentic response to the Holocaust requires commitment to the autonomy and security of Israel have made his ideas a favorite target of what Alvin Rosenfeld, in a devastating, indispensable essay,5 calls the concerted assault on Holocaust memory. According to Norman Finkelstein, Michael Goldberg, Peter Novick, Tom Segev, Yehudah Elkanah, Avishai Margalit, Boaz Evron, and many others, it is precisely memory of the Holocaust that has diverted Jews from what, in their view, is the appointed destiny of Jews in this world: to dance at the weddings of every people except their own,

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to support liberal causes and the Democratic Party in America or the Meretz party and—this most of all—the aspirations of Yasser Arafat in Israel. Several of them, in fact, argue that Holocaust memory is a far greater danger to Israel than all the Arab armies combined, and that what is wanted is Holocaust forgetting. But Howe has suffered a worse fate than Fackenheim, the fate of being ignored or forgotten. For every hundred graduate students in literature who are familiar with the most stupefyingly opaque French theorists, there is perhaps one who has even heard of Howe, one of the great exemplars of humane literary study in the twentieth century. There also is a sharp contrast in the way they chose to apply their principles to their own lives. Howe doggedly remained loyal to that version of secular messianism called Jewish socialism, even though (with characteristic scrupulousness) he chronicled, especially in World of Our Fathers, the murderous rage of countless Jewish socialists against Jewish religion, Jewish sensibilities, and Jewish peoplehood. But this lifelong socialist used to say that he “would have to be driven by gunpoint before [he] would enter a commune, [his] hopes for a better world stopping short of the claustrophobic littleness of such colonies.”6 Fackenheim, in contrast, practiced what he preached. Having come to the Zionist conclusion that the one genuine tikkun of a shattered world, however fragmentary and precarious, was the State of Israel itself, he moved, with his family, to Jerusalem and took upon himself the constant burden of peril forced upon Israel by her Arab neighbors. That is, he did not confine himself to telling other people to be moral, as moralists generally do; he chose to act morally himself. And yet—despite all these differences, one may find similarities not only intriguing but perhaps of more than accidental or personal significance. First, both men recognized that they could no longer pursue their intellectual vocations as before, because the Jewish catastrophe of World War II had set Jewish as well as ultimate human values in opposition to philosophical and literary ones. At the time the Holocaust was taking place, and even for a few years after the war, Howe had no taste for and little interest in Judaism as a religion. He did not acknowledge himself as part of an American Jewish community, since socialist dogma stipulated (erroneously, of course) that class loyalties and class conflicts were decisive and superseded differences between the Gentile and the Jew. Nevertheless, starting in about 1947, Howe’s attempt to grapple with the Holocaust led him to reconsider what it meant to be Jewish. The turning point came in 1949, when the jury for the prestigious Bollingen Award for excellence in poetry gave its coveted prize to Ezra Pound for his Pisan Cantos, a work permeated by anti-Semitic and fascist sentiment and idea. Pound had also made wartime speeches on Mussolini’s radio in Italy in praise of fascism and anti-Semitism. Prior to this event, Howe had embraced literary modernism, one of whose tenets was the autonomy of the literary

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text and aesthetic judgment, a version of Oscar Wilde’s famous dictum that “There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”7 But now the Pound controversy brought literary and moral values into sharp conflict. It was one thing, Howe wrote, to acknowledge Pound as the poet of “the right wing of modernist culture,” but “to render him public honor a few years after word of the Holocaust reached us was unbearable.”8 Howe was now forced back to a reconsideration of the meaning of aesthetic autonomy. Just what was the relation between the literary work acknowledged to be autonomous and the external world to which it was nevertheless related, the relation between literature and history? Having for over a decade defended the integrity of literature against the political manipulations not only of his Stalinist opponents but of his Trotskyist allies, Howe now found himself forced to agree that the category of the aesthetic is not the primary one for human life, to be very wary of the claims of the formalist aesthetic, and to strike out on a new literary path of his own, which I shall describe presently. What Pound was for Howe, Martin Heidegger was for Fackenheim— only worse, because Howe had no particular admiration for Pound’s poetry, whereas Fackenheim believed that Heidegger’s Being and Time had provided the “deepest and most compelling account of the human condition offered by a twentieth-century existential philosopher.”9 Fackenheim, moreover, was a practitioner of an intellectual discipline often supposed at the outset to be incompatible with Judaism itself. George Eliot, presumed to be so friendly to Jews that each of Israel’s three major cities has named a street for her, called “Jewish philosopher” an oxymoron: “To say ‘Jewish philosopher,’ ” wrote Eliot, “seems almost like saying a round square.”10 Fackenheim himself has written that “Of Jewish philosophy, it may be asked whether it exists at all, or more precisely, whether such existence as it does have is legitimate.”11 The uneasy relationship between philosophy and Judaism was for Fackenheim made almost unbearable by the fact that the great modern tribune of Geist, the man widely assumed to be the supreme figure in modern philosophy, was Martin Heidegger, who as rector of Freiburg University told his students that “The Führer himself and he alone is German reality and its law, today and henceforth.”12 and who mentioned the death camps nowhere in his writings. The failure of Heidegger both during and after the Hitler period to take account of the Holocaust, the almost equally egregious failure of his apologists (most notably his former girlfriend Hannah Arendt) to recognize the resulting inauthenticity of his thought, called into question for Fackenheim the ability of Jewish philosophers to serve two masters: philosophy and Judaism. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, both men recognized the need to rethink not only their respective disciplines but also the divide presumed to separate secular Jews such as Howe from religious ones such as Fackenheim.


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As Fackenheim has put it, “The Nazi holocaust was a crime at once religious and secular, aimed at both the death of the Jewish faith and the death of Jews regardless of faith or lack of faith,”13 Secular Jews such as Howe might not believe in revelation, covenant, and miracle, but they could not reject the experience of their own people. Maidanek and Auschwitz demonstrated that if God did not choose the Jews, then the world chose them. Old distinctions among Jews deriving from the distinction between religious and secularist now diminished in importance, and the compelling question became how to perpetuate Jewishness in a form that blended the two. For Fackenheim, the Zion that arose from the ashes was both “secular” and “religious.” Zionism had begun as a project mainly of secular Jews, a project derided by the Orthodox as yet another form of assimilation, on a national rather than an individual scale, assimilation thinly disguised by nationalist symbols and slogans. But for Fackenheim, Zionism made obsolete old distinctions between religious and secularist: Israel was a community of faith, both because it affirmed the will to live of a martyred people and because nothing short of faith, however ill defined, could explain the tenacity of a permanently beleaguered Jewish population in the midst of fanatically racist and imperialist enemies. There lurked within this secularity innumerable sacrednesses. Fackenheim rejected any attempt, whether historical or theological, to find meaning in the Holocaust, but he strove mightily, in thought and deed, for a response to it. This response required Jews to break “the millennial unholy connection between hatred of Jews and Jewish powerlessness, by founding a state of their own.”14 He knew that this was not the inevitable Jewish response to the Holocaust. It would have been just as “natural” for survivors to steer clear of Palestine, the one place on earth that would tie them inescapably to the Jewish destiny that had just caused them so much grief. Their choice of Palestine was a testimony of life against death, on behalf of Jews and, by implication, of all mankind. Howe, like Fackenheim, sought a response to rather than an explanation of the Holocaust. But unlike Fackenheim, he did not (at first) see the founding of a state as the only alternative to collective despair. His response was a literary one: the salvage of Yiddish literature. If in the Talmud saving a single life is like saving the whole world, then Howe undertook to save a literature. His guiding idea was at once “secular” and “religious,” namely, that a religious faith they had rejected exercised a far more imperious hold over Yiddish writers than new, secular faiths they had adopted. In the late forties, Howe’s feelings of “Jewishness” were strong but shapeless; in order to lend them coherence, in order to provide for secular Jews like himself a substitute for Torah, he hit upon the idea of establishing an objective body of canonical texts for the creed of secular Jewishness. These would be the stories, poems, and essays of that most secular body of Jewish writing, Yiddish literature. Editing and translating this literature would become

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a major activity for Howe for the remainder of his life. “This wasn’t, of course, a very forthright way of confronting my own troubled sense of Jewishness, but that was the way I took. Sometimes you have to make roundabout journeys without quite knowing where they will lead to.”15 One might add, too, that in order to make a return journey, you must first leave. For someone grappling with the implications of the Holocaust, Yiddish too was a natural but not an inevitable place to turn. It was the language of the majority of the victims of Nazism. As a character in Cynthia Ozick’s story “Envy; or, Yiddish in America” (1969) laments: “A little while ago there were twelve million people . . . who lived inside this tongue, and now what is left? A language that never had a territory except Jewish mouths, and half the Jewish mouths on earth already stopped up with German worms.”16 Yiddish literature had begun, in the mid-nineteenth century, as an intensely secular enterprise, a result of the disintegration of the traditional world of East European Judaism. Its only religious aspect was what Howe liked to call the “religious intensity”17 with which its practitioners turned to the idea of secular expression. But in the aftermath of the Holocaust, this largely secular literature could easily take on a religious aspect.Traditionally, in the bilingual Jewish cultural household, Hebrew had been the sacred tongue, Yiddish the mame-loshen, or vernacular; but now Yiddish became for many the “dead” language of martyrdom, while Hebrew was being used for, among other things, purchasing nonkosher meat in Tel-Aviv. As Jacob Glatstein, whose poetry Howe championed above that of all other post-Holocaust Yiddish poets, wrote: “Poet, take the faintest Yiddish speech,/fill it with faith, make it holy again.”18 Howe was too intelligent and honest a man to scant the problems bound to afflict Jews who did not believe in Judaism as a religion. He saw the danger inherent in separating the concept of chosenness from the messianic hope. Even when, in his later years, he was lured into participating in one of Michael Lerner’s grotesque jamborees designed to demonstrate that Torah follows an arrow-straight course from Sinai to the left wing of the Democratic Party, Howe would take pleasure in outraging the assembled Tikkunists by declaring that there is no sanction in Jewish religion for liberal politics. “To claim there is a connection,” he said in 1989, “can lead to parochial sentimentalism or ethnic vanity.”19 Neither did he conceal from himself the amorphous quality of this secular faith. “The very term ‘Jewishness,’ ” he acknowledged, “suggests, of course, a certain vagueness, pointing to the diffusion of a cultural heritage. When one speaks of Judaism or the Jewish religion, it is to invoke a coherent tradition of belief and custom; when one speaks of ‘Jewishness,’ it is to invoke a spectrum of styles and symbols, a range of cultural memories, no longer as ordered or weighty as once they were yet still able to affect experience.”20 It was with this guarded yet sincere belief in the sustaining power of literary Jewishness that Howe began, in the early fi fties, the first of his six volumes of English translations, called A Treasury of Yiddish Stories and dedicated “To the Six Million.” Like Fackenheim, Howe believed that it was incumbent upon


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Jews to remember those who had been murdered in Europe; like Fackenheim, who lamented that “the world always forgets,”21 Howe deplored historical amnesia—were he alive today, he would certainly be using his formidable polemical skills against those aforementioned foes of Holocaust memory who believe it is their duty to urge a forgetful world to do still more abundantly that which it already does quite adequately. But from Fackenheim’s conclusion that the one authentic response, at once secular and religious, of the Jewish people to Auschwitz was Jerusalem, and from Fackenheim’s relentless critique of Jewish powerlessness as an incentive to murder, Howe dissented. In his lengthy introduction to A Treasury of Yiddish Stories, Howe argued that Yiddish literature flourished in the historical interim between the dominance of religion and the ascendance of nationality. Yiddish literature “became a central means of collective expression for the East European Jews, fulfilling some of the functions of both religion and the idea of nationality.”22 Unwittingly, perhaps, Howe here suggested the eventual triumph of Zionism—for which he had very little affection in 1953—over Yiddishism: once Yiddish had served the purpose of keeping Hebrew alive in a kind of warm storage over the centuries, it would retreat and leave the two real adversaries—religion and nationalism—to contend against one another. But Howe seemed to go out of his way to set the Yiddish version of secular Jewishness in opposition to its Zionist competitor. He praised Yiddish literature and the culture it reflected most warmly for the very characteristics that made the opposing camp of secular Jews, the Zionists, reject it. “The virtue of powerlessness, the power of helplessness, the company of the dispossessed, the sanctity of the insulted and the injured—these, finally, are the great themes of Yiddish literature.”23 Howe did not take up the question, which would of course be raised by any sharp-eyed Zionist reader, of whether pride in powerlessness was justified when there was no alternative to it. Writing at a time when the State of Israel had already for five years been under what would prove a permanent state of siege by the Arab nations, Howe defiantly set the sacred texts of Yiddish literature in opposition to the imperatives of Zionism: “The prevalence of this [anti-heroic] theme,” he wrote, “may also help explain why Zionists have been tempted to look with impatience upon Yiddish literature. In the nature of their effort, the Zionists desired to retrieve—or improvise—an image of Jewish heroism; and in doing so they could not help finding large portions of Yiddish literature an impediment. The fact that Yiddish literature had to assume the burden of sustaining a national sense of identity did not therefore make it amenable to the needs of a national ideology.”24 For Howe, Zionism was not a serious option, because he had little taste for nationalism, and he “wasn’t one of those who danced in the streets when Ben Gurion made his famous pronouncement that the Jews, like other peoples, now had a state of their own.” What he himself called his ingrained

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“biases”—cosmopolitan socialism—kept him from such vulgar joy as might accrue from images of “a sunny paradise with stern pioneers on kibbutzim, rows of young trees, and the best hospitals in the world.”25 In the sixties, to be sure, Howe was forced to reassess his attitude toward Zionism and Israel, especially in order to set himself apart from fellow leftists such as Noam Chomsky who depicted Israel as the devil’s own experiment station. He was particularly aggrieved by the anti-Semitism of Jewish leaders of the New Left: “Jewish boys and girls, children of the generation that saw Auschwitz, hate democratic Israel and celebrate as ‘revolutionary’ the Egyptian dictatorship . . . a few go so far as to collect money for Al Fatah, which pledges to take Tel Aviv. About this I cannot say more; it is simply too painful.”26 He was even capable of saying—this in the eighties—that “in this era of blood and shame, the rise of the Jewish state was one of the few redeeming events,” and that “the establishment of Israel [was] perhaps the most remarkable assertion a martyred people has ever made.”27 These sentiments are very similar to Fackenheim’s bold formulation, that precisely because the Germans cut off Jews from humanity and denied them the right to exist, Jews have, since Auschwitz, come to “represent all humanity when they affirm their Jewishness and deny the Nazi denial.”28 Nevertheless, as Howe readily admitted in his autobiography, “Old mistakes cling to the mind like pitch to skin,”29 and none of these admirable sentiments signified a conversion to Zionism. Although he did not hesitate to sign petitions of American Friends of Peace Now that identified all signatories as “lifelong Zionists,” he continued to declare, as in an interview of 1982, “I still don’t think of myself as a Zionist—I’m not a Zionist.”30 By 1977, Howe acknowledged that in the long struggle between Zionism and Yiddishism for the loyalty of secular Jews, Zionism had triumphed: “When . . . Hillel Halkin sent from Israel a powerful book arguing that the Jews in the West now had only two long-range choices if they wished to remain Jews—religion and Israel, faith and nationhood—I searched for arguments with which to answer him. But finally I gave it up, since it seemed clear that the perspective from which I lived as ‘a partial Jew’ had reached a historical end and there, at ease or not, I would have to remain”31 Perhaps, too, Howe had come to see that Israel was something people gave their lives for, that it was a transcendental idea, whereas reading Sholom Aleichem was not. The last letter I received from Howe was written on April 30, 1993, five days before he died. He reported on his health, but mainly he wanted to tell me that he had lived for the previous four months with the wonderful young people who had led the Warsaw Uprising. He was referring to the then recently published book of memoirs by Yitzhak Zuckerman, a leader of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of April 1943. Howe’s lengthy review-essay, “The Road Leads Far Away,” appeared in the May 3 issue of the New Republic, two days before his death on May 5.


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The essay shows how much Howe had changed in his relation to Jewish history and destiny since World War II and even since the publication of his first Yiddish anthology. He writes scathingly of the Jewish socialist Bundists in Poland who rejected the idea of “Jewish unity” against the Nazis, because major class divisions still existed within the Jewish community and because socialist etiquette required Jews to wait for the Polish proletariat to rise up before they could fight. “The Bund statement could almost have been made in 1935; it ignored the fact that what was now at stake was not politics within the Jewish community but the very survival of the Jews as a people.” Moreover, the Howe who had in the early fi fties committed himself to the rescue of Yiddish literature partly because it celebrated the virtue of powerlessness and the power of helplessness was now imaginatively immersed in the heroic armed defense, mainly by Zionists, of the Warsaw Ghetto. Howe also makes clear that Zuckerman himself settled in Israel after the war and became a member of the Ghetto Fighters (Lohamei Hagettaot) kibbutz in the Galilee. But when he comes to assess the ultimate significance of the uprising, something is missing. “From a military point of view,” says Howe, “the Warsaw Ghetto uprising was of slight significance. From . . . a human point of view, its significance is beyond calculation.”32 But students of Emil Fackenheim know otherwise. Mordecai Anielewicz (wrote Fackenheim) died in May 1943. Named after him, Kibbutz Yad Mordekhai was founded in the same year. Five years after Mordecai’s death, almost to the day, a small band of members of the kibbutz bearing his name held off a well-equipped Egyptian army for five long days—days in which the defense of Tel Aviv could be prepared, days crucial for the survival of the Jewish state. The battle for Yad Mordekhai began in the streets of Warsaw.33 Instinctively, Howe’s moral intelligence told him that what had seemed in 1943 the desperately quixotic Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto had tremendous human significance, but he could not bring himself to say that it was indeed a calculable significance: precisely the events in the Land of Israel in 1948 proved that, as Fackenheim has taught a whole generation, in the long run nothing that is done for the sake of justice is practically useless. NOTES 1. Leon Wieseltier, Kaddish (New York: Knopf, 1999), 514. 2. Emil Fackenheim, To Mend the World (New York: Schocken, 1982), 16–22. 3. Michael Morgan, The Jewish Thought of Emil Fackenheim (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1987), 357. 4. “Jewish Faith and the Holocaust: A Fragment,” Commentary 46 (August 1968): 30. 5. Alvin Rosenfeld, “The Assault on Holocaust Memory,” American Jewish Year Book, vol. 101, 2001, 3–20.

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6. The American Newness: Culture and Politics in the Age of Emerson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), 57. 7. Oscar Wilde, preface to Dorian Gray (1891). 8. The Critical Point (New York: Delta, 1973), 55. 9. Encounters between Judaism and Modern Philosophy (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 213. 10. Life of George Eliot, As Related in Letters and Journals, edited by J. W. Cross (New York: Crowell, 1885), 84. 11. “Jewish Philosophers and Jewish History,” in Jewish Philosophers and Jewish Philosophy, ed. Michael L. Morgan, 166 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997). 12. Quoted in To Mend the World, 167–68. 13. Encounters between Judaism and Modern Philosophy, 133. 14. The Jewish Return into History (New York: Schocken, 1978), 184. 15. A Margin of Hope (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1982), 260. 16. Cynthia Ozick, “Envy; or, Yiddish in America,” Commentary 48 (November 1969): 44. 17. Voices from the Yiddish: Essays, Memoirs, Diaries, edited by Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenberg (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972), 2. 18. “In a Ghetto,” Selected Poems of Jacob Glatstein, translated by Ruth Whitman (New York: October House, 1972), 110. 19. Quoted in Edward Rothstein,” Broken Vessel,” New Republic (March 6, 1989): 19. 20. Introduction to Jewish-American Stories (New York: New American Library, 1977), 9–10. 21. To Mend the World, 167. 22. Treasury of Yiddish Stories, 30. 23. Ibid., 38. 24. Ibid., 39. 25. A Margin of Hope, 276–77. 26. ”Political Terrorism: Hysteria on the Left,” New York Times Magazine, (April 12, 1970): 124. 27. A Margin of Hope, 276–77. 28. God’s Presence in History (New York: New York University Press, 1970), 86. 29. A Margin of Hope, 276. 30. “The Range of the New York Intellectuals,” in Creators and Disturbers: Reminiscences by Jewish Intellectuals of New York, ed. Bernard Rosenberg and Ernest Goldstein, 287 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982). 31. A Margin of Hope, 281. 32. “The Road Leads Far Away,” New Republic (May 3, 1993): 36. 33. The Jewish Return into History, 285.

C HA P T E R 1 4

She’erith Hapleitah Reflections of a Historian

ZEEV MANKOWITZ I am doubly glad to be contributing to this volume—firstly to join in honoring Emil Fackenheim and, secondly, having cast my mind back over these last thirty-four years, I gained a better appreciation of the formative role Emil has played in shaping my thinking about the Holocaust and much more besides. I vividly remember the dramatic impact of Emil and Elie Wiesel’s contributions to a symposium in Judaism in 1967, a fragmentary attempt to grapple publicly with the implications of the Holocaust in a new key. Emil’s special way with the world of midrash and his wonderfully clear work in Jewish philosophy accompany me down to the present. As a historian, furthermore, I have always been struck by Emil Fackenheim’s refusal to flee the messiness of history for the symmetries of theology—he has always sought to maintain a painfully honest conversation between the two and thus formulations that could otherwise slip into the rarefied and abstruse enjoy an immediacy and a relevance that speak powerfully to the world as we know it. Thus as someone who has long been concerned with survivors of the Holocaust, I was excited to come across Emil’s recent paper She’erith Hapleitah—The Rebirth of the Holy Remnant and wondered how in this case the findings of the historian would mesh with the theological formulations of the philosopher. For the most part, in this chapter I plan to stay within the bounds of history; in my conclusion, I might allow myself a little poetic latitude. In the aftermath of the Holocaust the term She’erith Hapleitah in its broadest construction connoted the saved remnant, that is, all European Jews 173

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who survived the Nazi onslaught, including the hundreds of thousands of Polish, Baltic, and Russian Jews deported to the interior of the Soviet Union for political reasons or as part of Stalin’s “scorched earth” policy. In a more limited sense She’erith Hapleitah referred to the collective identity of some 300,000 displaced persons in occupied Germany, Austria, and Italy who turned their backs on their former lives and actively sought to leave Europe for Palestine and many other destinations. Having escaped the unavoidable constraints of rebuilding their former lives and now living temporarily under American protection in a land they despised, it was primarily these survivors who publicly identified themselves as the “Surviving Remnant” and saw themselves, as one of their leaders put it, as “the dynamic force of the Jewish future.” By 1950, approximately 200,000 had made their way to the State of Israel, while the remaining 100,000 found new homes in North America, Great Britain, Australia, and elsewhere. At the outset it is worth noting that in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust and well beyond, She’erith Hapleitah did not enjoy a good press, and its significant role in the critical years following the war was either overlooked or underplayed. How, then, do we account for this seeming neglect when rich archival material was readily available to historians in both Israel and abroad? Firstly, it was perhaps to be expected that the brief moment of She’erith Hapleitah on the stage of history would be overshadowed by the devastation of the Holocaust, on the one hand, and the revolutionary promise of Jewish statehood, on the other. In addition, the widespread sense, both secular and religious, that the move from Holocaust to Rebirth was ineluctable, almost preordained, meant that the stormy and uncertain progression of events from May 1945 to May 1948 was lost from view. If what happened was inevitable, then there was scant need to trace the detailed unfolding of events while carefully assessing the concrete contributions of those involved. If in time it became apparent that statehood was not a direct outcome of the Holocaust and that, in fact, the destruction of the human hinterland of the Zionist movement in Eastern Europe almost precluded the achievement of Jewish sovereignty, then this might open the way to new interpretations of the move from Holocaust to Homeland. And, indeed, this is what eventually happened. Thus as Walter Laquer argues in his conclusion to A History of Zionism, “The Jewish state came into being at the very time when Zionism had lost its erstwhile raison d’etre: to provide an answer to the plight of east European Jewry. The United Nations decision of November 1947 was in all probability the last opportunity for the Zionist movement to achieve a breakthrough.”1 Historians of the period, nonetheless, were slow to revise their estimate of the minor role allotted to She’erith Hapleitah itself in these developments. Part of the explanation might lie in the focus of these studies that unthinkingly cast the survivors into a subsidiary role of supplicants: their basic necessities were supplied by the U.S. Army, their camps were administered by United Na-

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tions Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), they were supported by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, inspired by soldiers of the Jewish Brigade, guided politically by the Palestinian Delegation, led over the Alps, and transported to Palestine by the Mossad L’Aliyah Bet, and their political fate was ultimately determined by the domestic pressure of American Jewry and the creation of the State of Israel. While this description is not without truth, it does tend, without ill intent, to cast She’erith Hapleitah into a supine role and deprives them of a will of their own. This image of passivity was rendered more plausible, moreover, by a pervasive stereotype that portrayed survivors as broken and helpless, ground to dust by unspeakable torture, a view that began to circulate in the Yishuv even before the war ended, and that gained wider currency with the first photographs and newsreels of the liberation of the camps: suddenly the “walking skeletons” and “helpless heap of human wreckage” were there for all to see. These images that were repeatedly used by Jewish fund-raisers and in the Zionist campaign against British policies in Palestine became fixed in the public’s mind. The stereotype, in addition, was secretly fed by a dark account of survival that assumed that the virtuous went under while the less worthy survived. After all, even the survivors themselves spoke of a process of “negative selection.” These expressions of survivor guilt often were taken at face value, without any sustained attempt to uncover their deeper meaning. Interestingly enough, even when Elie Wiesel, Solzhenitsyn, and Terrence Des Pres succeeded in transforming “the survivor” into a cultural hero in an age of mass death,2 it did not translate into a new understanding of She’erith Hapleitah. Their collective enterprise, recorded primarily in Yiddish and bearing the profound stamp of East European Jewish life, remained a closed book for most. This is unfortunate because a good few months before the war was over, the seeds of survivor organization were already germinating in Buchenwald, in the numerous satellite camps of Dachau, and elsewhere. On the morrow of liberation of the camps in the period April–May 1945, we already witness a flurry of activity among the survivors that naturally focused on the pressing problems of food, health, shelter, clothing, the search for family, and a safe future but that, over the next few months, rapidly elaborated itself into a network of representative and camp councils, political movements, newspapers, youth groups, children’s homes and schools, vocational training, and a wide range of cultural pursuits. Amid this remarkable effort at self-rehabilitation in the most unpromising of circumstances, we also find the first sustained public attempt to grapple with both the implications of the Shoah and some of the major questions of post-Holocaust Jewish life. Until quite recently, however, much of this history was lost from sight. What gave me my first clue about the hidden history of She’erith Hapleitah was the report of an Anglo-Jewish journalist from Dachau but two to three days after the liberation of the camp. In the London Jewish Chronicle,

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Shmuel Goldsmith tells how astonished he was to find the Zionist flag flying over the gates of the camp and even more surprised to discover that it was put there by an embryonic Zionist movement already hard at work. The only possible conclusion one could draw was that some of the survivors had begun to organize themselves prior to liberation, and it was only when I stumbled over the clandestine newspaper Nitzotz—the Spark—that I began to grasp to what extent this was true. The veterans of the Irgun Brith Zion who had been deported from the Kovno Ghetto to Kaufering, a subcamp of Dachau, in July 1944 succeeded in reissuing their underground newspaper as part of their preparations for liberation. But our concern with Nitzotz goes beyond the courage that informed this daring initiative and focuses primarily on a remarkable first attempt to sum up the meaning of what the paper called “the Catastrophe,” in light of which efforts were made to plan for the future. The surviving members of Irgun Brith Zion were persuaded that a determined fight against the physical and moral debilitation of concentration camp life was the necessary precondition for any serious collective activity. The cruel battle for survival in the camps generated a selfish nihilism that threatened to weaken the bonds of solidarity necessary for any social organization. The first step in the struggle for humanity—and here these younger leaders fell back on their movement ethos and their ghetto experience—was for them to set an example in caring for others and in safeguarding their individual integrity. The second step entailed the setting up of underground cells that would concern themselves with both education and mutual help. The Zionist education envisaged by the Nitzotz group was to provide both spiritual sustenance and tangible guidelines for the future, and it was the latter that gave rise to painful heart-searching. What, they asked, did the future hold for the Zionist movement? What was the future of Zionism now that European Jewry had been annihilated? For Shlomo Frenkel, the young editor of Nitzotz, the dilemma was stark: on the one hand, the subjective attraction of Zionism was greater than ever before, while on the other, the objective chances of achieving its goals had dimmed considerably. This was how Frenkel put it in the Chanukah 1944 number of the clandestine paper: Before our eyes Zionism has begun to lose the claim to the political title of being the movement that will save the remnants of our people. There is no point in dreaming anymore about the liquidation of European Jewry for it has been wiped out already by the fire and swords of German soldiers. . . . The Jewish question has already been solved by Adolph Hitler; he has, without doubt, succeeded in achieving his goal. Even if he has not destroyed all of world Jewry he has nonetheless reduced our national strength to a minimum and has brought us to a critical pass from which there is no certainty that we will recover.3


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Thus given the gravity of the hour the most urgent task was to unify the ranks of the Zionist movement that had always been plagued by a factionalism that had proved harmful in the face of destruction—the Nazis did not distinguish between rich and poor, Right and Left, secular and religious—all Jews, regardless, were subjected to the same fate. Equally, political divisiveness made no sense in the aftermath—where the very future of the Zionist movement hung in the balance, disunity was a luxury they could ill afford. A brief word of clarification: throughout their brief moment in occupied Germany, the survivors struggled to make sense of what they called the “katastrofe” or the “khurban.” For many, the Zionist narrative of a people apart, a landless minority with nowhere to go and no one to protect them, provided an explanation of the historical context within which the Holocaust was possible, but the persistent attempts to go farther and probe the purpose and meaning of what had happened invariably ended in a sense of defeat and left the agonizing question “farvos?”—to what end?—unanswered. When the people of She’erith Hapleitah were called upon to account for their spiritual resilience and powers of recovery they would point to the millennial tradition of community into which they were born and bred. The cultural reflexes of She’erith Hapleitah were profoundly conditioned by this long tradition of community but, more immediately, it was to ghetto life under Nazi occupation to which they turned for inspiration and guidance. As the survivors remembered it, those crowded into the ghettos of Eastern Europe succumbed neither to the selfish disregard of all social responsibility nor to the bewildered paralysis of total despair. Instead, where conditions allowed, many cooperated in order to stave off the threat of hunger, cold, and disease, set up makeshift institutions to succor those who could no longer fend for themselves, sought to resist the dubious temptations of criminality and betrayal, and created a diverse cultural life that expressed their pain and protected their humanity. This was held up as an ideal standard of conduct for She’erith Hapleitah: if in the depth of darkness their people sought to remain true to themselves, there could be no justification, a fortiori, not to do the same in the infinitely easier conditions of liberation. This conscious tie between the vigor of the Surviving Remnant and spiritual resilience during the Holocaust appears to confirm the view of historians who see the sanctification of life as a key dimension of Jewish behavior in the face of disaster. From this point of view, She’erith Hapleitah can serve as a unique control group in comparing behavior during and after the Nazi occupation and, in this context, the fact that the survivors in Germany became an important voice in European Jewry so soon after liberation raises some interesting questions. It appears to refute, for example, those characterizations of Jewish behavior during the Holocaust that rest on notions of either a “ghetto mentality,” an exilic “mind-set,” or a less tangible “unworldliness.” Conditioned passivity of this kind that was assumed to have permeated Jewish minority existence over nearly two millennia could

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surely not be undone by an act of will in such a short space of time, especially given the important lines of continuity that began during the Holocaust and persisted into liberation beyond. The initial organization of She’erith Hapleitah started, as we saw, many months before liberation and in itself was the product of clandestine activity that had begun two or three years earlier. The critical variable appears to be the presence or absence of Nazi terror rather than the deformities of minority life. Many arguments have been marshaled against the way Raul Hilberg, Bruno Bettelheim, and Hannah Arendt, each in their own idiom, characterized and accounted for Jewish behavior in the face of the Nazi onslaught—the historically rooted activism of the survivor community in occupied Germany is another. From the outset a commitment to Zionism was the defining feature of those who chose to remain temporarily in occupied Germany. The bitter fate of the Jewish people during the war was understood in terms of the Zionist critique of the vulnerabilities of life in exile; Jewish resistance to the Nazis was seen as a primarily Zionist enterprise, while the creation of a Jewish state was taken to be the last will and testament bequeathed by the victims to the survivors. Furthermore, the institutions set up by the survivors—local and regional committees, the Central Committee of the Liberated Jews in Bavaria, the press, political parties, youth movements, children’s homes, schools, and training farms—were informed by a spirited Zionist ethos. This is not to suggest that all the survivors were ideological Zionists—some opted for Palestine in order to join family and friends, those pessimistic about the chances of getting elsewhere chose it by default, and yet others were driven by religious conviction. On the other hand, many of those who were weary of war and sought a safe haven far from the dangers of a country threatened by upheaval retained their deep, instinctive sympathy for the idea of a national Jewish home in Palestine. In my estimate the majority of survivors, whatever their personal plans for the future, were touched by the spirit of Zionism and gave their support to the achievement of its goals. The committed Zionists who were the predominant group amid the founding fathers of She’erith Hapleitah went farther. They were firmly wedded to the ideal of Jewish independence and believed that Palestine held out the most realistic hope for the rescue and rehabilitation of the remnant of European Jewry, and that this desperately needed demographic boost, in turn, would help the Yishuv fulfill its historic role as the promise of the Jewish future. It is my sense that in some important ways, the people of She’erith Hapleitah came before their time. The survivors who had gravitated toward the extraterritorial enclave in Germany worked at piecing together a coherent picture of what they had personally been through while seeking to find out what had become of their family and friends. Why had the Nazis embarked upon the unprecedented murder of an entire people? What prompted some of their countrymen to become partners to genocide, and how did their neighbors stand by and watch with equanimity as they were marched off to their


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death? What had now to change in the wake of what had happened? These issues were worried over and clarified in a myriad of discussions, public and private, about the facts of the past and its meaning for the future. The people of She’erith Hapleitah found themselves grappling with issues that only began to exercise the Jewish world and other concerned observers twenty years later and more. Thus by way of illustration, when Samuel Gringauz formulated his understanding of the retributive mission imposed upon the Surviving Remnant by the dead, he saw it as taking “the form of a defiant affirmation of life and national rebirth. Nothing must permit Hitler a final triumph by the destruction of the Jews through the circumstances of the post-war world or through inner disintegration.”4 Those who read Gringauz at the time may very well have been impressed, but his words did not cause a public stir. When Emil Fackenheim spoke in 1967 of Jews being commanded “not to offer Hitler a posthumous victory,” by comparison, his words and commentary aroused considerable interest and came to play an important role in shaping the broader Jewish response to the Holocaust. The leaders of She’erith Hapleitah, to take the argument farther, were quick to grasp and internalize the larger implications of the destruction of European Jewry for the Jewish future. When Shlomo Shafir wrote in late 1944 that Hitler had “solved” the Jewish problem, he was among the first to initiate a public discussion of the future of Zionism now that its human hinterland and its historic raison d’etre had been destroyed. On the basis of this understanding, the Zionists liberated in Germany mounted a single-minded campaign against American and Soviet pressure for the repatriation of the liberated Jews to the countries of Eastern Europe and were the first to advocate and promote the creation of a temporary enclave under the protection of the American occupation. If Jewish independence in Palestine was to have any hope of success, then every last survivor had to be saved and won over to the cause of Eretz Yisrael. The campaign to create a unified Zionist movement, similarly, came in response to all that had been lost. Neither time nor energy should be expended on political squabbles in a time of dire emergency, when everything they believed in rested precariously in the balance. Decades were to pass before this strategic reading of the postwar situation moved beyond leadership circles and was actively appropriated by broad sections of the Jewish people. Beyond its immediate and practical purpose, the quest for unity also represented a search for both a new politics and a reconstituted framework of values. After everything they had been through, so many survivors felt, life just could not simply go on as before. In his address to the soldiers of the Jewish Brigade in July 1945, to adduce but one example, Abba Kovner addressed this issue and managed to articulate what many survivors sensed in a more inchoate fashion. The troubling implications of total destruction could not be sidestepped by attributing the murder of the Jewish people to a minority of demented criminals—“Only a handful of sadistic S.S. men were needed to hit a Jew, or cut off his beard, but millions had to participate in the murder of

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millions. There had to be masses of murderers, thousands of looters, millions of spectators.”5 How was one to make sense of the fact that among those directly implicated in the unspeakable torture there were doctors, lawyers, and people of learning who “on the eve of the slaughter spoke of labor, law, philosophy, art, and Christian love.” Many Jews in Eastern Europe who had supreme confidence in the redeeming culture and conscience of the West were initially disarmed by their faith in human solidarity and their belief that deeds of this kind went beyond the reach of human possibility. What, then, was left, and on whom could they depend given the devastating bankruptcy of so much they had believed in? The search for a new politics, therefore, was but one expression of a crisis of faith and trust whose enormity began to shake the confidence of people of conscience in the West, thirty to forty years later. At the time, however, many found these early adumbrations of postmodernity to be outlandish, disturbing, and threatening. Of course, the contribution of She’erith Hapleitah goes beyond the understanding of history and also includes the making of history. One way of illustrating this is to ask about the impact of the Surviving Remnant on the processes that culminated in the achievement of Jewish statehood. In order to answer this question it would be analytically helpful to distinguish between the two major, interrelated phases in the attainment of sovereignty: the retreat of Britain from the mandate and the victory of Israel in the 1948–1949 War of Independence. I turn first to a consideration of the former. With the intial organization of She’erith Hapleitah on the morrow of liberation, one of their first priorities, as mentioned, was to campaign against too hasty a return to Eastern Europe for fear that there would be no way back. This meant resisting the insistent military pressure, American and Russian, to return home without delay, and it led to the first adumbration of the idea that occupied Germany might serve as a staging ground for those who wished to make their way to Palestine. Thus from October 1945, Bavaria, because of its organized Jewish presence and the protection and support afforded by the American forces, became the primary destination for the groups the Brichah was moving out of Poland. When David Ben-Gurion visited She’erith Hapleitah in October 1945 and gauged for himself the passionate and formative Zionist presence among the survivor leadership, he very quickly grasped the political potential of a large, restive concentration of Jews under the benign protection of the American occupation forces in Germany. Thus the understanding he arrived at with the Supreme Command of the U.S. Army, according to which Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe would be allowed to enter the American Occupation Zone unhindered and would be granted the benefits of Displaced Persons (DP) status, set the stage for the key role the Surviving Remnant was to play in Zionist diplomacy. The costly, vociferous, and volatile presence of a large Zionist-inspired community in occupied Germany was a strong incentive for Truman’s administration to keep urging the British government to open the


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way for the admission of the 100,000 victims of Nazism into Palestine forthwith. On the diplomatic front, the encounter with the survivors in Germany left its clear impress on the Harrison Report and, later, the recommendations of the Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry, both of which proved to be important milestones on the uncertain path leading up to the United Nations decision to partition Palestine on November 29, 1947. At the same time She’erith Hapleitah became the focal symbol of the Jewish tragedy and an effective force in winning over American Jewry to the cause of Palestine as a refuge and home for those who survived the Nazi onslaught: anti-Zionists moderated their opposition to Jewish national aspirations, former non-Zionists began to publicly affirm the urgent need for a Jewish homeland in Palestine and in the Zionist camp itself, and the more militant voices came to the fore. In consequence, the pressure exerted by the Surviving Remnant in Germany was now paralleled by the effective political organization of the major Jewish organizations in America and their careful monitoring of both administration policies on the Palestinian front and the performance of the military in occupied Germany. Equally, if not more, important was the willingness of tens of thousands of survivors to vote for Palestine with their feet. The journey that began with the trek across Europe and was followed by a spell in the DP camps continued on to a variety of embarkation points in Italy and France, where the frail vessels of the Mossad Le’Aliyah Bet were boarded. While hoping to evade the naval blockade on Palestine, those who braved the rigors of the trip understood full well that they, in all likelihood, faced the prospect of a lengthy internment in Cyprus or elsewhere. In various ways these waves of clandestine immigrants helped loosen the British hold on Palestine: in a period when the Soviet Union was increasing its pressure on Greece, Turkey, and Iran, the British navy was forced to neglect important aspects of its own strategic priorities; the harsh treatment of the victims of Nazism symbolized most dramatically by the return of the immigrants aboard the Exodus to German soil embarrassed the Labor government and subjected it to a barrage of adverse public opinion; with each interception of an immigrant boat, the Yishuv was enflamed anew, so assuring the resistance movements of widespread public support; and, finally, once the internment camps in Cyprus were filled to capacity and the German option sealed by the Exodus debacle, no one knew what to do with the thousands of illegal immigrants still making their way to Palestine. With the British withdrawal from Palestine in 1948 and the ensuing escalation of Jewish-Arab hostilities, the burden of full-scale war naturally fell on the Yishuv, straining the socioeconomic, political, and military infrastructure built up over seventy years of settlement almost beyond endurance. The sensitive and controversial question of the role of Holocaust survivors in the fledgling state’s battle for survival that for many years was clouded over by hearsay and denial can now be better assessed in light of recent research. While a clarification of the disturbing attitudes and difficult moral questions of the time goes beyond the contents of this chapter, some of the facts and figures adduced in

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the pioneering research of Hanna Yablonka will round out the picture: “. . . of all overseas recruits into the IDF (Israel Defence Forces) during the War of Independence, the number of Holocaust survivors came to some 22,300, which, bearing in mind the size of the IDF at the time, is impressive indeed. At the end of 1948, the IDF consisted of 88,033 soldiers, of whom only some 60,000 were combat soldiers.” Given the fact that overseas recruits “. . . were invariably sent to join combat units, it may be concluded that, by the end of 1948, these soldiers constituted about one third of the IDF’s fighting force, and that the Holocaust survivors played a significant role in Israel’s War of Independence.”6 Thus to sum up, She’erith Hapleitah played an important role in helping generate the processes that led up to the British withdrawal from Palestine, and while their contribution to the 1948–1949 War of Independence was not decisive, it was far weightier than has generally been appreciated. Throughout this chapter I have chosen to translate She’erith Hapleitah as the Surviving Remnant. Two additional translations suggesting very different readings of the past have been used on occasion—the Saved Remnant and the Saving Remnant, and it could be said that the interplay between these contrasting representations helps capture some of the key forces at work in the history of She’erith Hapleitah. The survivors themselves would have readily confirmed that they were indeed a Saved Remnant for, as was patently clear to all, were it not for the Allied victory, none of them would have remained alive; the severe constraints imposed by their status as DPs, secondly, rendered them heavily dependent on outside help for the achievement of their ambitious goals. But this, of course, was not the whole story. The people of She’erith Hapleitah objected strenuously to the notion that they were helpless victims who could only be saved by others. Their struggle to return to a life of dignity, their political activism and bid for recognition, and their willingness to do their bit in the momentous struggle for Jewish independence endowed them with a sense of being redeemers in their own right. Thus it bears repeating that She’erith Hapleitah was largely made up of ordinary folks who were neither angels nor saints, and who, despite many failings that were all too human, did not succumb to the deformities of suffering: they got on with their lives to the degree circumstances allowed, planned for the future and, in the main, preserved their humanity intact. However, if historians can be allowed a measure of poetic license, it is my strong sense that the redeeming role of She’erith Hapleitah goes beyond the remarkable achievements already described. Many have warned against the deformations that could be bred by catastrophic defeat: brutalization, destructiveness, and a total lack of concern for others. Interestingly enough, whereas the Holocaust has left its profound impress on contemporary Jewish life, it has never been allowed to become ultimately definitive of human reality. Put differently, there seems to be a cultural a priori at work, a fundamental affirmation of life that has largely kept the destructive and nihilistic implica-


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tions of the Holocaust at bay, that has, by and large, transformed the outrage, hurt, and disillusionment into a life-serving force. She’erith Hapleitah, in my view, filled a defining role in shaping this reality. They had every reason to surrender themselves to blind anger and wanton destruction. Such responses, however, were rare. Whereas their suffering and losses were their point of departure, the people of She’erith Hapleitah devoted their best energies to the reconstruction of their personal lives and the redemption of their people without forgetting broader human responsibilities. The speed and willingness with which they took up the burdens of life and civic responsibility in both Israel and, indeed, wherever they settled, bear eloquent witness to their affirmation of life and their undiminished humanity. It is my sense that the Surviving—Saving Remnant has set the parameters within which two major clusters of response to the Holocaust are unfolding and shaping contemporary Jewish life. The first cluster of assertive responses would include the bid for Jewish dignity, the desire to move beyond political helplessness and a reworking of the Jewish engagement with Western civilization and modernity. The second, opposite cluster of action and belief might best be termed the response of limitation and restraint. It is a response that includes the repudiation of human self-absolutization, totalitarian pretense or, as Fackenheim puts it, modern idolatry. Furthermore, the ethos of limitation can be discerned in the drive to curtail the excessive powers of the centralized state by creating a pluralism that would enhance the mediating roles of local, regional, ethnic, and religious groups. The most crucial norm of limitation the Holocaust has brought out in sharp relief is the commitment to the sanctity of life. Kedusha is inextricably bound up with the idea of limits and boundaries—the holy is marked off by dread boundaries that dare not be crossed. To violate the sanctity of life is to threaten the special standing of human beings, the actuating source of the Jewish commitment to tikkun olam, to making the world a better place. The Nazi attempt to topple human beings from their special station and to affirm the survival of the fittest as the norm of human conduct was the crucial first step toward their unprecedented political morality: making murder an instrument of personal liberation and the primary means to human redemption. In his encounters with philosophy and concomitant concern to mend the world, Emil Fackenheim has played a leading role in both articulating these complex issues and spelling out what they might mean for contemporary Jewish life. In a way I think that our respective assessments of the role of She’erith Hapleitah—historical and theological—have a lot in common. In my formulation, having turned their backs on despair and rage, the survivors set the stage for the future responses of those who were not directly implicated. Once the people of She’erith Hapleitah refused to surrender their humanity, they created a norm that those who were not “there” cannot easily disregard. Or, in Emil’s words:

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If the death of the Jewish remnant would be historic—nay, a terminal catastrophe—then what informs its life must be more than the wish to survive. . . . What informs the remnant is an imperative: to stay, as it were at a post that may not be abandoned. Jewish thought must grapple with this imperative, with this Jewish sense of being at a post that, whatever its immediate or ultimate purpose, may not be abandoned. And it will not be able to avoid for long the age-old idea that the remnant, in some sense, is holy.7 At the heart of the response of limitation, what we find, therefore, is the drive to tikkun olam, to what Emil Fackenheim has elaborated in To Mend the World. As a historian I echo and confirm this critically important conclusion: having turned their backs on debilitating despair, the survivors set the stage for the future responses of those who were not directly implicated in the destruction of European Jewry. Once the people of She’erith Hapleitah refused to surrender their humanity to rage they created a norm that those who were not “there” cannot easily disregard. Those who kept hope alive, despite everything they suffered and endured, are indeed a Saving Remnant. NOTES 1. Walter Laqueur, A History of Zionism (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972), 594–95. 2. Terrence Des Pres, The Survivor: An Anatomy of Life in the Death Camps (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973). 3. Ivri (Shlomo Frenkel), “Al parashat drachim” (At the crossroads), Nitzotz 3:38 (Channukah 5705–December 1944): 14–15. 4. Samuel Gringauz, “Jewish Destiny as the DPs See It: The Ideology of the Surviving Remnant,” Commentary 3:4 (December 1947): 505. 5. Abba Kovner, “The Mission of the Survivors,” in The Catastrophe of European Jewry: Antecedents, History, Reflections, ed. Yisrael Gutman and Livia Rotkirchen, 675 (Jerusalem: 1976). 6. Hanna Yablonka, Survivors of the Holocaust: Israel after the War (London: Macmillan, 1999), 82. 7. Emil Fackenheim, “The Rebirth of the Holy Remnant,” in Major Changes within the Jewish People in the Wake of the Holocaust, ed. Yisrael Gutman, 652 (Jerusalem: Yad Yashem, 1996).

C HA P T E R 1 5

Willful Murder in the Lublin District of Poland DAVID SILBERKLANG Emil Fackenheim on many occasions related a conversation with Raul Hilberg, where he asked Hilberg, as a leading expert on Nazi Germany, “Why did they do it?” Hilberg heaved a sigh and replied: “They did it because they wanted to do it.”1 To many who heard this story, Hilberg’s reply and Fackenheim’s agreement might have seemed somewhat evasive, only begging further questions. Yet as Fackenheim, a philosopher with deep roots in history, had grasped, and as research over the last dozen years has shown, Hilberg had put his finger on a troubling truth. The element of willfulness of the perpetrators of the murder of the Jews was integral to the Holocaust and is therefore integral to our attempts to understand it. Until the 1990s, much of the thought and historical research on this question examined the motivations of decision makers. But the Fackenheim-Hilberg dialogue disturbed me on a different level—that of the middle- and lower-level officials; those who dealt with the Jews directly. This chapter examines the willfulness of the murder of the Jews through two brief case studies from the Lublin district in German-occupied Poland—the . creation of the Bel-zec labor camp complex in the summer of 1940 and the organization of the mass murder that began in March 1942. Occupation policy in the general government of Poland and policy regarding Jews often were sources of competition among the various German authorities. That competition in the Lublin district of the general government, between German civilian governor Ernst Zörner and his staff, on the one hand, and the senior SS officer in the district, SS- und Polizeiführer (SS and police commander) Odilo Globocnik, and his staff, on the other, was arguably the fiercest. The two case studies to be 185

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discussed reflect not only the disagreements, competition, and animosity but also the basic agreement among the various officials regarding the Jews. . - ZEC CAMPS, 1940 HERMANN DOLP AND THE BEL On February 8, 1940, Heinrich Himmler wrote a stern note to SS-Sturmbannführer Hermann Dolp, warning him that failure to abide by the SS court-martial decision against him (a two-year ban on alcohol intake) would result in his eviction from the SS and all accompanying punishment implied thereby.2 Six days later, a humbled Dolp arrived in his new posting, Lublin, where he was to distinguish himself during the next twenty-seven months as arguably the most brutal, bloodthirsty SS man on Odilo Globocnik’s staff. Dolp was a squat, fi fty-one-year-old married man with four children, a veteran Nazi and SS man, who reached the rank of colonel (Standartenführer) by 1931. His first assignment in occupied Poland was to set up and command the Selbstschutz (uniformed and armed ethnic German collaborators) in Kalisz. On November 1, 1939, he was involved in a drunken altercation in which he tried to rape a young Polish woman friend of a German official. Dolp pulled a gun on the official, which brought numerous complaints against him by fellow Germans who witnessed the scene. He was removed from his post, investigated, court-martialed on February 4, 1940, and demoted by two ranks. Dolp was immediately reassigned to Globocnik.3 In Lublin, Dolp was first assigned to the Selbstschutz, where he distinguished himself for his viciousness, brutality, and thorough regard for his duty, as in the infamous forced march of Jewish POWs from Lublin northward toward Biala-Podlaska in February 1940, during which hundreds were murdered.4 He also was put in command of the forced labor and POW camp at 7 Lipowa Street in Lublin. In late spring, Globocnik relieved him of this duty in order to free him for a larger and more important task: supervising the digging of defensive trenches along the border with the Soviet Union, especially along the southeastern stretch of border between the Bug and San rivers. He was . sent to Bel-zec to set up a series of forced labor camps for this purpose, but his authority also extended to many other forced labor camps in the district.5 . Dolp thrived under Globocnik. Regarding Bel-zec, Globocnik praised Dolp’s good work under difficult conditions and with “poor human material” (i.e., Jews and Gypsies).6 His viciousness left an indelible mark on the memories of Jewish . inmates of the camps that he commanded, especially Bel-zec.7 His efforts were rewarded with a promotion to Obersturmbannführer in April 1944.8 . - ZEC SETTING UP BEL . The Bel-zec forced-labor camps originated in discussions in early 1940 among senior SS and army officers regarding border fortifications between Germany

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and the Soviet Union.9 The SS security chief Reinhard Heydrich and his boss, Heinrich Himmler, envisioned utilizing hundreds of thousands of Jewish forced laborers to construct these border fortifications.10 When Lublin district civilian and SS officials met in April to coordinate Jewish forced labor, the project had been greatly reduced to more manageable proportions—Globocnik now sought a down payment of 5,000 of the estimated 45,000 Jewish forced labor pool in the district for the “Grenzgraben” (border excavations).11 . Globocnik earmarked the small border town of Bel-zec in the southern part of the Lublin district as the center of the fortification project. The first 190 Jewish forced laborers were sent there from Lublin and nearby Piaski in late May and early June. The Lublin Judenrat learned of the German plans . to establish a labor camp at Bel-zec just prior to the first dispatch of Jews there, apparently from Richard Türk, the head of the Population and Welfare Department of the district government. At the same time, Globocnik ordered . the Judenrat to create an Association for Bel-zec Camp Affairs, whose functions included administration, health and sanitation, all care for the laborers, preparing additional camps, and financing the digging of border trenches. For the Germans, this was the easiest method to get the Jews to organize internal camp affairs themselves. For the Judenrat, this facilitated maintaining contact with the forced laborers and sending them supplies. The Judenrat appointed . the Bel-zec camp functionaries, who were in effect the Lagerrat (camp council). Two officials and a cook were sent there on June 13. The terrible camp conditions that prevailed are reflected, in part, in the fact that no camp kitchen whatsoever existed until the arrival of these three.12 We can only wonder what the original 190 inmates ate during their first sixteen days in the camp. . An additional 180 Lublin and Piaski Jews were sent to Bel-zec on July 8 and then three additional officials from the Lublin Judenrat to help run internal Jewish affairs there.13 Meanwhile, Lublin Jews also were sent to camps dealing with swamp drainage, irrigation, and land reclamation as part of a large water regulation project undertaken by the civilian government’s Water Works Directorate (Wasserwirtschaftsinspektion), which was to encompass 10,000 Jews in many labor camps throughout the district.14 Jews also were used in massive road repair and construction operations contracted to private German firms and supervised by the SS. These roads were later to serve the German troops converging in the general government in preparation for “Operation Barbarossa.” The aforementioned labor camps were also under Dolp’s rule. Lublin civilian German and SS officials met periodically during the spring and summer to work out a cooperative arrangement for exploiting Jewish forced labor. Ostensibly, the roles of the two authorities were clear. The civilian labor department kept records of the Jews, based on data recorded by the Judenräte, categorizing them by skill, and could requisition forced laborers for civilian projects. Meanwhile, the SS and police were responsible

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for security, rounding up Jews for labor when more were needed, and for the forced labor camps.15 Lurking behind these meetings was a struggle between Globocnik and Zörner for control of Jewish forced labor.16 Agreements that were reached, with the involvement of Globocnik’s superior in the general government, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Krüger, were consistently ignored by Globocnik. Appeals by Lublin civilian authorities to their superiors in Kraków were generally to little or no avail.17 Globocnik caught the civilian officials unprepared when on July 15, 1940, . he submitted a demand for 3,000 Jews for the border fortifications at Bel-zec in two days’ time and another 5,000 the following week. By early August, he would need 30,000 men. The intended forced laborers included 10,000 from Warsaw.18 In addition, he wanted 1,000 Jewish men to be placed in the forced labor camp at 7 Lipowa Street.19 While the civilian authorities considered, Globocnik’s men acted. And this was the pattern throughout these months. Without informing any civilian authority, they rounded up 300 Jews for forced labor at Lipowa Street in raids on the night of July 22–23. When Lublin Labor Department officials complained, Globocnik’s subordinates dismissed them. Civilian officials conceded defeat in this affair and agreed that all additional SS operations would await the upcoming meeting between General Governor Hans Frank and Krüger.20 Again Globocnik moved quickly to assert his supremacy and independence in Jewish affairs when he dispatched one of his subordinates to Kraków to arrange transferring 1,000 Jewish craftsmen from there to the border fortifications project.21 Several subsequent meetings and arrangements between Globocnik and the civilians were honored by Globocnik largely in the breach.22 On consecutive nights—August 12–13 and 13–14—Globocnik’s troops swooped down on Jewish homes all across the general government and rounded up more than 10,000 Jews in a lightning operation. Not only were the Jews caught completely by surprise, many finding themselves being shipped off . to Bel-zec in pajamas and barefoot,23 but also the German civilian authorities were surprised. Lublin Labor Department and county officials either received notification just before the raids began, or else they received no notification at all. Calls came streaming in to civilian government offices in Lublin from various localities, complaining of unexplained large concentrations of SS troops appearing in town or of unannounced, indiscriminate raids for Jewish laborers, disregarding Labor Department identification papers that should have exempted the bearers from seizure. The raids were sometimes so indiscriminate that the German labor chief in Bial-a-Podlaska complained that only 40 of the 1,600 conscripted Jews did not have these exemptions.24 The civilian authorities in Lublin were furious at Globocnik’s men’s behavior. They complained to Frank on August 16, insisting that Globocnik receive clear instructions regarding the limits to his authority in Jewish forced labor.25 The civilian labor authorities initiated a meeting that day with Globocnik’s new “Judenreferent,” Ernst Lerch, to try to iron out their differences and halt the


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round ups, at least temporarily, in order to give the Labor Department officials time to register all the conscripts and replace those among them who were its own Jewish forced laborers. Globocnik agreed to halt the roundups until August 20, but the Labor Department was unable to complete its work by then.26 Brushing aside Labor Department pleas for a further postponement, Globocnik berated the civilians’ incompetence and renewed the raids for Jewish laborers. Globocnik was oblivious to any damage his raids may have caused to other German labor projects.27 Frank proved powerless to intervene. Zörner and his staff attempted several countermeasures to foil Globocnik’s . roundups, such as halting all cooperation with him and rerouting a Bel-zec-bound train of forced laborers from Warsaw and Radom to the civilian government’s waterworks project in Chel-m, but these proved ineffective.28 Globocnik went on to ignore a subsequent agreement between Krüger and labor officials in Kraków that placed the civilian authorities in charge of Jewish forced labor and obligated Globocnik to submit his Jewish labor requirements in centralized requests.29 Surprise raids for additional Jewish forced laborers continued, without coordination with the civilian authorities.30 This is not the place for an in-depth discussion of the extremely harsh . conditions that prevailed in the eight camps that comprised the Bel-zec forcedlabor complex. The camps were run most brutally under Dolp’s coordination. Brutality accompanied the Jews from the violent roundup through their return home. Hundreds died, and many hundreds more were permanently maimed. At the camps, the Jews lacked food, bedding, or even loose straw to sleep on, a change of clothing, shoes, water—everything and anything required to lead a normal life. They worked long hours, in all weather, amidst constant beatings. Dysentery and other diseases were rampant by mid-September 1940, but access to a toilet was severely limited. . Even with regard to the release of the forced laborers from the Bel-zec camps to their homes or to civilian government labor projects later in 1940, once they were ostensibly no longer needed by the SS, Globocnik disregarded agreements with other authorities by whim. Many were not released on the dates, in the numbers, or to the destinations agreed upon. Instead, he had these people sent wherever he wanted.31 . The Bel-zec camp complex operated at full capacity for only two months. In mid-October the first trainloads of Jews began to be released from the camps, and the excavation work was largely completed by November. The first . Jews were to begin leaving the Bel-zec camps on October 14. According to a schedule agreed upon between the SS and the civilian authorities, the trains were to depart for Lublin almost daily during the following week, and the laborers were to continue from there either to a new labor camp or to their homes. By October 22, 6,760 people were to have departed, but Globocnik’s men wreaked such havoc with the departure schedule and destinations that Lublin Labor Department officials were very soon complaining of the disruption in labor projects in all the general government. In a report on Jewish forced

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labor in October, Governor Zörner could account for only 4,331 of these Jews. The first train, with 1,250 Jews for Hrubieszów, departed a day late, with only 1,021. Of these, only 519 reached the destination, and the civilian authorities had no idea what had become of the others. Similarly, of 1,500 expected by the civilian authorities to depart for De˛bica and Tarnów on October 19, Dolp . agreed to 1,000. Of these, only 590 actually left Bel-zec for these destinations, and only on October 20. The October 16 train that was to return 900 Radom Jews to their home city in order to be integrated into Labor Department projects there actually carried mostly Lublin Jews. This was the general pattern . for the departures from the Bel-zec camps, which Richard Türk disparagingly called a “circus.”32 The civilian authorities in the Lublin district were unable to gain control of the situation in 1940; the Lublin SS had succeeded in asserting its dominance in Jewish policy, even in the Jews’ release from the SS forced labor camps. By mid-December, the camps were closed for all intents and purposes, save a small group of forced laborers left behind to clean up and perform . various odd jobs. Less than a year later, Dolp was back at Bel-zec, this time to construct a death camp. A number of the Jewish forced laborers brought to construct the new camp had worked at digging the trenches there, some of which now formed the northern perimeter of the death camp. These trenches subsequently served as burial and burning pits for the corpses of the murdered Jews.33 Two observations emerge from this story. First, for Globocnik’s SS men . and the German civilian authorities, the Bel-zec forced-labor experience sealed their mutual hostility. But second, the German civilian authorities raised no objections to the conditions in the camps or the brutality, and this perhaps can give us some insight into the second case study. PREPARING FOR DEPORTATIONS—COOPERATION AMONG THE VARIOUS AUTHORITIES . Based upon the Bel-zec and forced-labor precedents, we might expect to find ongoing acrimony between the SS and German civilian authorities in connection to planning the deportation and murder of the Jews. The roster of participants in the Wannsee Conference of January 20, 1942, might be a reflection of the aforementioned acrimony. Two men from the general government participated: Josef Bühler, Frank’s deputy, and Eberhard Schöngarth, Reinhard Heydrich’s SS chief in the region. Absent was any representation of Globocnik. Yet he was the key figure in the murder of the Jews in the general government, having been personally appointed to this task by Himmler. Moreover, he had operated independently of Frank’s and Heydrich’s machinery in the past. His absence speaks volumes.34 Yet achieving cooperation among the competing authorities in the general government and in Lublin in particular was essential to the smooth running of


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the murder operation. Frank’s enthusiasm regarding the upcoming “solution,” as expressed in his well-known December 16, 1941, speech to general government officials, together with Bühler’s attendance at Wannsee and request that the general government be given priority in seeing its Jews liquidated, indicates that the desired cooperation was attainable.35 Whereas the absence of anyone from Globocnik’s staff from the Wannsee Conference could not have helped cooperation, agreement on being rid of the Jews ultimately was not difficult to achieve. But could all the parties concerned work together? The answer lies in the last months of 1941. PREPARING THE VICTIMS In the run-up to “Operation Reinhard,” the murder of the Jews of the general government, the Germans needed to “prepare” the intended victims. This meant limiting and concentrating the Jews with even tighter restrictions on their movement; concentrating rural Jews into larger communities; bringing in Jews from the Third Reich to be included in the murder operations; and “sifting” through the Jewish population to choose those who would not be murdered at first, such as essential laborers. For this preparation for murder to be accomplished, cooperation between the SS and the German civilian authorities was essential.

Restrictions and Worsened Conditions Tighter restrictions on movement were imposed on the Jews from September and October 1941. Unauthorized movement out of assigned residence areas was punishable by death.36 Supplies to the Jews also began to be reduced in many places. For example, in February and March 1942, the civilian administrations in Janów-Lubelski and Radzyn counties ceased providing Jews with food altogether.37 Nazi violence against the Jews and shootings increased significantly from fall 1941, as both a tool of terror and a deterrent.38 Curfew hours were extended, and Judenrat members were publicly humiliated by SS officials. The Gestapo imposed its informers and collaborators on the Jews. Various Jewish belongings were confiscated. Jews were barred from marketplaces in many counties, and poverty and hunger became much more widespread and visible.39 One of the most debilitating factors affecting the Jews at this time was the spread of disease, which the Germans had not planned but were prepared to exploit. During the summer of 1941, a typhoid fever epidemic spread in Lublin and in many parts of the district, brought on by several factors: the continuing influx of refugees carrying the disease from the Warsaw area; the ongoing concentration of Jews, which served as an incubator for spreading disease; and contact with Soviet POWs who had contracted this and other contagious diseases. Thousands of Jews in the Lublin district died of contagious

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diseases during the following months. While many Judenräte were ordered to create or expand hospitals, restrictions and overcrowding were not eased, and medications were not provided. The Lublin Judenrat received permission from the civilian authorities in June 1941 to open a new bathhouse in the ghetto. In an effort to limit the spread of the disease, it decided to add showers to the bathhouse and to obligate all the Jews to bathe at least once a week. However, the German mayor confiscated the bathhouse ten days later for use by Poles, thereby increasing the danger of the disease spreading still faster. By January 1942, at least six out of the ten counties in the district had been seriously affected by typhoid fever.40 Unlike epidemics, confiscations were planned. Metals, cloth, glass, paper, and other goods were gathered across the district by 500 “Sammler.”41 In December, Jews had to hand over all furs in order to supply German soldiers on the eastern front.42 The result of these confiscations, and the failure of the German authorities to supply heating fuel that winter, was that the Jews froze. Meanwhile, the German authorities had tightened their control over and instilled more fear in the Jews. In the Lublin district, German preparations to receive Jews from the Reich and elsewhere began in September 1941. Jews were to be brought in from Mielec (the Kraków district), Bohemia and Moravia, and Slovakia.43 In order to facilitate the murder of these Jews, Bühler asked Zörner to establish a transit camp (Durchgangslager) to receive an expected 14,000 Jews from the Reich and 39,000 from Slovakia. Housing problems were Türk’s domain. His solution to this temporary housing problem was to create a revolving door, or Judenaustausch. Incoming Jews would generally be sent to occupy the homes of recently deported local Jews. In this way, no resources needed to be expended on a transit camp. In some cases, the incoming Jews found unfinished meals still on the table.44

Sorting the Jews Sorting the Jews involved census-taking, counting and marking essential laborers, and identifying foreign Jews. The Population Department in Kraków ordered a census of Jews on January 20, 1942.45 In the city of Lublin, the head of the municipal population department ordered the Judenrat on January 30 to provide a list of Jews with American, British, or Palestinian nationality by February 5.46 On February 2, the municipal police ordered the Lublin Ghetto divided into two, with a fence for each part. One ghetto would house most of the population, while the other would house those who worked for the Germans. In addition, the mayor ordered the Judenrat to take on full municipal duties. Although the members of the Judenrat seem not to have grasped the implications of this, the separation of the ghetto from the municipality facilitated the deportations that soon followed.47


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Increasing the Jewish police also was connected to “sorting.” In January 1942, the Lublin Gestapo ordered the Judenrat to increase the Lublin Jewish police to twenty men. By the eve of the deportations, in March 1942, there were 113 Jewish policemen. Developments followed much the same pattern elsewhere in the district. However, the Lublin Jewish police were not aggressive enough. So the SS and Ukrainians did nearly all the roundup work, and most of the Jewish police were deported.48 Setting aside essential laborers was a fundamental part of the preparation for deportations. There were certain skills required by the German authorities for military production and local needs. For this they sought to leave a minimum number of Jewish skilled laborers alive temporarily. The selection of necessary Jewish skilled laborers was a two-stage process in March–May 1942, first setting aside all Jews who worked for the Germans and later narrowing this pool to essential laborers. It was a cooperative selection effort—the civilians determined which laborers to leave behind, while the SS issued the necessary stamps in the work ID cards. In Lublin, the SS issued new red-stamped work ID cards on March 8 to the Jews deemed necessary.49 When the deportation order was issued on the night of March 16–17, those with this stamp were permitted to remain in the ghetto together with their families. On March 31, yet another identity card was issued to replace the red cards. This further reduced the number of Jews permitted to remain temporarily in the ghetto to fewer than 3,000, or less than 10 percent of the March 16 population.50 This was a cooperative effort—the civilian authorities determined which laborers to leave behind, while the SS issued the necessary stamps in the work identification cards. The same sorting preparations were undertaken throughout the Lublin district during the following two months, leaving a small minority of the Jewish population marked for a temporary stay of execution. Lists of necessary laborers and craftsmen were produced for each locality, with full names, addresses, and occupations.51 Globocnik’s men sought to preserve district-wide a similar proportion of Jews as had been allowed to remain in Lublin—no more than 10 percent. The fluid nature of the Jewish population at that time, with deportations constantly sending Jews to death and bringing other Jews in, further complicated the compilation of the lists. Still, by mid-May, complete lists of more than 11,000 Jewish craftsmen and skilled laborers (not including Lublin) were available for nearly all the counties, as were parallel lists of the numbers of Jews available for immediate deportation. If these 11,000 are added to those Jews working in agriculture, various camps, sorting stations, and other functions, as well as family members who were sometimes permitted to remain, then the total number of Jews meant to be spared immediate deportation to death probably was above 20,000 out of a district Jewish population of more than 300,000.52

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Cooperation The civilian and SS bureaucracies were informed of the substance of the Wannsee Conference through their respective chains of command in the general government.53 On March 4, 1942, as the SS’s preparations for the beginning . of the murder were nearly complete in camp construction (at Bel-zec) and manpower conscription (the Red Army renegades trained at Trawniki and elsewhere), the general government’s Interior Department in Kraków wired a request to the Population and Welfare Department in Lublin to reach an understanding with Globocnik and to give him full assistance in his upcoming measures.54 Globocnik had kept the civilians uninformed regarding details of the organization of the murder. Civilian officials in Lublin did not know at first that Globocnik had set up a special staff for the murder operation, separate from his regular staff. When Fritz Reuter, Türk’s deputy in the Population and Welfare Department, sought Globocnik’s appropriate subordinate to meet, in response to the requests from Kraków, he spent three days trying to find what turned out to be the wrong person (Globocnik’s adjutant, SS-Hauptsturmführer Sepp Nemec). Reuter did meet with SS-Obersturmführer Helmut Pohl on March 12, but he was also not in charge of deportations, so he referred Reuter to SS-Sturmbannführer Hermann Höfle, Globocnik’s deputy in the murder operation. Reuter and Höfle finally met at 5:30 p.m. on March 16, only hours before the first deportation from Lublin was to begin.55 Was Globocnik up to his old tricks? Despite this inauspicious beginning, a close working relationship was soon achieved. Höfle was most interested in the civilians’ assistance in dealing with incoming transports of Jews from the Reich and Slovakia, although they soon agreed on cooperation regarding the entire district as well. They agreed that Globocnik’s staff and the civilians together would select laborers from among the incoming transports, at the Lublin freight station, upon arrival. This limited number of able-bodied laborers would be sent where needed. The nonlaborers . would be sent to Bel-zec, from whence they would cross the border, “never to be seen in the General Government again.”56 This phrasing reflects the dialogue in a mutually understood coded language, in which Globocnik’s men and the German civilian authorities were engaged. Bühler’s participation in Wannsee and Frank’s December 16, 1941, speech are among the indicators that the murder plan was known well in advance at least to those civilians who needed to know, such as Türk. The same coded language prevailed in Türk’s subsequent meetings on March 19 and 23 with Helmut Pohl, who had been appointed by Höfle to be in charge of the incoming transports. They discussed many issues: the schedule for expulsions within the district; the priorities for localities in the southeastern part of the district to be “emptied” (“entleert”) of Jews; appropriate reception


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points for incoming Reich and Slovakian Jews; and the need to preserve the Jewish laborers employed by the Germans. Issues regarding specific places were dealt with in detail, such as the schedules and numbers of incoming and outgoing Jewish traffic from Izbica, Piaski, and more. Pohl also agreed to consult county chiefs and county labor heads in order to keep them abreast of plans and schedules “to avoid taking essential laborers.”57 It is interesting to note that in this period, the SS was hardly ever accused of taking Jews who were not scheduled for deportation. When such problems did arise, Türk and his staff did not make a great issue of it but rather suggested that the local county officials take up the matter directly with Höfle or Pohl. In one case, Höfle even apologized for taking the wrong Jews and for not coordinating activities with the civilians.58 The Lublin civilians’ attitude to such mishaps was disinterest. When the Population and Welfare Department in Kraków wired Türk on March 31 to complain that Dr. Josef Siegfried, an important Jewish social welfare and Judenrat official in Lublin, had been mistakenly rounded up, Türk did not even bother responding until it was much too late to save Siegfried. In fact, Dr. Siegfried was among the Judenrat members taken by the SS on the morning of March 31, when the Lublin Judenrat was reorganized by the SS and reduced in size. Türk responded to Kraków only on April 8, claiming that Dr. Siegfried had been deported before Türk could find any responsible SS person with whom to raise the issue. Since Türk and his staff were then in daily contact and close coordination with Höfle and his staff, this explanation is specious. His closing comment to Kraków was more candid: “and perhaps there is nothing wrong with the resettlement having gone through.”59 Alongside the disinterest of the German civilian authorities in Lublin regarding such supposed deportation errors, the zeal that many of them displayed to be rid of their Jews is noteworthy. For example, on March 24, 1942, county chief Alfred Brandt of Pul-awy County requested the speedy deportation of 2,700 Jews from two locations.60 Similar requests were made by other county chiefs during the following weeks, in what seemed almost like a race to be the first county without Jews.61 For their part, Höfle and his men made a genuine effort to inform the local civilian authorities of their plans. The county chiefs of Krasnystaw and Zamosć´ (Adolf Schmidt and Helmuth Weihenmeier) reported on March 20 that they were well informed, and that the deportations from their counties were proceeding well. Höfle had even come to inform Schmidt personally regarding plans and schedules.62 On March 30, Pohl came to Türk’s office to give him . a progress report on the deportations: 24,550 had been deported to Bel-zec, while 8,000 Reich Jews had been brought in, and approximately another 8,000 were on the way.63 Some civilian officials were impatient to be rid of their Jews and prepared their statistical data early. Hans Lenk, county chief for Janów-Lubelski, sent a list of 5,900 deportable Jews to Höfle on May 9. However, Türk’s Population

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and Welfare Department was responsible for population statistics, and Höfle’s team was not yet ready for deportations from this county. Lenk had to wait until the fall.64 CONCLUSION All of the aforementioned stands in sharp contrast to the acrimony surrounding the roundups of Jews for forced labor in the summer of 1940. The relations between Globocnik’s men on the “Operation Reinhard” staff and the civilians in the Population and Welfare Department and in the counties appear to have been almost harmonious at this time. Why was this so? The documents do not provide a clear answer, but several explanations suggest themselves. It is clear that no love was lost between the civilians and Globocnik’s men. As soon as the murder of the Jews had progressed significantly, the two groups returned to their mutual hostility. Eventually, Zörner resigned in April 1943 and Globocnik was removed from his post three months later. But their cooperation also was not grudging. There was general ideological agreement regarding the Jews. Many historians have noted the widespread willingness among various officials by late 1941 to participate in the murder of the Jews.65 In addition, by early 1942, the SS in the general government was clearly the dominant force in Jewish policy.66 The “Final Solution” also was understood as a Hitler order with which no official would contend. However, no official evaded it either. Fackenheim has suggested that weltanschauung is the key to understanding this willfulness in massive murder.67 The murderous harmony that had been achieved is reflected in the following story. In February 1942, Therese Borger learned that her mother, sixtyfive-year-old Bertha Langer, of Brünn (Brno) in Moravia (the “Protectorate”), was ill. Ms. Borger decided to bring her mother to Lublin so that she might care for her. She wrote to the Judenrat requesting a letter of reference for the German authorities, affirming that she had the financial means to support her mother. On February 23, Ms. Borger submitted a written request, together with the Judenrat’s reference, to the Population and Welfare Department to bring her mother to Lublin. The next day, Türk forwarded the request to the mayor of Brünn for his approval. The March 10 response, raising no objections, reached Türk’s office ten days later. Since Türk’s staff was then very busy . with the mass deportations of Jews to Bel-zec and into the district from other areas, six more days elapsed before Türk informed Therese Borger that the resettlement of her mother in Lublin had been approved. On March 31, Bertha Langer arrived in Lublin. As far as we know, Türk’s deputy Fritz Reuter and Helmut Pohl of Operation Reinhard met her at the station and immediately “resettled” her, in the fullest Nazi sense of the term.68


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NOTES 1. See Emil Fackenheim, “Holocaust and Weltanschauung: Philosophical Reflections on Why They Did It,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 3:2 (1988): 197; “The Holocaust and Philosophy,” The Journal of Philosophy, 82:10 (1985): 509. Fackenheim has related this story on numerous occasions in private conversations with the author. I believe the conversation took place at a conference in 1975. 2. Himmler to Dolp, November 8, 1940, and Dolp to Himmler, November 9, 1940, Yad Vashem Archives (YVA), O.68/28, Hermann Dolp file from the Berlin Document Center (BDC). 3. All biographical data on Dolp taken from Dolp file, ibid. His SS number was 1293. See also YVA, M.9/576, the Jewish Agency Political Department’s Records of War Criminals, file A/74, June 5, 1945. Dolp was approximately 1.58m. tall (5'2"). The Jewish testimonies recall him as short and vicious. 4. See the anonymous testimony of one of these POWs in the Ringelblum archive, YVA, M.10.AR.1/1073. For a vivid survivor description of Dolp, see Moshe Zylberberg Caspi testimony, YVA, M.1.E/1402. 5. See SS-und Selbstschutzführer [Dolp] to Piaski Judenrat, June 8, 1940, demanding 500 Jews for these two camps . by June 11. Wojewódstwo Archiwum Pan´stwowe w Lublinie (WAPL), Rada Z ydowski (RZ) 26 (file copied in YVA, O.6/47.1). 6. Globocnik to Krüger, “Halbjährige Berichterstattung” (on Dolp), August 13, 1940, YVA, O.68/28, Dolp file. 7. See, for example, on the Lipowa 7 camp: YVA, Moshe Zylberberg Caspi, M.1.E/1402; Avraham Levin’s report on Lipowa 7, based on discussions with an escaped POW, March 2, 1942, M.10.AR.1/377. 8. Promotion notification to Dolp, April 9, 1944, YVA, O.68/28, Dolp file. 9. Nuremberg Document NO-5322. Excerpts of the document also have been published in various sources. 10. Halder referred to the project again on February 24 and July 27. Franz Halder, Generaloberst Halder, Kriegstagebuch, Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, ed., (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 1962), I:184, 206, II:38. See also Nuremberg Document NOKW-3140. 11. “Protokoll über die am 22.4.40 beim SS-und Polizeiführer stattgefundene Besprechung betreffend den Einsatz jüdischer Zwangsarbeiter,” WAPL, Gouverneur des Distrikts Lublin (GDL) 891 (file copied in YVA, JM/10,458). 12. On June 1, the Judenrat created a department for labor camps outside . the city in order to deal with the needs of the Jews being sent to Bel-zec and other camps. Globocnik’s order came in addition to this. “Sprawozdanie zdzial. alnosći Gremium Bel-zeckiego oraz Komitetu Pomocy dla pracuja˛cych w Obozach . Pracy” (Report on the Activities of the Association for Bel-zec of the Committee for Aid to Laborers in Labor Camps), WAPL, RZ 46 (hereafter Gremium Report); “Sprawozdanie z dzial-alnosći Centralnej Rady Obozowej w Belzcu za czas od 13 czerwca do 5 grudnia 1941 [1940] roku” (Report on the Activities of the Central . Camp Council at Bel-zec from 13 June to 5 December 1941 [1940]), WAPL, RZ 47 . (copy in YVA, O.6/322; hereafter Bel-zec Report), 25–26.

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See also Lublin Judenrat Annual Report, WAPL, RZ 8 (copy in YVA, O.6/389; . hereafter Lublin Judenrat Annual Report), 52; the travel permit to Bel-zec for the three, dated June 13, signed by Judenrat Chairman Henryk Bekker, in WAPL, RZ 46 (copy in YVA, O.6/323). The Judenrat’s two controversial appointments as . heads of the camp were Dr. Wolf Fajgeles and Lejb Zylberajch. Fajge Nozyk was the cook; see Nachman Blumental, ed., Documents from Lublin Ghetto (Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1967), Protocols 27 and 28, May 27 and 28, 1940, 158–59, 170–71, n. 3. 13. Travel permits signed by Bekker for Abram Gorzyczynski, July 9, and for Chil Honigman, Josef Wajsfeld, and Israel Abram Blumenkranc, July 15, in WAPL, RZ 46. See also Gremium Report; Lublin Judenrat Annual Report, 52. 14. Judenrat minutes, 30, June 8, 1940, Blumental, Documents, 162. Dieter Pohl, Von der “Judenpolitik” zum Judenmord; Der Distrikt Lublin des Generalgouvernements 1939–1944 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1993), 85; Bogdan Musial, Deutsche Zivilverwaltung und Judenverfolgung in Generalgouvernement; Eine Fallstudie zum Distrikt Lublin 1939–1943 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1999), 167. See also Gremium Report; Lublin Judenrat Annual Report, 52. 15. See the report on the general government’s department heads meeting, Kraków, June 7, 1940, in Tatiana Berenstein, et al., eds., Faschismus—Getto—Massenmord; Dokumentation über Ausrottung und Widerstand der Juden in Polen während des zweiten Weltkrieges (Berlin: Rutten und Loening and Jewish . Historical Institute, 1961), 210; Tatiana Berenstein, et al., eds., Eksterminacja Zydów na ziemiach polskich w okresie okupacji hitlerowskiej; zbior dokumentów (Warsaw: Jewish Historical Institute, 1957), 210–11. See also Krüger’s letter to Dr. Frauendorfer, head of Abteilung Arbeit in Kraków, June 13, 1940, in WAPL, GDL 748 (copy of file in YVA, O.53/79). 16. See “Protokoll” of meeting on Jewish forced labor, April 22, 1940 (see n. 11). 17. “Niederschrift” of meeting among Zörner, Globocnik, von Mohrenschild, Türk, and Hofbauer, June 17, 1940, WAPL, GDL 891; Minutes of meeting of Lublin district officials, June 25, 1940, YVA, O.6/11a. 18. Globocnik to Jache, head of the Lublin Labor Department, July 15, 1940, YVA, O.53/79. See also Jache, “Vermerk über fernmündlichen Anruf des Herrn Gouverneurs,” July 22, 1940; “Verfügung vom 19, Juli 1940,” WAPL, GDL 746 (much of file copied in YVA, O.6/11a). 19. “Vermerk” by Jache on discussion with Globocnik, July 17, 1940, WAPL, GDL 746. 20. The officers were Karl Hofbauer, Globocnik’s Judenreferent, and Horst Riedel, commandant of Lipowa 7. “Vermerk” by Hecht, July 23, 1940; “Vermerk” on discussion among Dr. Damrau, Sauermann, Jache, Hecht, Nemitz, Dr. Hofbauer, July 23, 1940; minutes of July 23, 1940, meeting—Dr. Damrau, Sauermann, Jache, Hecht, Nemitz, Dr. Hofbauer participating, WAPL, GDL 748. 21. Globocnik to Stadthauptmann Schmidt, Kraków, July 30, 1940, in Berenstein, et al., Faschismus, 213. 22. “Protokoll über die Judeneinsatz besprechung vom 6. August 1940, 10 Uhr,” WAPL, GDL 748. “Protokoll über die Judeneinsatzbesprechung,” ibid.; “Vermerk,” by Hecht, August 6, 1940, on meeting that day in Kraków, and “Vermerk,”


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by Ramm, August 9, 1940, on meeting the day before with Globocnik, Nemec, and Hofbauer on the “Grossrazzien” that Globocnik planned to begin the following week, WAPL, GDL 748. 23. According to Hofbauer, Jews from twenty-one locations in the Lublin district were to be taken: Bial-a-Podlaska, Bil-góraj, Chel-m, Hrubieszów, Izbica, - uków, Mie˛dzyrzec-Podlaski, Parczew, Krasńik, Krasnystaw, Lubartów, Lublin, L Pul-awy, Radzyn, Tarnogrod, Tomaszów-Lubelski, Werbkowice, Wl-odawa, Zaklików, Zamosć´, Zwierzyniec. See Hofbauer to Lublin Labor Department, August 13, 1940, WAPL, GDL 748. See also Lublin Judenrat letter to “Herrn Lagerkommandant Obersturmbannführer Dolp,” August 16, 1940, WAPL, RZ 46; Judenrat minutes, 38, August 18, 1940, in Blumental, Documents, 176. 24. See “Vermerk,” Ramm, August 12, 1940, on Radzyn; “Vermerk,” Hecht, August 13, 1940, on phone call from Chel-m Labor Office; “Vermerk,” Hecht, August 13, 1940, on conversation between Lerch and Ramm regarding raids, Chel-m, Zamosć´, Warsaw, Kielce, ordering trains; “Vermerk,” Hecht, on phone conversation with Lerch, August 13, 1940; Hofbauer to Labor Department, August 13, 1940, on twenty-one roundup sites in Lublin district; “Vermerk,” Ramm, August 15, on meeting with Drs. Damrau and Kipke, re. SS raids; Damrau to Frank, August 16, complaining about SS raids; report by Marwan, Zamosć´ Labor Office, August 16; Bial-a-Podlaska Labor Office to Lublin Labor Department, August 17; Lublin Labor Department to Globocnik, August 20, on new raids in Zamosć´; “Vermerk,” Ramm, August 20, on call from Zamosć´ Labor Office. All of the aforementioned can be found in WAPL, GDL 748 and 749 (many are in both files; copies are in YVA, O.53/79). 25. Heinz Ramm, head of the Lublin Labor Department, brought his complaints to Dr. Hans Damrau, Zörner’s chief of staff, who relayed them to Frank. Ramm, “Vermerk,” August 15, 1940; Damrau to Frank, August 16, 1940, ibid. Copies of the letter went to Dr. Max Frauendorfer, head of the General Government Labor Department. See Ramm to Frauendorfer, August 20, 1940; Ramm to Geschlisser, August 20, WAPL, GDL 749. Ramm added that relations with Globocnik had deteriorated because of the SSPF’s disregard for the agreements he had reached with Ramm, and that he had no Jews left for road construction or water regulation projects. 26. Ramm, “Vermerk,” August 17, 1940, on an August 16 conversation with Globocnik; Ramm to Globocnik, August 19, 1940; Ramm, “Vermerk,” August 20, on conversation with Lerch, all in WAPL, GDL 745 and 749 (copies in YVA, O.53/79). 27. Globocnik to Ramm, August 20, 1940; Ramm to Globocnik, August 24, WAPL, GDL 748. 28. On the cease cooperation order, see Ramm to Labor Office heads in the District, August 20, 1940; Hecht, “Vermerk” on Ramm’s notification to all labor offices in the district of Zörner’s order to cease all cooperation with the SS and police in rounding up able-bodied Jews, August 20, 1940; Ramm to Frauendorfer, August 20, all in WAPL, GDL 749. On the rerouted train, see Globocnik’s complaint to Türk, August 24, 1940, and Türk’s response, August 27, WAPL, GDL 891. See also Türk to Kommando des Durchgangslagers, August 25, 1940, asking that the 1,000 Jews just arrived from Warsaw and Radom be fed, in WAPL, RZ 43.

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29. Krüger to Globocnik, September 3, 1940, WAPL, GDL 891. See also Frauendorfer to Lublin Labor Department, September 6, 1940, YVA, O.6/11b. 30. More than 2,000 Jews were rounded up in Lublin on the night of October 20–21, and another 250–300 in Lublin on November 14–15, and 60 in Radzyn on November 16. See Hecht’s three memos headed “Vermerk” on October 21, 1940, and his other “Vermerk” memos on November 15 and 16, 1940, in YVA, JM/2700. See also Zörner’s “Aktenvermerk,” dated November 28, 1940, regarding cooperation with the police on Jewish forced labor. He noted yet another agreement by the police to respect Labor Department work cards and to halt raids for forced laborers, in Berenstein, et al., Faschismus, 218. 31. See Hecht, “Vermerk,” October 14, 1940; Jache, “Vermerk,” October 17; Jache to Frauendorfer, October 19, all in YVA, O.53/79; Türk to Dr. Föhl, October 21, 1940, WAPL, GDL 891; Hecht, “Vermerk,” October 2, and Jache, “Vermerk,” October 21, on Jews to be released from Belzec on October 19–21, in YVA, JM/2700; Zörner’s report on Jewish forced labor in October 1940, November 6, 1940, in Berenstein et al., Faschismus, 217, and Eksterminacja, 221. 32. Lublin Labor Department to Zamosć´ Labor Office, October 11, 1940; Hecht, “Vermerk,” October 14; Hecht, “Vermerk,” October 17; SS-Bannführer Maubach to Lublin Labor Department, October 18; Jache to Frauendorfer, October 19, all in YVA, O.53/79. Türk to Dr. Föhl, October 21, 1940, WAPL, GDL 891. Hecht, “Vermerk,” October 21, 1940, and Jache, “Vermerk,” October 21, both on the missing Jews from the transport to De˛bica, YVA, JM/2700. Zörner report on Jewish forced labor in October 1940, November 6, 1940, in Berenstein, et al., Faschismus, 217. Warsaw Judenrat Report, appendix 2, p. 260. 33. On the proximity of the death camp to the labor camp, see United Nations War Crimes Commission, Case 1372, f. 1261, YVA, JM/10,156; Yitzhak Arad, Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 23–24; Michael Tregenza, “Belzec Death Camp,” Wiener Library Bulletin, 30:41–42 (1977): 15–16. 34. On Wannsee, see, for example, Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1985), 263–65; Richard Breitman, The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution (New York: Knopf, 1991), 229–33; Christopher R. Browning, “Wannsee Conference,” in Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, vol. IV: 1591–94; Yehoshua Büchler, “Document: A Preparatory Document for the Wannsee Conference,” with additional remarks by Richard Breitman, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 9:1 (Spring 1995): 121–29. 35. Hans Frank, Das Diensttagebuch das deutschen Generalgouverneurs in Polen, 1939–1945, edited by Werner Präg and Wolfgang Jacobmeyer (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1975), 457–58. The relevant sections of the speech have been published in many sources. See, for example, Yitzhak Arad, et al., eds., Documents on the Holocaust (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1981), 247–49; Hilberg, Destruction, 308–309. Dieter Pohl also has noted the shared purpose that characterized the Wannsee Conference and the preparations for the murder in the GG. See Pohl, Von der “Judenpolitik” zum Judenmord, 104–11. 36. See Zörner order, September 22, 1941; Engler announcement in Bial-aPodlaska, September 25, 1941, Moreshet Archive (MA), D.1.5868; Frank’s October 15, 1941, decree can be found in Berenstein , et al., Faschismus, 128–29. See also


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Christopher R. Browning, “Genocide and Public Health: German Doctors and Polish Jews, 1939–1941,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 3:1 (1988): 24–29; Pohl, Von der “Judenpolitik” zum Judenmord, 92–93. 37. In Hrubieszów, food rations were increased significantly between September 1941 and May 1942. YVA, M.10.AR.1/814, “Hrubieszów—spichrz Polski,” June 30, 1942; Pohl, Von der “Judenpolitik” zum Judenmord, 70–71. 38. Memo from Dr. Hasse to the Lublin-Land Kreishauptmann, March 17, 1942, regarding a March 4 court verdict, in WAPL, Kreishauptmannschaft LublinLand 75 (copy in YVA, O.53/82). 39. JSS in Bial-a-Podlaska, report for December 1941, January 9, 1942, WAPL, GDL 256 (copy in YVA, JM/2701). On poverty in the district in general, see Alten’s reports to JSS in Kraków for May 1941 to February 1942, in YVA, JM/1574–1575. See also Manfred Heymann testimony, YVA, O.2/794; Else Rosenfeld and Gertrud Luckner, eds., Lebenszeichen aus Piaski; Briefe Deportierter aus dem Distrikt Lublin 1940–1943 (Munich: Biederstein, 1968), Lebenszeichen aus Piaski, 76–91; Zygmunt Klukowski, Diary from the Years of Occupation 1939–1944 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 164–89, passim; YVA, M.10.AR.1/794, “The Condition of the Jewish Population in Radzyn County” (Yiddish), anonymous testimony, [November] 1941; Nachman Koren testimony, Encyclopedia of the Jewish Diaspora, vol. 5, Lublin (Hebrew) edited by Nachman Blumental and Meir Korzen (Jerusalem, Tel Aviv: Encyclopedia of the Jewish Diaspora, 1957), 728; Dov Freiberg, To Survive Sobibor (Hebrew) (Ramle: Privately published, 1994, c1988), 132–34; Daniel Freiberg, Darkness Covered the Earth (Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Ghetto Fighters’ House, 1970), 75–76; Tatiana Brustin-Berenstein, “Deportations as a Stage in the German Annihilation Politics Regarding the Jewish Population” (Yiddish) Bleter far Geschichte 3:1–2 (January–June 1950): 68, table 2. 40. Blumental, Documents, Protocol 37(98), July 8, 1941, 259; Isaiah Trunk, in Dos Buch fun Lublin: Memories, Testimonies. and Materials on the Struggle for Life and the Martyrdom of the Jewish Community of Lublin (Yiddish) (Paris: C.A.P.N. Press, 1952), 360; Memo, Bekker to Kreishauptmann Lublin-Land, July 16, 1941, YVA, O.6/11b. On the spread of typhoid fever in the district and Jewish efforts to deal with it, see the reports by Alten and the district JSS to JSS in Kraków for the months May 1941 to February 1942, WAPL, GDL 256, and YVA, JM/1574–1575. The Lublin Judenrat discussed the health crisis many times during the second half of 1941 and early 1942. See Blumental, ibid., 258–97. On the soldiers contracting the disease, see the testimonies by Josef Birger-Ezrahi, YVA, O.3/447, O.3/6771, M.49.E/2791; Roman Fischer, YVA, O.3/2124, and Oral History Division (OHD) (86)2; Samuel Gruber, I Chose Life (New York: Shengold, 1978), 32–34; YVA, O.16/610 and M.1.E/925; Josef Cynowiec, YVA, O.3/3009; Sol Holzman, O.33/1305. See also Türk to Bevölkerungswesen und Fürsorge Department (BuF) Kraków, January 26, 1942, on typhoid fever in the district, YVA, O.53/83. Numerous testimonies discuss the epidemic. See, for example, Anszel Krechman, YVA, M.1.E/1249; Ewa Szek, YVA, O.16/611; “Hrubieszów—spichrz Polski,” June 30, 1942, YVA, M.10.AR.1/814; “The Condition of the Jewish Population in Radzyn County,” YVA, M.10.AR.1/794; Sarah Erlichman-Bank, In Impure Hands: Letters to My Sister from the Vale of Tears (Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Ghetto Fighters’ House, 1976), 36. See also Józef Marszalek, The Concentration Camp in Lublin (Warsaw:

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Interpress, 1986), 20–21; Trunk, in Encyclopedia of the Jewish Diaspora, Lublin, 358–60. Rosenfeld and Luckner, Lebenszeichen, 76–79; Klukowski, Diary, 148–83, passim. On the Lublin cemetery, see WAPL, RZ 177; WAPL, Gmina Zydowska 8 (copy in YVA, O.6/401). 41. A list of 518 “Sammler,” divided according to county and community, is in WAPL, GDL 896 (copy in YVA, JM/10454). See also the video testimony of Zvi (Finger) Naor, Massuah Archive. 42. Schöngarth to SSPFs in GG, December 24, 1941, in Berenstein, et al., Eksterminacja, 167–68; Walther memo, December 25, 1941, Hörster memos on clothing received, December 29 and 31, 1941, list of items confiscated, January 2, 1942, and Worthoff memo on the need for additional items, January 12, 1942, all in WAPL, RZ 56 and 26 (copies in YVA, O.6/11b); Blumental, Documents, Protocols 61–63 (122–124), 1(125), December 25, 29, 31, 1941, January 1, 1942, 291–96. WAPL, RZ 56 and 57, contains extensive records of the confiscated clothing. See also the testimonies of Dov Finger, YVA, O.3/2780; Moshe Zylberszpan, YVA, M.49.E/4137; Miriam Gryzolet, YVA, M.1.E/782; Klukowski, Diary, 182; Freiberg, Darkness Covered the Earth, 82. 43. See Türk telegrams to Major Ragger, January 6 and 21, 1942, in Nachman Blumental and Józef Kermisz, eds., Dokumenty i Material-y do Dziejów Okupacji . Niemieckiej w Polsce (Lodz: Centralna Zydowska Komisja Historyczna, 1946), vol. 2, 10–14; BuF Lublin to BuF Cholm, January 9, 1942; Türk to BuF Hrubieszów, January 9, 1942, and Reuter, BuF Lublin to Ragger, January 23, 1942, WAPL, GDL 893 (copies in YVA, JM/10455 and O.53/83). See also correspondence between Weirauch in the GG Interior Department and the BuF in Chel-m, Radzyn, Zamosć´, and Hrubieszów, February 9–10, 1942, in Dokumenty, vol. 2, 15–19. On the arrival of these deportations, see phone message from Ragger to Türk, March 7; Türk response, March 9; Ragger’s dispatch of the exact deportation schedule on March 10; Reuter’s secret telegrams on these to BuF in Radzyn and in Cholm on March 11 and 12; Reuter to Nemec, in SSPF’s office, March 12; Ragger’s secret telegram to Türk on March 13; Reuter’s memo of March 17; BuF Cholm to BuF Lublin, March 18. All documents may be found in Dokumenty, vol. 2, 22–33. Several of these documents also may be found in YVA, JM/215/1 (“Oneg Shabbat” archive material), JM/10,455, O.51/10, O.53/82, O.53/83, O.6/382, and elsewhere. The original Reuter memorandum of March 17 is in WAPL, GDL 270, while Ragger’s March 10 and 13 telegrams are in WAPL, GDL 893. See also Türk note on resettlement to Chel-m and Hrubieszów, January 20, 1942, and Türk to Ragger, January 29, 1942, YVA, O.51/10. 44. Bühler to Zörner, March 3, 1942, WAPL, GDL 270 (file copied in YVA, JM/10,458); Memo, Fritz Reuter, BuF Lublin, March 17, 1942, WAPL, GDL 270 (copies in YVA, O.6/11, O.51/10, O.53/82, M.9/256, Dokumenty, II: 32–33, and in Eksterminacja, 280–81); Zörner to Wehrmacht officers in Lublin, April 1, YVA, O.53/82; Türk memo, March 19 (on meeting Helmut Pohl), WAPL, GDL 273 (file copied in YVA, O.6/352, O.53/82 and JM/10,458); two Türk memos, March 20 (on Reuter’s meetings with Kreishauptmann Schmidt of Krasnystaw and Weihenmayer of Zamosć´, and on call with Kreishauptmann Brandt of Pul-awy), ibid.; Arthur Liebehenschel, Concentration Camps Inspectorate, to Karl Koch, Kommandant at Majdanek, March 22 and 24, 1942, YVA, JM/3536a; BuF memos of March


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14, 23, and 27, 1942, on the transport of 14,000 Czech Jews to Izbica and other destinations in the Lublin district, in WAPL, GDL 749. See also Miroslav Kryl, “Deportatien von Theresienstadt nach Majdanek,” in Miroslav Karny, et al., eds., Theresienstädter Studien und Dokumente 1994 (Prag: Nodace Terezinska iniciativa, 1994), 74–76; Yehoshua Büchler, “The Deportation of Slovakian Jews to the Lublin District of Poland in 1942,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 6:2 (1991): 151–65; Livia Rothkirchen, The Destruction of Slovak Jewry (Hebrew and English) (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1961), 19–24, 57–101. The actual number of Jews deported from the Reich between March and June was considerably higher. 45. Letter, BuF Kraków to BuF of each district regarding “Gettobildung und Angabe der Einwohnerzahl,” January 20, 1942, WAPL, GDL 270. 46. Dr. Steinbach, Lublin Stadthauptmann’s office, to Judenrat, January 30, 1942, WAPL, RZ 24 (copy in YVA, O.6/11b). 47. Hoffmann, Polizeidirektor in Lublin Municipality to Judenrat, February 2, 1942, YVA, O.6/11b; Amtsblatt des Gouverneurs des Distrikts Lublin, February 28, 1942, including Zörner’s February 4 order to set up a fenced-off “Sonderghetto” for Jews working for Germans, YVA, catalog number 8167 (also in MA, D.1.5868); Hermann Worthoff Trial Verdict, YVA, TR.10/859, 48–49; Blumental, Documents, Protocols 5(129), 6(130), February 3, 7, 1942, 300–302. 48. Karl Streibel Indictment, YVA, TR.10/756, 63; Blumental, Documents, Protocols 4(128), 17(141), January 31 and March 31, 1942, 299, 319–20. 49. Blumental, ibid., Protocol 12(136), March 7, 1942, 63; Klajnman-Fradkopf testimony, YVA, O.33/1134; Worthoff verdict, YVA, TR.10/859, 49; Pohl, Judenpolitik, 110–11, 123–24. 50. Blumental, ibid., Protocols 14(138), 16(140), 19(143), March 17, 31, 1942, 310–12, 314–17, 321. A full list of those who received a J-Ausweis is in WAPL, RZ 164. The actual number of those who received this most sought-after identification card was 4,641. The Judenrat had succeeded in increasing the number of recipients. 51. See telegram from Weirauch, BuF Kraków, to BuF Lublin, May 9, 1942, and Hartig, BuF Lublin, to all Kreishauptleute in Lublin district, May 9, 1942, WAPL, GDL 893 (copy in YVA, O.53/83); Leon Perec testimony, April 19, 1945, YVA, M.2/240; Arbeitsamt Lublin to Gemeindeverwaltung Biskupice, March 5, 1942, WAPL, RZ w Biskupicach (copy in YVA, JM/3695); Ziegenmeyer, Kreishauptmann Lublin-Land, to KdS Lublin, April 18, 1942, and response by Walther, May 8, 1942, YVA, O.53/84; Ziegenmeyer to Liegenschaftverwaltung angehörige Gut Jakubowice Muranowane, April 20, 1942, Faschismus, 435; Kommissar Fischergenossenschaft to BuF Lublin-Land, April 21, 1942, BuF Lublin-Land to KdS Lublin, May 1, 1942, Walther to Ziegenmeyer, May 12, 1942, and BuF Lublin-Land to Fischergenossenschaft Lublin, May 18, 1942, YVA, O.53/84. 52. In YVA, O.53/83, see the following: telegram, Weirauch, BuF Kraków, to Interior Department, Lublin, May 9, 1942; telephone calls and letters, Hartig, BuF, Lublin, to Kreishauptleute in Lublin district, May 9, 1942; Ziegenmeyer to BuF Lublin, May 11, 1942; Kreishauptmann Hrubieszów to BuF Lublin, May 12, 1942 (1,233 laborers); BuF Lublin, memo on phone call from office of Kreishauptmann Pul-awy, May 12, 1942; Interior Office Pulawy to BuF Lublin, May 13, 1942 (ca. 2,000 laborers); BuF Zamosć´ to BuF Lublin, May 13, 1942, with attached “Liste der in Judenwohnbezirk in Zamosć´ ansässigen jüdischen Handwerker

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und Facharbeiter,” dated May 12, 1942 (519 laborers); Reuter to Pohl, May 13, 1942; “Liste der im Kreise Bilgoraj befindlichen Handwerker,” May 15, 1942 (936 laborers); BuF Lublin-Land, “Jüdische Textilwerker im Distrikt Lublin,” May 16, 1942 (4,107 laborers); Hartig, BuF, handwritten draft list of numbers of Jewish laborers in Lublin-Land County, by desired skill or trade, May 16, 1942 (1,440); Hartig, BuF Lublin to BuF Kraków, May 16, 1942, telegram and letter (9,841 laborers, not including Lublin-Land and Krasnystaw counties); Hartig’s handwritten draft of a revised list of Jewish laborers, May 18, 1942; telegram, Hartig to BuF Kraków, May 19, 1942; Kreishauptmann Krasnystaw to BuF Lublin, May 18, 1942; Kreishauptmann Lublin-Land to BuF Lublin, May 19, 1942 (1,402 laborers); telegram, Dr. Hopf, BuF Kraków, to BuF Lublin, May 19, 1942; telegram, Hartig to BuF Kraków, May 20, 1942; Kreishauptmann Bilgoraj to BuF Lublin, May 28, 1942. Data could not be provided for Krasnystaw County, as deportations into and out of the county were then underway. 53. See, for example, testimony of Dr. Ludwig Losacker, former chief of staff of the Lublin district government and head of the Interior Department in the GG, and of Oskar Reichwein, former SS “Judenreferent” in Zamosc, both in the fall of 1961, in YVA, TR.10/1146Z, XII:2603 and XIII:2681, respectively. See also Pohl, Judenpolitik, 109. 54. This was followed three days later by the urgings of Major Johannes Ragger of BuF in Kraków. Reuter memo, March 17, 1942, WAPL, GDL 270. This detailed memorandum is one of the most important documents on the development of cooperation between the SS and the civilian authorities in Lublin for the murder of the Jews. 55. Ibid.; testimonies on Mielec deportations and forced labor, recorded by Israel Police, Department 06, February 1964–May 1967, in YVA, TR.11/01156. 56. Reuter memo, March 17, 1942, WAPL, GDL 270. 57. Türk memos on meetings with Pohl, March 19 and 23, WAPL, GDL 273. Pohl was in charge of incoming and outgoing “Judentransporten” at the Lublin rail station from March to July 1942. See the Pohl and Lerch indictment, TR.10/736. See also Pohl, Judenpolitik, 119. 58. See, for example, Türk’s memo of March 24 on a complaint by Meinecke of the Lublin Labor Department that 2,000 laborers had been deported from Piaski the day before. WAPL, GDL 273. 59. Telegram, Hensel, BuF Kraków, to Türk, March 31, 1942, and Türk letter to BuF Kraków, April 8, WAPL, GDL 273; Blumental, Documents, Protocol 16(140), March 31, 1942, 314–18. 60. Türk to Höfle, March 24, 1942, WAPL, GDL 273; Türk to Brandt, March 24, 1942, ibid. 61. See, for example, Lenk, Kreishauptmann Janów-Lubelski, to SSPF Lublin, May 9, 1942, requesting the deportation of 5,900 Jews from eight locations, YVA, O.51/10; Ziegenmeyer, Kreishauptmann Lublin-Land, to BuF Lublin, May 19, 1942, requesting the deportation of 19,735 Jews from six locations, YVA, O.51/10, O.53/83, JM/215.1; Busse, Kreishauptmann Hrubieszów, to BuF Lublin, May 22, 1942, requesting the deportation of 14,188 Jews from five locations, YVA, O.51/10, O.53/83, JM/215.1. District Administrator Wilhelm Engler shared this eagerness at a May 31, 1942, government meeting in Kraków, expressing his pleasure that


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the “cleansing” of the district of Jews would soon be completed. See Frank, Diensttagebuch, 500. 62. Türk memo, March 20, 1942, WAPL, GDL 273. 63. Türk memo, March 30, 1942, WAPL, GDL 273. See also Türk’s memo, “Zum Monatsbericht März 1942,” April 7, 1942, WAPL, GDL 273. 64. Lenk to SSPF Lublin, May 9, 1942, YVA, O.51/10; Dokumenty, II:54. 65. See, for example, Browning, “Genocide and Public Health,” 21–36; “German Technocrats, Jewish Labor, and the Final Solution: A Reply to Götz Aly and Susanne Heim,” Remembering for the Future: The Impact of the Holocaust on the Contemporary World (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1988), vol. 2, 2199–2208 and in revised form in The Path to Genocide, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 59–76; Götz Aly and Susanne Heim, “The Economics of the Final Solution: A Case Study from the General Government,” Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual 5 (1988): 3–48; “The Holocaust and Population Policy: Remarks on the Decision on the ‘Final Solution,’ ” Yad Vashem Studies 24 (1994): 45–70; Dan Diner, “Rationalization and Method: Critique of a New Approach in Understanding the ‘Final Solution,’ ” ibid., 71–108; David Bankier, “On Modernization and the Rationality of Extermination,” ibid., 109–29; Ulrich Herbert, “Racism and Rational Calculation: The Role of ‘Utilitarian’ Strategies of Legitimation in the National Socialist ‘Weltanschauung,’ ” ibid., 131–45; Götz Aly, “Erwiderung auf Dan Diner,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 41:4 (October 1993), 621–35; Hilberg, Destruction, 482–84. 66. Norman Rich, Hitler’s War Aims, vol. 2, The Establishment of the New Order (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1974), 95–96; Breitman, Architect of Genocide, 235. 67. Fackenheim, “Holocaust and Weltanschauung,” 201–206. 68. See the Judenrat’s endorsement of Therese Borger’s financial means, signed by Bekker, February 21, 1942; Therese Borger to BuF Lublin, February 23; Türk to Bürgermeister, Brünn, February 24; Dr. Karafiat, Obermagistrat, Brünn, to Governor, District Lublin, March 10; Türk to Therese Borger, March 26; Zentralstelle für jüdischer Auswanderung Prag to Governor, Lublin, April 30, all in YVA, O.53/83.


C HA P T E R 1 6

Metahistory, Redemption, and the Shofar of Emil Fackenheim GERSHON GREENBERG

This chapter is concerned with religious-philosophical approaches to the Holocaust in the time and place of the war and immediately thereafter (referred to as She’erit Hapeleitah), that is, with responses by individuals who themselves belonged to the objects of reflection. At the end of this chapter, I suggest where Emil Fackenheim’s thought stands vis-à-vis these earlier approaches. My focus is on the particular aspect of “metahistory.” Isaac Breuer used the term to describe the direct relationship between Israel and God according to divine laws—as over-against the nation’s existence solely according to the laws of nature.1 I use it (although the thinkers studied here did not themselves use the term) to refer to the higher, mythic (or midrashic) dimension of events, along with its empirical application and verification; to covenantal history, that is, God’s relationship to the nation of Israel in history, his providence, and his presence in Israel’s time-space reality. Within the war itself, that is, for thinkers through the beginning of 1944, the metahistorical structure, specifically the aspect of divine presence perceptible in history, was shaken by the reality of suffering by the pious. In reaction, the thinkers fell into theological silence. But then they identified practical ways to endure (and even reduce) the crisis spiritually until redemption came and lifted the threat to metahistory presented by the suffering. After the war, in the Displaced Persons camp, the metahistorical structure was redefined according to Mesirut nefesh (submission of the soul in terms of suffering self-sacrifice) and restored. Some three decades later, Fackenheim affirmed metahistory in terms of the commanding voice of Auschwitz and the 207

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Tikkunim (mendings) that began at the edges of the historical reality of the Holocaust. Survivors who remained Jewish and the act of the establishment of the Jewish state reopened historical reality to metahistory, to the point of fragmentary hints of redemption. WITHIN THE TIME AND PLACE OF WAR Shlomoh Zalman Ehrenreich was the longtime rabbi of Simleul Silvaniei, Transylvania—he chose to remain there and did not accept a 1932 invitation to succeed Yosef Sonnenfeld as head of Jerusalem’s Edah Hareidit. He led his community through anti-Semitic outbreaks in 1939, Hungarian control upon Hitler’s 1940 Vienna award, and finally through the expulsion to a ghetto five kilometers away in the Klein brickyards of Cehul Silvaniei in early May 1944. At the end of May he was taken to Auschwitz and immediately murdered. His written reflections, saved by a local gentile family, were given to his grandson, Yehoshua Katz, in 1945, head of the Szombathely (Hungary) yeshiva, and he published them. On one level, metahistory remained intact for Ehrenreich. He initially presumed that God remained present in history for his people, and that the nations that attacked Israel belonged to a divinely structured and administered process. He reacted to the plight of Jews on a train from Grosswardein (Oradea) passing through Simleul-Silvaniei in February 1939, their faces branded with swastikas and their fingers bitten off, by asking: How could human beings perpetrate such evil, let alone those from the cultured land of Germany? They could do so, he believed, only if there were some higher force involved namely, God. He referred to the Degel Mahaneh Ephraim by the Ba’al Shem Tov’s grandson, Ephraim Misudylkov—a text dear to him. In 1999, I found an edition with his Haskamah (approbation) in the ruins of his synagogue. Esau’s hands, according to Ephraim Misudylkov, did not tyrannize Jacob as long as Jacob’s voice was that of Torah (Midrash Bereishit Rabbah 65:20 to “The voice is Jacob’s voice but the hands are the hands of Esau”; Genesis 27:22). But God forbid that Jacob’s voice not be that of Torah! Ehrenreich’s contemporary description of Torah loss had to do with the specific fact that Jewish men had been marrying German women. There was even one German rabbi who provided divorce decrees against Jewish wives of Poles and Russians who came to Germany to marry Gentiles. Also, daughters and granddaughters of Viennese rabbis were consorting with Polish men, and the rabbis did nothing to stop them. Upon the loss of Torah, the infuriated God of Israel transferred his fury to Esau—and once the transfer took place, Esau proceeded to release his pent-up hatred indiscriminately (Metsudat David to Isaiah 10:5).2 The worsening condition of Transylvania’s Jews did not undercut Ehrenreich’s interpretation. As late as October 22–23, 1943, Shemini Atseret, he stated that the metaphysical opposition between Esau and Jacob remained

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contained as long as there was Torah (Midrash Eykhah Rabbah; Proem 2:1). When Torah failed—and for Ehrenreich the failure was a matter of rampant assimilation and Zionism (secular and religious)—God employed Esau as his instrument of restoration. The nations were certainly evil (see Ta’anit 29a). “But the nations were not doing the hitting. God alone did that [i.e., moved Esau’s aggression from potential to actual].”3 In October 1942, he acknowledged that the evil was deeply ingrained among the perpetrators. Citing the Kedushat Levi (Levi Yitshak of Berdichev), he averred that otherwise the attackers would have given Israel a chance to do Teshuvah. They would never have forced Israel to violate the Torah, and they would have been ashamed of their actions. But unless God intervened, their evil neither could have nor would have been activated. To justify the fact that God would employ such evil forces to set Israel straight, Ehrenreich explained that the forces would ultimately be destroyed (Kedushat Levi), eliciting recognition of God’s name in the world and neutralizing their evil. Further, each evil nation had some spark of goodness—Egypt’s pharaoh, for example, had honored Joseph (Genesis 41). Ehrenreich did not identify the good spark of the Nazi nation—nor, for that matter, that of Hungary or Romania.4 Up until this point Ehrenreich, committed to the reality of divine presence in history, combined the traditional concept of Esau-Jacob alienation conditioned by Torah reality, contemporary factors of Torah loss, and elements of theodicy to come to terms with the suffering around him. But this did not leave him at peace, and he developed an alternate path of thought. Why, he asked, were the pious suffering? Could it be accidental? Similar to a fire started in a field to burn the thorns but inevitably burned the cornstalks as well (Exodus 22:6, see also “together with the thorn the cabbage is smitten,” Baba Kama 92a)? Did God’s presence in history involve a point beyond which he had no control? Ehrenreich’s response was to change the subject. He declared categorically that man was not to reflect upon God’s judgments, or open his mouth with rebellious challenges to him (see Rashi to Genesis 21:12; Exodus 5:22, 6:1). He should rather be concerned with his own sins and with doing Teshuvah. Beyond this, Ehrenreich sensed that redemption, which would bring understanding, was imminent. Indeed, it would remove the contemporary grounding for asking such questions.5 In this alternative line of thought, theological silence replaced metahistorical explanation of the tragedy. Silence functioned as a boundary around the issue of divine presence, while opening the Jew to a language totally other than that of metahistory—the language of redemption. Silence also served as a threshold through which to pass into the redeemed future, and as an instrument for enduring suffering until redemption came. This silence belonged to the nation of Israel’s legacy, instituted by Abraham at the Akeidah and by Aaron at his sons’ immolation. Against its backdrop, Ehrenreich sought to fill his congregants’ lives in the present with positive activity, which also helped

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precipitate redemption. Such activity consisted of Torah study and Teshuvah (penitent return). In this, the era of Ikveta dimeshiha (onset of the Messiah), Torah study purified the Jew, qualifying him for and contributing to the advancement of redemption. Teshuvah—which God initiated now upon man’s plea because the heart was too oppressed to begin the dialogue of return—would elicit divine compassion in favor of accelerating redemption.6 The path of metahistorical explanation taken initially by Ehrenreich resembled that of Shlomoh Zalman Unsdorfer in Bratislava. Unsdorfer shared the rabbinical leadership of wartime Slovakia with Armin Frieder of Nove Mesto, Shmuel David Ungar, and Mikhael Ber Weissmandel of Nitra. A standard-bearer of the Hatam Sofer (Mosheh Schreiber) tradition, he became its voice after his teacher, the Da’at Sofer (Akiva Schreiber), left Bratislava in the summer of 1939, and the Heshev Sofer (Avraham Shmuel Benyamin Schreiber) left in Shavuot 1943. In mid-September 1944, he fled to Marienthal Internirungslager, a camp set up for Jews holding American passports for prisoner exchange. In early October—when the Germans came and saw his false papers—he was moved to Sered. From there he was sent to Auschwitz, where he was murdered upon arrival on October 18. Unsdorfer’s wartime writings about the catastrophe (sermons, Pirkei Avot lectures, personal records of the tragic events affecting the Jews of Bratislava) were found by his son, Simhah Bunem, when he returned from Auschwitz in 1945 to the ruins of their home in Bratislava. Like Ehrenreich, Unsdorfer pursued the path of metahistorical explanation and formulated an interpretation of God’s presence in the catastrophe. After Hungary annexed southern Slovakia in the fall of 1938, Jews holding Hungarian papers, accused of instigating the annexation, were expelled to the Slovakia-Hungary border. Some were taken to the Patronka weapons factory or the Ratenbriken hard-labor camp outside of Bratislava, and Unsdorfer trekked to both places to offer solace. In May 1939, at Ratenbriken, he stated that the great distress and the threat of war came from heaven. The troubles were intended to force Jews to confess their sins and straighten their ways—God forbid, he added, that they should not do so (“In vain I struck My children; they did not learn My lesson,” Jeremiah 2:30).7 This was echoed in his Pirkei Avot lectures. The rabbinic sages observed how God was present in Israel’s suffering as well as in relief (Berakhot 12a). Specifically, God brought suffering to evoke Teshuvah, remove trespasses, and improve the nation (Deuteronomy 5:30), and he restored protection from suffering once the return was complete (Sota 21a). He set up harsh rulers when Israel made overtures to the gentiles, releasing the latent animosity of Esau to halt assimilation and restore Israel’s separate identity.8 In a November 1941 sermon in his Weidritz Alley synagogue, Unsdorfer stated that whatever the level of Esau’s animosity, Esau attacked only when Torah’s voice diminished—and then only under divine aegis: “It was not in Esau’s hands to chase Jacob from his home, to send him into the ghetto and labor camp” (See


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Pesikta Rabbati 13:1).9 Unsdorfer’s commitment to divine involvement in Israel’s history was demonstrated by his January 1942 listing of measure-for-measure punishments, which were specific and balanced to a degree possible only for God: Jews were confined to their homes during Christmas, after they had participated in the gentile Christmas celebrations in previous years; they were forced to wear the Magen David patch, after they stopped dressing as traditional Jews; and they had to mark their stores as Jewish owned, after they stopped posting Mezuzot.10 Even following the massive deportations to the “lands of blood” in the east (i.e., Poland) in the spring of 1942, Unsdorfer spoke of catastrophe in terms of divine response to religious failure. In making his point about assimilation, he evoked the rabbinic sages’ simile about a passerby who awoke a robber because he was in danger. The robber beat him up (Midrash Bereshit Rabbah 75:3). Jews, particularly in Germany, had been intruding into gentile culture. They incited Esau, and God let the incitement turn into attack. Meanwhile, having left the fold, Jews were no longer protected by the Shekhinah.11 But as with Ehrenreich, there was an alternate position to that of metahistorical interpretation. In September 1941, Unsdorfer found himself unable to ask his congregants to recite words of Tokhehah (rebuke) when pious Jews were being dragged into the street with Tallit and Tefillin and their beards and Peyot were being slashed off.12 While the punishment of the sinners could be comprehended, he asked his congregants in December 1941, “What of the [innocent] sheep? What was their sin? What of our infants, who [were not even old enough] to taste sin?”13 Citing the Yigdal hymn in January 1942, he asked: If God compensated man with kindness according to his deed and placed evil on the wicked according to his wickedness, why were the pious now being persecuted?14 The fragility of Unsdorfer’s commitment to God’s presence in history was conveyed in his prayer of March 12, 1942. That was a day set aside for fasting, in response to the massive deportation to the east and the failure of Armin Frieder’s plea to President Tito on behalf of Slovakia’s 80,000 Jews (“Did not one God create us? Are we not accountable to the same God? . . . We plead before you, the priest and servant of God”). Unsdorfer affirmed that God acted piously with Israel and was its redeemer, and that God also became angered. But God’s anger seemed out of control, the deaths pointless: What will satisfy You? Teshuvah and Vidui (confession)? We hereby do Teshuvah. We confess before You that we have sinned, trespassed, and committed crimes. A broken spirit? All the troubles have broken our spirit. Charity? We hereby give charity. Please do not be excessively furious with us. What is to be achieved by our blood should You slaughter us? Please consider the piety of Your servants and those devoted to You. All those great in Torah and Yirah who have sacrificed themselves in sanctification of Your name.15

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In the spring of 1942, Unsdorfer silenced his theology. He still tried to understand why the pious suffered. In his commentary to Pirkei Avot III:24, he introduced Hayim Ibn Attar’s Or Hahayim commentary to Exodus 22:6 (“If fire breaks out, and catch in thorns, so that the stacks of corn, or the standing corn, or the field, be consumed therewith, he that kindled the fire shall surely make restitution”): The pure children of Israel (the standing corn) served as guarantors when the Torah was accepted (Psalms 8:3). When mankind turned evil, that is, against the Torah, it made sense that they would be burned. But Unsdorfer was not quieted. Like Ehrenreich, he reacted by stepping away from the issue and asserting an imperative to rein in the quest for explanation. This did not undermine his faith. To the contrary, it provided for silence, and silence provided a new threshold for belief.16 Unsdorfer attributed his inability to explain to human limitations: “How could human beings, whose days were as passing shadows, presume to understand the ways of God—who is, was, and will be?” (September 4, 1943). Silence belonged to a noble tradition, one that gave it reality in the religious life of the present. Abraham and Isaac, for example, did not probe God’s intentions vis-à-vis history—although they had obvious cause (Rashi to Genesis 21:12). In his silence, Unsdorfer went beyond Ehrenreich’s anticipation of redemption to submerge his will into God’s and make God’s will his own—as Abraham once did.17 Once with God, he could understand the ultimate metaphysical dynamic of the universe—that descent and ascent, darkness and light, and Hevlei mashiah (the pangs of the Messiah) and redemption each belonged to one another. Secured in this knowledge, like Ehrenreich he provided a way for his congregants not only to endure but to anticipate, even help precipitate, redemption. The way was prayer, which channeled presence before (even with) God and the wisdom of Hevlei mashiah/redemption into daily life. The Hallel service, for example, described the positive outcome of divine providence and was recited before the outcome actually occurred.18 Assuming a harmony between the ways of the personal God and the realities of the world, these two thinkers believed that God’s presence was reflected in the tragedy—that he intervened into events to restore the life of Torah in Israel. At the same time, in the face of contemporary events, their assumption forced them into theological silence—lest they renounce the correspondence between human piety and divine providence. Through redemption, they were able to cope with the tension generated by their metahistorical inclinations. With redemption an imminent reality, they could hope that the tension would soon resolve itself—and without compromising God’s presence in history and the rapport between God and the pious Jew. The rabbi of Belz, Aaron Rokeah, found refuge in Budapest in the fall of 1943 after a series of imprisonments and escapes in Eastern Europe—and the death of thirty-three family members in Przemysl. There he and his brother, Mordekhai, of Bilgoray, who served as his spokesman, received (miraculously, the Hasidim believed) entry certificates for the Land of Israel.


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In the parting sermon of January 16, 1944, delivered for him by Mordekhai a day before leaving, the speaker referred to Yissakhar Taykhtahl’s Em Habanim Semehah, published at the end of December 1943. Taykhtahl believed that redemption was about to burst forth before the war. It did not, because massive aliyah did not take place. Now, given Israel’s evident inability to receive redemption all at once, redemption would only come gradually and through natural means. This included the people of Israel’s initiative in terms of aliyah—its choosing between aliyah and (continued) catastrophe (Was this a realistic choice?). Mordekhai (i.e., Aaron) cited Taykhtahl’s recollection of a dream of Shimon Rokeah, the founder of the Belz dynasty, about how a declaration of redemption’s advent could disarm opponents and thereby enable the advent to actually take place. In the dream, Noam Elimelekh (Elimelekh of Lyzhansk, 1717–1782) related an anecdote about a king’s daughter having difficulty giving birth. Following his advisors, the king had the witches who were causing the difficulty informed that the birth took place successfully. They thereupon stopped their curses, and the successful birth was able to take place in fact. Mordekhai (i.e., Aaron) agreed with Taykhtahl that it was imperative to declare redemption’s imminence. But while Taykhtahl focused on massive aliyah, the speaker focused on believing in the imminent reality of salvation as the precondition for its unfolding, and on enacting this belief in Teshuvah (Sanhedrin 98a), which, as with Taykhtahl’s aliyah, was a matter of human initiative. The people of Israel would first have to awaken, and then God would bring them to him. Mordekhai (i.e., Aaron) cited the dispute between God and Keneset Yisrael (congregation of Israel) about who was to turn first in Teshuvah in Lamentations 5:21. For the speaker, all of the historical end points (kitsim) had come and gone, and Israel now stood at the trans-metahistorical, apocalyptic end (Sanhedrin 98a). The imminent redemption (These are the days of Hevlei mashiah, of preparations for the future redemption soon to come) overshadowed the metahistorical dimension. The sorrows were endless (Where, he asked, was there water for the endless tears?), unprecedented (Did ever such a thing happen in the world?), and inexplicable (And why? How come? Until when?), but God and his presence were not accountable to such humanly defined questions. For Rashi, Mordekhai pointed out, divine promises came from El Shaddai (almighty) rather than Adonai (eternal truth) and were not necessarily fulfilled during the lifetime of those to whom God made his promises. Moreover, the God who made himself known in history was of Rahamim (mercy), and it transcended human calculation (Rashi to Exodus 6:3). In addition to Teshuvah, there was a concrete (and historical) aspect to the trans-metahistorical, apocalyptic drama: actual, individual aliyah by Mordekhai and Aaron. Aliyah penetrated the epistemological and ontological partition between Hevlei mashiah and the messianic reality and enabled the Hevlei mashiah to recede and redemption manifest itself. Further, it evidenced God’s presence in history. By going to the Land of Israel and establishing

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Torah through his followers there, Aaron Rokeah could and would enable the word of God to go forth from Jerusalem and bring redemption. In the Land of Israel, the Tsadik could teach Halakhah “such that the Holy One, Blessed be He, will help us immediately, quickly, with universal salvation.” Ehrenreich and Unsdorfer and the Rebbe of Belz all set aside the metahistorical concept of divine presence in history. But with the Rebbe there was a significant exception to the process—his own imminent escape as a manifestation of divine presence. Ehrenreich and Unsdorfer awaited redemption in passive theological silence, committed to the life of piety that might possibly facilitate it. The Rebbe acted in history to serve in the apocalyptic drama and bring about redemption.19 DISPLACED PERSONS CAMPS For thinkers of the She’erit Hapeleitah, the metahistorical approach, discerning God’s presence in history, was central—along with Israel’s active and direct path to redemption. The two thinkers cited later affirmed the structural alienation between the people of Israel and the nations (i.e., Esau) stipulated by Ehrenreich and Unsdorfer. But rather than focus on the people of Israel’s failure to keep Torah and the consequent suffering, they focused on the suffering that the alienation itself produced. They viewed suffering as the inevitable (as such, positive) characteristic of Jewish existence, and the suffering of the pious in particular as the crystallization of the nation’s suffering involved in keeping Torah. Bentsiyon Firer was a religious Zionist from Rymanov, Poland, and headed the Or Meir Yeshivah in Ulm near Munich prior to his aliyah in December 1948. He presumed a metaphysical split between Esau and Jacob, which began with their birth (Midrash Bereishit Rabbah 63:6), continued through time, and turned national at Sinai (Shabbat 89b with Rashi commentary). Israel’s eternal existence was assured by God. He removed the people of Israel from the historical framework of the nations, and as they went from ascent to descent to oblivion, Israel descended and again ascended—with God’s Torah keeping the people of Israel vital. Mesirut nefesh was the means by which Israel maintained Torah during its alienation from the world—and in turn assured that Torah would give life to the nation. For Firer, Mesirut nefesh characterized Israel’s metahistorical existence. Firer traced Mesirut nefesh from the Akeidah to the choice to die rather than become part of the gentile Tumah (polluted) realm in the medieval period, through the adherence to Jewish faith in the modern world where no choice existed. He interpreted the Holocaust as an explosion of Mesirut nefesh. Specifically, Hitler attacked Israel’s “psychic” system (for example, replacing individual names with tattooed numbers in the concentration camps in order to destroy spiritual identity), knowing that Israel’s collective mind, which was


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drawn from Torah, was the source of Israel’s being, and that once Torah was destroyed the ability to resist would be destroyed as well. But Israel survived: “Even after the conflagrations and crematoria of the Holocaust tore away large sections of the organism of the Jewish people, the people were not destroyed. Nor will they ever be.”20 The explosion served as a catharsis of all potential suffering, it concluded metahistory as defined by Mesirut nefesh, and it left Israel to redemption through the Jewish state: “Redemption is beginning to sprout forth from the Jewish national Hurban. When we begin to grasp that the birth of the newly created state of Israel had to undergo terrible birth pains, which are always accompanied by a colossal outflow of blood, our painful national catastrophe is eased.”21 That is, the metahistory of Mesirut nefesh, culminating in the Hevlei mashiah of the Holocaust, was the direct source for the Jewish sovereignty that was the threshold to redemption. The movement from metahistory to redemption included a line of historical transformation. Firer wrote in Di Yidishe Shtime in 1948 that with the Warsaw ghetto revolt, Mesirut nefesh turned active. The revolt shattered the mind-set of passive suffering and obedience to death. It terminated two millennia of pogroms and inquisitions and asserted national self-consciousness. Those who revolted recognized that while military victory was impossible, they could shatter despair and revive national ambition. The active Mesirut nefesh of Warsaw, for Firer, was carried on by the military resistance of the religious Kibbutz Kfar Etsiyon in the summer of 1948.22 God’s discernible presence in history in the form of Israel’s Mesirut nefesh was also the theme of Mordekhai Perlov’s statement of September 1948. Perlov was a graduate of the Tomkhei Temimim Yeshivah in Lubavitch, Russia, headed by Yosef Yitshak Schneersohn, and he was now a rabbi in Schwebisch-Halle. He invoked the midrashic interpretation of the ram of the Akeidah offered by Haninah ben Dosa (Pirkei Derabi Eliezer 31). Every part of the ram was used by Israel. The ashes were used for the Temple’s inner altar, the sinews for David’s harp, the skin for Elijah’s girdle, the left horn for God to sound at Sinai, and the right (larger) horn for sounding at the onset of the messianic era. Perlov added his own gloss, saying that the ram instructed the people of Israel about how to live until redemption—that is, how they should conduct themselves in God’s presence as history unfolded. He did not cite sources, but the point made by rabbinic sage R. Huna in the Talmud of Jerusalem appears to have been in mind: For that entire day Abraham saw how the ram would get caught in one tree, and free itself and go forth; then it got caught in a bush, and freed itself and went forth. Said to him the Holy One, blessed be He, “Abraham, this is how your children in the future will be caught by their sins and trapped by the kingdoms, from Babylonia to Media, from Media to Greece, from Greece to Edom.” He said to Him, “Lord of the ages! Is that how it will be forever?”

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He said to him, “In the end they will be redeemed by the horn of this ram.” (J. Ta’anit 2:5) Perlov focused on the fact that the horns, one of Torah, the other of Mitsvot, were caught in the thicket. Israel’s life between Sinai and redemption was to be one of Mesirut nefesh (caught in the thicket), which was traceable to Abraham’s commitment to the Akeidah. Mesirut nefesh would be for the sake of Torah and Mitsvot—which were, in turn, the source for Israel to endure the suffering. A faith to persevere through both good and bad times (“Az gut iz dokh du tomer has veshalom nit gut iz oykh du un az du iz dokh gut,” Levi Yitshak of Berdichev) came from the sinews, that is, David (II Samuel 16:6, 9:1. I Samuel 17:16, 33). The belief that the Messiah would come, a belief pure of inquiry into God’s motives or reflections into his attributes (Rashi to Exodus 5:22, 6:1), came from the skin of the ram, that is, Elijah. For Perlov, the horns of Sinai (Torah revelation) and Elijah (messianic redemption) were connected by Israel’s metahistory of Mesirut nefesh in terms of Torah and Mitsvot. Mesirut nefesh blended with the internal, eternal soul of Israel. It was like the gold coin which, though covered by filth (presumably gentile Tumah) from the outside, would ultimately be unburied and shine brilliantly. It was frozen over by the ice of winter (i.e., oppression by the nations), he wrote, but would surface in springtime. Each Jew was ultimately such a coin and met distress with a cry of Shema Yisrael from a deep point within him. Even in this orphaned generation, Perlov explained, the Mesirut nefesh legacy of the Jewish soul, of faith amidst oppression and belief in the Messiah, remained. Through Mesirut nefesh, for the sake of Torah and Mitsvot, “We will merit to see, very soon, the elimination of our enemy materially and spiritually, somehow and somewhere; and be worthy of seeing the ingathering of the dispersed from the four corners of the earth; and the building of our sanctuary by our righteous messiah.”23 The views of these two thinkers of the She’erit Hapeleitah differed with those of their wartime predecessors. First, God’s presence in the people of Israel’s history was a manifest fact. The synthesis of Torah and Israel’s suffering was a direct expression of divine involvement. Second, the suffering of the pious was essential to Israel’s identity. Third, redemption was not divided from metahistory but rather its continuation in terms of Mesirut nefesh—for Firer through an apocalyptic event, and for Perlov through the inevitable removal of oppression. What might account for the change? Perhaps Firer and Perlov attributed their personal survival to God’s presence, and they projected their individual metahistories onto the whole nation. For Firer, in addition, the establishment of the Jewish state belonged to the messianic onset administered by God—possibly moving him to perceive (in a retroactive way) divine presence up until that point in Israel’s history.24


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EMIL FACKENHEIM Where did metahistory stand for post-1967 Jewish religious respondents to the Holocaust? Arthur A. Cohen’s thought implied it, as a reality that bridged history and ontology. The Holocaust was bracketed off from historical consciousness, but it also was not metaphysical. He compared it to an earthquake with tremors before and after. The Jewish people could comprehend this tremendum, for they were not only historical (as if there were no God), nor solely ontological (as if held by God against the movements of history). Their status would be explicated with redemption. For Richard Rubenstein, metahistory ended with the Holocaust. The catastrophe culminated the process of secularization and disenchantment that started when history began. Nazi technology demystified nature, and Nazi bureaucracy neutralized human sentiment. This broke the covenantal thread—and Judaism could no longer center itself around the God of history. For Eliezer Berkovits, in the course of the catastrophe, God’s relationship to history yielded to the metahistorical boundary at history’s edge. In response to God’s hiddenness, Jews of the catastrophe emulated the pure faith of Abraham (Emunah), who carried out the Akeidah command and prepared Isaac for sacrifice, despite the covenantal promise that his seed would grow. Their Emunah, enacted in Mitsvah, took place with no assurance that a Jewish community would survive to bring vitality to the Mitsvot offered to it. This metahistory, constructed of Emunah and Mitsvah, remained suspended. When the state of Israel came into being, history rose up from the depths to a level that could touch it. When Fackenheim faced the realm of the Holocaust, the murder camp of Nazism, he was at once silent about, and theologically opposed to, discerning God’s metahistorical presence. But from above there was the commanding voice of Auschwitz, and from below there were acts of Tikkun, which intimated such a presence. In the years of Jewish existence after the catastrophe, he was able to discern metahistorical signs. He discovered the commanding voice of Auschwitz and the Tikkunim amidst the survivors who remained Jewish (individual) and amidst the Jewish state (collective). During the catastrophe, the realm of Auschwitz was bordered by fragments of metahistory. In time, with the survival and revival of Jewishness, with the subsequent persistence of the Tikkunim of the Holocaust in the realm of the empirical, and with the fact of the Jewish state, a new historical reality unfolded, one so open to metahistory as to allow for words of redemption. The ingredients drawn upon for this process by Fackenheim were in some instances unlike those of the predecessors—notably the metaphysical dialectic between catastrophe and redemption and its enunciation as Hevlei mashiah. But there were striking similarities: Prayer as response to the incomprehensible; restoration of the Land of Israel in response to the death camp and as condition for the possibility of redemption; the continuity between the Warsaw ghetto revolt and the battle for the Jewish

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state; and the soulful resistance to darkness and persecution through Torah and morality, bridging the revelation of Sinai and the sounds of redemption. Because Fackenheim was not aware of the earlier writings, his thought also pointed to an ongoing undercurrent of religious ideas, deeply embedded in Jewish consciousness (or perhaps to a divine memory?)—while demonstrating a personal strength of mind and soul of prophetic or charismatic quality. The Jewish people were the first, Fackenheim wrote, to affirm the God of history—and then to bind their collective survival to him. Jewish faith meant God’s connection to history and staying with this God while God maintained Israel through exile and into redemption. God’s presence at Auschwitz was not theologically possible, and not judgmentally available. But God was not not there: “Nothing remains but the fact that the bond between Him and His people reached the breaking point but was not for all wholly broken.”25 From above, there was the commanding voice of Auschwitz—which religious Jews could identify and which secularist Jews heard. It was a voice that could be formed in terms of “lest,” commanding Jews to survive “lest” the Jewish people perish. From the ground below there were those who comprehended the Nazi logic of destruction, the quest to erase all sanity, Jewishness, life and reason, a comprehension outside all relation (for all relation had turned destructive), a comprehension receptive to the imperative from above to resist. The voice from above and the transcending comprehension present in Tikkunim below met, with no explanation other than the “lest,” and absolute transcendence became real in the midst of time. At such moments the resistance of the secular Warsaw ghetto fighter, of Pelagia Lewinska of Auschwitz, and of the religious Hasid were, for their part, all held together by an Ultimate. These metahistorical signs, of Tikkunim below and the voice from above, began to manifest themselves in time and space in the years after the catastrophe. The Jewish survivors continued the Tikkunim. They remained alive because after the Nazi celebration of death, life itself acquired sanctity. They remained Jewish because after Auschwitz Jewish survival became a sacred testimony on behalf of life and love. Because the voice was heard in Auschwitz, it could (in terms of ongoing being) be heard and obeyed later. The metahistorical signs also were made manifest through the lingering Tekiyot of the Shofar of Rav Yitshak Finkler and the lasting vision of Mordekhai Anielewicz of the Warsaw ghetto. Fackenheim, like Perlov in Schwebisch-Halle, drew from the midrash of Haninah Ben Dosa. In his essay “Israel and the Diaspora: Political Contingencies and Moral Necessities; or, the Shofar of Rabbi Yitshak Finkler of Piotrkov,” he offered this explanation: The left horn blown at Sinai, which was the Shofar that ushered in Jewish history, and the right, which was the Shofar to mark Israel’s eschatological end, were joined by the Shofar of Rabbi Finkler. Rabbi Finkler’s Shofar had been sounded the first morning of Rosh Hashanah, September 30, 1943, in Hasag-Skarysko. After that it was brought


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to Hasag-Czestochowa, where Heshil Rayzman of Hasag-Skarysko presented it to Ya’akov Pat of the Bund (1946). He took it to America—from where Joseph Kermish brought it to Yad Vashem. Some who heard it in Hasag-Skarysko, according to later reports, believed its Tekiyot ascended to heaven with the Tefillah Zakhah, recited prior to the Kol Nidrei prayer of Yom Kippur, which moved God from judgment to mercy. Fackenheim (citing Finkler’s son-in-law Yehiel Granatshtayn) believed the Tekiyot ascended in a plea to tear up the evil decree, as presented in the Unetanne Tokef prayer.26 In the Yom Kippur War, Fackenheim wrote, an Israeli tank driver stood up to overwhelming Syrian force by shooting and shooting and shooting: “The specter of a violent and total end of Jewish history, begun at Sinai, must have appeared before his mind but was immediately rejected. . . . This secularist Israeli heard the Shofar of Rabbi Yitshak Finkler—and, mingled with it, the Shofar of Sinai.”27 The Tikkun of the Warsaw ghetto revolt continued five years later at Kibbutz Yad Mordekhai, when its members held off the Egyptian army long enough for the defense of Tel Aviv to be prepared—days crucial for the state’s survival: “The Warsaw ghetto fighters had not, after all, been mistaken [in their knowledge] that Israel would continue to live. . . . The battle for Yad Mordekhai began in the streets of Warsaw.” Collectively, for Fackenheim, the Jewish state testified against the groundless hate, the madness, the denial of Judaism, which erupted in Europe. It testified on behalf of the God of the covenant against lapses into paganism. As the years unfolded after the catastrophe, then, the traces of God’s presence, which touched the edges of the realm of Auschwitz (vestiges of Jewish life, God’s voice, the Tekiyah, and Warsaw revolt), the Tikkunim found expression in time, space, and political sovereignty. The God of history began to return, and a threshold opened to metahistory. Indeed, the metahistorical word of redemption itself could once again be uttered. The voice of the redeemer was not and would never be heard from Auschwitz, but now perhaps it could be heard in the Land of Israel. The exilic tension between the present time of history where God was present and the future messianic fulfillment of time (covenantal history) had exploded at Auschwitz. But now perhaps the tension could be lightened. From within the scene of Anielewicz’s statue facing the green fields of Israel, the whispers of this prayer could be sensed: “Our Father in Heaven, the Rock of Israel, the beginning of the dawn of our redemption.”28 In his attention to the peripheral metahistory of the catastrophe and to the opening to metahistory at the center of the life of the people of Israel in time and space thereafter, Fackenheim in some instances set aside and in some instances updated the motifs that were in place during and right after the war. Unlike the wartime thinkers he included secular Jews among the sparks of Tikkun. Unlike them, he did not await redemption from out of the catastrophe, or speak of how it might have been precipitated by it. Unlike the thinkers of the She’erit Hapeleitah, he did not speak of Hevlei mashiah,

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relate earlier suffering to that of the Holocaust, or include the Warsaw ghetto uprising within the metahistory of Mesirut nefesh. His ram’s horns were not those of Sinai, Messiah, and suffering endurance through Torah and Mitsvot but of Sinai, Messiah, and a “moral necessity amidst all the contingencies of human existence, that the course of history, or in any case the course of Jewish history, must be so altered that such as Rabbi Finkler will never again be the helpless victims of the great hatred.”29 Like the wartime thinkers, Fackenheim did bring forward the act of prayer, called for by Ehrenreich and Unsdorfer, which took place amidst the incomprehensibility of present events: “What made the prayers of the Hasidim [of Buchenwald] great was not their ability to explain or understand what was happening . . . but precisely the insight that this was impossible.”30 He brought forward the rabbi of Belz’s attempt to bring about redemption (and the recession of catastrophe) by reaching to the Land of Israel and building Torah there, in the sense that the restoration of the Land meant defying the death camp and even hinted at redemption. Like Firer, he connected the Warsaw ghetto uprising to active resistance in the Jewish state; and like Perlov, he spoke of the people of Israel’s existence between the revelation at Sinai and Elijah’s sounding of the Shofar of redemption in terms of the resistance and revolt of their soul (of Torah and morality) against the darkness of persecution and catastrophe.31 CONCLUDING NOTE The divine presence in history, the covenantal tie between God and his people (our “metahistory”), was upset during the war. But the thinkers who enunciated the upset, turned to silence, and then acted to endure until order could be restored with redemption, preserved the presence existentially. That presence expanded during the She’erit Hapeleitah, as the content of metahistory blended with Mesirut nefesh. Two decades later, Fackenheim began to bring forward the path. He identified points of divine presence at the edges of the death camp and found instances where these points touched historical reality thereafter; he found new historical ground for the transcendent voice at Auschwitz and for the Shofar at Hasag-Skarysko—and thereby a place for metahistory. Now the covenant could begin again, and the hope for the Messiah could be reborn. In doing so, Emil Fackenheim of Jerusalem echoed the Tekiyot of Rabbi Finkler of Piotrkov. NOTES 1. Isaac Breuer, “Am Yisrael Bagolah,” in Moriah: Yesodot Hahinukh Haleumi Hatorani (1953/1954): 95–100. Breuer, Der neue Kusari: Ein Weg zum Judentum (FaM: Rabbiner-Hirsch-Gesellschaft, 1934), 63–91. See also Rivkah Horwitz, “Exile and Redemption in the Thought of Isaac Breuer,” Tradition 26 (1992): nr. 2:


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72–98, and Alan Mittleman, Between Kant and Kabbalah: An Introduction to Isaac Breuer’s Philosophy of Judaism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 150, Gershon Greenberg, “Sovereignty as Catastrophe: Jakob Rosenheim’s Hurban Weltanschauung,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 8 (1994): nr. 2: 202–24. 2. Ehrenreich, “Mah shedarashti beyom alef parashat Tetsaveh 7 Adar 5699 beyom shehukba ta’anit tsibur al tsarot yisrael,” in Derashot Lehem Shelomoh, ed. Y. Katz, 283–85 (Brooklyn, NY: Yehoshua Katz, 1976). 3. Ibid., “Mah she’amarti bi-shemini atseret shenat 5704,” 128–29. 4. Ibid., “Mah she’amarti be-simhat torah shenat 5703,” 149–51. 5. Ibid, “Mah shedarashti be-shabbat hagadol shenat 5703,” and “Mah shedarashti beyom alef parashat tetsaveh 7 Adar 5699 beyom shehukba ta’anit tsibur al tsarot yisrael,” 212–16, 283–85. 6. See also Gershon Greenberg, “Shlomoh Zalman Ehrenreich’s (1863–1944) Religious Response to the Holocaust: February 1939–October 1943,” Studia Judaica (2000): 9: 65–93. 7. Unsdorfer, “Be’ezrat hashem po presburg,” in Siftei Shlomoh, ed., 303–307(Brooklyn, NY: Balshon Printing, 1972). 8. Ibid., “Hem omru sheloshah devarim”; “Veze she’amav akabiah ben mehalelel”; and “Hu haya amer haviv adam shenivra betselem,” 181–82, 236–38, 242–44. 9. Ibid., “Toldot: Shenat 5702,” 49–50. 10. Ibid., “Vayehi: Erev shabbat kodesh vayehi: Shenat 5702,” 84–89. 11. Ibid., “Vayishlakh: Shenat 5702,” 58–59. 12. Ibid., “Bein keseh le’asor,” 153–54. 13. Ibid., “Or leyom shabbat kodesh parashat vayigash shenat 5702,” 78–81. 14. Ibid., “Vayehi: Erev shabbat kodesh vayehi: Shenat 5702,” 84–89. 15. Ibid., “Yom 4 lesidrat vayakhel-pekudei,” 128–29. 16. Ibid., “Hu haya omer hakal tsafui,” 244–45. 17. Ibid., “Ve’avraham zaken bayamim; Va’eira: Or leyom erev shabbat kodesh lesefer va’eira shenat 5702”; “Shofetim 5703”; and “Parashat va’eira: Or leyom 6 erev shabbat kodesh va’eira Shenat 5703,” 45–48, 93–96, 144–46, 308–10. 18. Ibid., “Besha’at tsarah rahmana Litslan: Parashat ekev,” 139–40. See also Gershon Greenberg, “Shlomoh Zalman Unsdorfer: With God through the Holocaust,” Yad Vashem Studies 31 (2003): 61–94; Greenberg, “The Suffering of the Righteous according to Shlomoh Zalman Unsdorfer of Bratislava, 1939–1944,” in Remembering for the Future: The Holocaust in An Age of Genocide, ed. John K. Roth and Elizabeth Maxwell, 422–38. (New York: Palgrave, 2001). 19. Mordekhai Rokeah, and Aaron Rokeah, “Derashat Ha’rav Mibilgoray,” in Harav Hakadosh Mibelz: Perakim Letoldot Hayav Vehalikhotov Shel . . . Rabi Aharon Mibelza, ed. Natan Ortner and Betsalel Landau, 141–59. (Jerusalem: Or Hahasidut, 1966–1967). Mendel Piekaz brought to light twenty-two lines from the original printing (Haderekh [Budapest: Ayzler Printing, 1944]), which were omitted in subsequent editions (including Ortner and Landau). In them the Rebbe, through Mordekhai, cited Genesis 49:15 with the Rashi commentary and expressed confidence that the Jews of Hungary would live in tranquility. That was three months before the campaign to destroy Hungarian Jewry began.

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Philosopher As Witness Many were saying they had tremendous fears, and that our departure was difficult for them. They were especially anxious about the future, saying that danger threatened [Hungary]. They [claimed] that my brother, the Tsadik of the generation, saw what was developing and on that basis [decided] to travel to the Land of Israel where God commanded the blessing of peace. . . . He was going to a place of tranquility and, God forbid, abandoning [his followers]: ‘Who will be responsible for us? Protect us? Save us?’ [To the contrary, if the Tsadik were looking for personal tranquility he would go to America or some place else, not the Land of Israel.] He foresees tranquility prevailing for the residents [of Hungary]; that goodness and Hesed would be sought and achieved by our brethren the children of Israel [remaining here].

Did the Rebbe’s expectation for tranquility mean a return to (a seemingly callous) metahistory? Insofar as it followed the speaker’s vision of Hevlei mashiah passing into redemption, this was a messianically driven expression, that is, a consequence of the Rebbe’s redemptive activity in the Land of Israel. Rather than being a return to metahistory, it reverberated the apocalyptic drama. I am indebted to Ze’ev Mankiewicz for leading me to this source. See Mendel Piekaz, Hasidut Polin (Jerusalem: Mossad Byalik, 1990), 424–34. See also Yissakhar Shlomoh Taykhtahl, Em Habanim Semehah [1943]: Restoration of Zion as a Response during the Holocaust. Edited and translated with notes by Pesah Schindler (Hoboken, NJ: KTAV, 1999). Schindler expressed his gratitude to Emil Fackenheim for his encouragement in publishing the work. 20. Firer, Netsah Yisrael: Di Yidishe Shtime (1948): 3 nr. 4: 4. 21. Ibid., “Veda mah shetashuv,” in Netsah Yisrael 3:1. 22. Ibid., “Dos Folk un zayn Torah: Shavuot Gedanken,” in Di Yidishe Shtime (1945): 2 nr. 32: 6, 10; “Di Torah-Hakdamah tsu der Velt-Geshikhte,” in Di Yidishe Shtime (1948): 3 nr. 3: 4; “Erev Pessah 5703–Erev Pessah 5708: Tsum funften Yortog fun varshaver Geto Oyfshtand,” in Di Yidishe Shtime (1948): 2 nr. 26: 6; “Ve’evhar bedavid,” Di Yidishe Shtime (1948): 3 nr. 2: 3; “Ve’al Ivut Hadin,” Dos Yidishe Vort (1948): 2 nr. 42: 4; “Har Sinai un Har Hamoriyah,” Di Yidishe Shtime (1948): 3 nr. 5: 3; “Dos Sefer un Am Hasefer,” Dos Yidishe Vort (1948): 2: 4; “Bein Hameitsarim,” Dos Yidishe Vort 29: 2; “She’al avikha veyagedekhah,” Netsah Yisrael (1947): 1: 5; “Mesirut Nefesh Oder Revolt,” Dos Yidishe Vort, 2 nr. 9: 5; “Heshbon hanefesh,” Netsah Yisrael 4: 10; “At the Gate,” in Sefer Rymanow, ed. Bentsiyon Firer and Ya’akov Berger, 2–4. Tel Aviv: Hever Hametargimim, 1990). See Meir Vunder, “R. Bentsiyon Firer,” in Meorei Galitsiah, vol. 4, ed., 68–70. (Jerusalem: Hamakhon Lehantsahat Yahadut Galitsiah, 1990). 23. Mordekhai Perlov, “Kohah shel torah,” Netsah Yisrael (1948): 4: 4–5. 24. See Gershon Greenberg, “Religious Survival among Jewish Displaced Persons,” in Thinking in the Shadow of Hell, ed. Jacques Doukhan, 45–60 (Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews University, 2003.) See also Greenberg, “From Hurban to Redemption: Orthodox Jewish Thought in the Munich Area, 1945–1948,” Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual 6 (1989): 81–112. 25. Fackenheim, The Human Condition after Auschwitz: A Jewish Testimony One Generation After (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1971).


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26. Yehoshua Eybeschutz, “Hashofar Shel Mosheh Ben Dov Mibenei Berak,” She’arim (1977): 27 nr. 78: 3–4; Malkah Granatshtayn, “Testimony,” Yad Vashem Archives (Jerusalem: File 0.3/3323.Granatshtayn, Yehiel), Hod Ugevurah: Ha’admor Mirodeshits Bipyotrkov Rabi Yitshak Shmuel Eliyahu Finkler (Jerusalem: Makhon Zekher Naftali. Karai, Felitsia, 1987), Hamavet Betsahov: Mahaneh Ha’avodah Skarzysko-Kamienna (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem. Pat, Ya’akov, 1994), “Der tshenstokhover Shofar,” in Ash un Fayer: Iber di Hurvus fun Poyln (New York: Cyco Biker Farlag, 1946), 134–36, Yehoshua Rekhter, “Testimony” (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem Archives, File 0.3/3530). 27. Fackenheim, “Israel and the Diaspora: Political Contingencies and Moral Necessities; or, the Shofar of Rabbi Yitshak Finkler of Piotrkov,” in The Jewish Return into History: Reflections in the Age of Auschwitz and a New Jerusalem (New York: Schocken Books, 1978), 188–209. 28. Fackenheim, “The Holocaust and the State of Israel: Their Relation,” in The Jewish Return into History, 273–86. 29. Fackenheim, “Israel and the Diaspora,” The Jewish Return into History (New York: Schocken, 1978), 188–209. 30. Fackenheim, To Mend the World (New York: Schocken, 1982), 219. 31. See also Fackenheim, From Bergen Belsen to Jerusalem (Jerusalem: Institute of Contemporary Jewry. 1972); Fackenheim, God’s Presence in Jewish History (New York: Harper and Row, 1970). On Fackenheim’s use of midrash, see Robert Eisen, “Midrash in Emil Fackenheim’s Holocaust Theology,” Harvard Theological Review 96 (2003): nr. 3: 369–92.


Contributors

Edward Alexander is professor emeritus of English at the University of Washington. The Jewish Wars: Reflections By One of the Belligerents (1996), Irving Howe—Socialist, Critic, Jew (1998), Classical Liberalism and the Jewish Tradition (2003), and The Jewish Divide over Israel: Accusers and Defenders (2006) are among his publications. David R. Blumenthal is the Jay and Leslie Cohen Professor of Judaic Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. He is the author of several books in medieval Jewish mysticism and philosophy as well as the author of works in contemporary Jewish theology, in particular, Facing the Abusing God: A Theology of Protest and The Banality of Evil: Moral Lessons from the Shoah and Jewish Tradition. Richard A. Cohen is the Isaac Swift Distinguished Professor of Judaic Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He is the author of Elevations: The Height of the Good in Rosenzweig and Levinas (1994) and Ethics, Exegesis, and Philosophy: Interpretation after Levinas (2001); the translator of four books by Levinas; the editor of four books; and the author of more than fi fty articles on modern and contemporary philosophy. Solomon Goldberg recently completed his dissertation, “The Unforgetting of Paideia: Heidegger on the Possibility of Philosophical Education.” He currently teaches at the Ontario College of Art and Design. Gershon Greenberg has published three bibliographical volumes of Jewish religious thought during the Holocaust, coedited and translated Wrestling with God: Jewish Theological Responses during and after the Holocaust (with Steven T. Katz, 2006), and authored fi fty articles and chapters on Orthodox Jewish theological texts during and after the Holocaust. Based in Washington, D.C., where he is professor of religion and philosophy at American University, he has served as visiting professor of Jewish thought and philosophy at Haifa, Bar Ilan, Tel Aviv, and Hebrew universities. 225

226

Contributors

Warren Zev Har vey is professor of Jewish thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he has taught since 1977. He is author of Physics and Metaphysics in Hasdai Crescas (1998). He wrote the introduction to the Hebrew collection of essays by Emil Fackenheim, ‘Al Emunah ve-Historiah (1989). Franklin H. Littell greatly valued his long-standing, close friendship with Emil Fackenheim. Currently, Littell is the Distinguished Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, where he teaches in the graduate program. He is professor emeritus of religion at Temple University and a longtime adjunct professor at the Hebrew University’s Institute of Contemporary Jewry. An ordained minister in the United Methodist Church, he was Chief Protestant Adviser to the U.S. High Commissioner in postwar Germany. He is the author of numerous books, including The Crucifixion of the Jews, the first systematic Christian response to the Holocaust, The German Phoenix, Religious Liberties in the Crossfire of Creeds, and The Historical Atlas of Christianity. Zeev Mankowitz is a senior faculty member of the Melton Center for Jewish Education at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. He served as an academic consultant in the planning of the new museum at Yad Vashem and his book Life between Memory and Hope: The Survivors of the Holocaust in Occupied Germany (2002) has recently been published in Hebrew. Mankowitz is chair of the Board of Yesodot: The Center for the Study of Torah and Democracy and acting chair of Ir Amim that works for a stable, just, and equitable Jerusalem for all of its peoples. Michael L. Morgan is the Chancellor’s Professor of Philosophy and Jewish Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is the author of several books, including Platonic Piety and Beyond Auschwitz. Together with Paul Franks, he translated and edited Franz Rosenzweig: Philosophical and Theological Writings. He has edited The Jewish Thought of Emil Fackenheim and Emil Fackenheim: Jewish Philosophers and Jewish Philosophy. He is a coeditor of the Cambridge Companion to Modern Jewish Philosophy. His book, Discovering Levinas, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2007. David Patterson holds the Bornblum Chair in Judaic Studies at the University of Memphis and is director of the university’s Bornblum Judaic Studies Program. A winner of the Koret Jewish Book Award, he has published more than 100 articles and book chapters on philosophy, literature, Judaism, and Holocaust studies, as well as more than two dozen books. His most recent book is Hebrew Language and Jewish Thought (2005). Benjamin Pollock is assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Michigan State University. He has published articles on the thought of

Contributors

227

Rosenzweig and Fackenheim and his book, Franz Rosenweig and the Systematic Task of Philosophy will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2009. Susan E. Shapiro is associate professor in the Department of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Massachusetts, where she also directs the Program in Religious Studies. She has written a number of articles on the Holocaust, including “The Return(s) of the Uncanny in Post-Holocaust Discourse,” “Elie Wiesel and the Ethics of Fiction,” “For Thy Breach Is Great Like the Sea; Who Can Heal Thee?,” “Failing Speech: Post-Holocaust Writing and the Discourse of Postmodernism,” and “Hearing the Testimony of Radical Negation.” David Silberklang is the editor of Yad Vashem Studies and a lecturer in Jewish history in the Rothberg International School and Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He also is the series editor for the memoir series published jointly by Yad Vashem and the Holocaust Survivors Memoirs Project. He has published scholarly articles and reviews on various aspects of the Holocaust, and his book, Gates of Tears, on the Holocaust in the Lublin district of Poland will soon be published in Hebrew. Catherine H. Zuckert is the Nancy Reeves Dreux Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, where she also serves as editor in chief of The Review of Politics. Her publications include Natural Right and the American Imagination: Political Philosophy in Novel Form, Postmodern Platos: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gadamer, Strauss, Derrida, and Strauss: Political Philosophy and American Democracy, coauthored with Michael Zuckert. She currently is working on a three-volume study, Plato’s Philosophers.


Index

Abraham, 10, 19, 113, 116n46, 123, 159, 209, 215–217 Alexander, Edward, xi Aliyah, vii, 6, 213–214 amcha, 105–112 America, 9, 23n3, 138, 141, 219; see also United States occupation of Germany and, 179 Anderson, Fulton Henry, 17 anti-Semitism, 11, 13n2, 121, 130n8, 134–135, 137, 140, 142–144, 165, 170, 208 conspiracy theory and, 14n18, 25n25 anti-Judaism and, 121–122 Annual Scholars’ Conference on the Holocaust and the Church Struggle, 138–139 Arendt, Hannah, 13n2, 24n9, 166, 178 Aristotle, 8, 17, 76, 82, 159 Aryan, 11, 14n18, 16, 80 Assad, Bashar, 130n6, 135 assimilation, 91, 209, 211 Association for College and University Religious Affairs, 137 aufheben, 18, 19; see also “overreaching” Augustine, 130n6 Auschwitz, vii–xii, 3–5, 9–10, 12, 13n2, 14n13, 14n15, 21–22, 31, 42–44, 61, 65–71, 73n15, 74n20, 98, 106, 108–109, 112, 148, 150–152, 154–156, 158–160, 164, 167, 169–170, 208, 210, 217–220 autonomy, 63, 160, 165; see also freedom Avineri, Shlomo, 21, 23

Bach, J. S., 11 Baeck, Leo, 3–6, 10 Barth, Karl, 22, 25n22, 63 Bauer, Yehuda, 7, 134, 139, 143 Baum, Gregory, 133 being, 62, 72n2, 82–83, 93, 95, 97–98, 150, 154; see also ontology Belzac, 185–190 Ben-Gurion, David, 169, 180 Bergen-Belsen, 25n26 Berlin, vii, 3–4, 8, 11, 16–17, 20, 22, 65 Bernasconi, Robert, 72n3 Biblia Hebraica, 6 Bible, 7, 12, 24n6, 92, 100, 152 Birkenau, 153 Blumenthal, David R., xi Bohm-Duchen, Monica, 127 Bollingen Award, 165 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 130n8, 131n9 Borger, Therese, 196 Braiterman, Zachary, 58n8 Breuer, Isaac, 207 Browning, Christopher, 14n13 Buber, Martin, 6–8, 10–12, 14n21, 22, 34, 41, 63–64, 67–68, 74n19, 108–112 Buchenwald, 31, 106, 175, 220 Bullock, Alan, 13n2 Canada, vii Chagall, Marc, 127–128 Chaplin, Charlie, 128 children as victims, 37, 43, 111, 134, 144–145 Chomsky, Noam, 139, 170

229

230

Index

chosen people, 88, 102n8, 167 Christ, 24n14, 91, 123, 125–126, 130n6; see also Jesus; Christianity Christian Study Group on Israel and the Jewish People, 138 Christianity, viii–ix, xi, 4, 20, 22, 44, 70, 89, 94, 96, 117–129, 131n11, 133–145 anti-Semitism and, 122–123, 131n8, 134 Catholic Church and, 119, 134–135 failure of during the Holocaust, 119–121 Lutheran Church and, 119 theology of, 6, 90–91, 96 Christians, 6, 8, 21–22, 94, 107, 125–128, 133–145, 164 Christians Concerned for Israel, 138 Christology, 117, 121, 123, 126 Chrysostom, St. John, 130n6 Churchill, Winston, 12n2 Cohen, Hermann, 16, 64, 89, 91–95, 100 Cohen, Richard A., xi, 72n9 commandment, 43, 163 Commanding Voice of Auschwitz, 43, 127, 159–160, 207, 217–218, 220 concentration camps, 97, 127, 154, 156, 164, 175, 214; see also death camps; forced labor camps Constantine, 141 conversion, 6, 22, 133, 142 covenant, 24n14, 110–111, 122, 207, 219–220 creation, 77, 94, 96 crucifixion, 128 Crusades, 19, 131n9, 145 Dachau, 175–176 Dasein, 70, 72n2, 90, 150 Davis, Moshe, 5–6 death, 5, 7, 18, 31, 42, 61, 147–148, 150–153, 155, 158, 167, 175, 211, 218 death camps viii–ix, xi, 42, 64, 69–71, 148, 165, 190, 193, 217, 220; see also concentration camps; forced labor camps De Boer, Theodore, 72n3, 72n6 “Declaration of the Protestant Church of the Rheinland,” 139

Denmark, 136 deportation, 190, 192–196, 211 Descartes, René, 61, 71n1, 159 despair, 7, 42, 65, 107, 177, 184 Deuteronomy, 46, 131n11, 147, 210; see also Bible dialogue, 6–7, 100, 210 Diaspora, 11, 142 discourse, post-Holocaust, 32, 35–36 disease, 191–192 displaced persons, 174, 180, 182 displaced persons camps, 181, 207, 214 Dolp, Hermann, 186–187, 189–190 Doull, James, 23n1 Dresden, 134 dysentery, 189 Egypt, 34, 40, 46, 128, 150, 170, 209 Egyptians, 45 Ehrenreich, Shlomoh Zalman, 208–212, 214, 220 Eichmann, Adolf, 24n9 Einhorn, Zeev Wolf ben Yisrael Iser, 116n46 empiricism, 65, 73n16 England, vii Enlightenment, 22, 24n6, 70, 77, 87–88, 120, 160 medieval Jewish, 88 Epicureanism, 92–93, 96 epistemology, 106 Erntefest, 9, 22 eternity, 19, 97, 150 ethics, 61–62, 64, 66, 74nn20–21 evil, viii–x, 9, 14n13, 22, 41, 50, 65–66, 69–70, 74n19, 79, 93, 98, 107, 109, 117–118, 127, 147–148, 157, 208–209, 212 banality of, 24n9 radical ix, xi, 5, 8–9, 13n2, 65, 70–71, 72, 73–74nn19–20, 84, 93 Existentialism, viii–ix, 5, 166 Exodus, 34, 94, 105, 150, 209, 212; see also Bible Exodus (ship), 181 experience, viii–ix, xi, 30, 34–35, 62, 65, 67, 68, 72n2, 90, 97

Index exteriority, 65 Ezekiel, 40, 152; see also Bible face 73n16 face-to-face, 62–64, 72n6, 72n7 Fackenheim, Emil L., Encounters between Judaism and Modern Philosophy, 56, 65 “From Bergen-Belsen to Jerusalem,” 25n26 God’s Presence in History: Jewish Affirmations and Philosophical Reflections, x, 34, 39–45, 65, 109, 131n11 “Hegel and Judaism: A Flaw in the Hegelian Mediation,” 15, 44 “Holocaust and Weltanschauung: Philosophical Reflections on Why They Did It,” xi “Israel and the Diaspora: Political Contingencies and Moral Necessities; or the Shofar of Rabbi Yitshak Finkler of Piotrkov,” 218 The Jewish Bible after the Holocaust: A Re-reading, 33, 144 “Jewish Faith and the Holocaust,” 138 Jewish Philosophers and Jewish Philosophy, 47n26, 73n14, 101n2 The Jewish Return Into History, 131n11 “Judaism and the Idea of Progress,” 40 To Mend the World, x, 8, 25n25, 29–30, 32–37, 38n18, 49–51, 54–58, 59n32, 67, 75–78, 80, 83, 85n1, 85n8, 86n28, 94, 97, 100, 102n23, 120, 136, 164, 184 Metaphysics and Historicity, 47n9, 72n10 “The People Israel Lives,” 138 “Philosophy and Jewish Existence in the Present Age,” 24n8 Quest for Past and Future, 17, 65, 131n11 The Religious Dimension in Hegel’s Thought, 15, 18, 45–46, 49, 52, 55–56 “She’erith Hapleitah—The Rebirth of the Holy Remnant,” 173 What is Judaism?, 74n21, 109

231

faith, vii–viii, 3, 42–43, 45–46, 65, 70, 77, 89–90, 94, 100, 114, 131n9, 137, 167, 180, 212, 216, 218; see also revelation Fest, Joachim, 12n2 Fichte, J. G., 17, 20, 99 Final Solution, 122, 191, 196 Finkler, Rabbi Yitshak, 218–220 finitude, 20, 30 Firer, Bentsiyon, 214–216, 220 Flannery, Edward H., 121–122 forced labor, 187–190, 195–196 forced labor camps, 4, 185–190, 210; see also concentration camps; death camps Fragmented Middle, 44–45 France, 88, 136 Frank, General Governor Hans, 188, 194 freedom 41, 45, 63, 67; see also autonomy of religion, 141–142 French Revolution, 20–21, 88 Frenkel, Shlomo, 176 Friedlander, Saul, 130n6 Friedman, Maurice, 7 Führer, 13n2, 15, 23n3, 97, 134, 166 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 33 Gandhi, Mahatma, 131n9, 141 Gans, Eduard, 22, 25n26 gas chambers, 21, 149 Geiger, Abraham, 131n12 Geist; see Spirit Genesis, 19, 209; see also Bible genocide, 12n2, 22, 133, 137, 141, 143, 145, 178 Germany, viii, ix, 4, 6, 10–12, 15–16, 23, 88, 98, 164, 174, 177–181, 185–186, 208, 211 Gestapo, 44, 191, 193 Ghetto, 176–177, 192, 208, 210 Glatstein, Jacob, 168 Globocnik, Odilo, 185–191, 193–194, 196 God, ix, 7, 8, 10, 12, 19, 22, 24n6, 24n14, 42–45, 61, 63–65, 67–70, 89–92, 94–98, 108, 111–113, 114n4, 115n31, 116n42, 122, 131n10, 148, 151–152, 156, 158–159, 167, 211, 213–214

232

Index

God (continued) absence of, 7, 41, 64, 68, 118, 212 as abusive, 111 Auschwitz and, 65, 108 as Creator, 116n46, 139 death of, 9, 14n21, 17, 22, 41–42, 47n9 eclipse of, 7, 12, 14n21, 41–42, 108–111 hiding face, 41, 47n9, 69, 109, 111, 217 History and, 20, 41, 111, 208–209, 211–216, 220 of History, 12, 14n21, 39–43, 46, 217–219 relation with Israel, xii, 4, 207, 211, 216 Goerner, Hans Georg, 14n18 Goldberg, Solomon, x, 58n8 Golden Calf, 132n14 Goldman, Hana, 114n4 Goldsmith, Shmuel, 176 Golgatha, 24n14 good, 9, 14n13, 61, 81, 84, 157 Gottesfinsternis; see God, eclipse of Grass, Guenter, 22 Graetz, Heinrich, 22 Great War, The; see World War I Greece, 90 Greenberg, Gershon, xii Gringauz, Samuel, 179 Halevi, Yehuda, 8, 39 Halle, vii, 10–11, 14n19, 65 Hallel, 10–12, 108, 110, 212 Halpérin, Jean, 114n4 Händel, Georg Friedrich, 10–11 Harvey, Warren Zev, x Hasidim, 31, 220 healing, 34–35, 37 Hebrew, 168–169 Hebrews, 131n10; see also New Testament Hebrew Union College, 3–4 Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 6 Hegel, G. W. F., vii, x, 6, 8–9, 13n2, 15–23, 23nn1–3, 24n9, 24n14, 29, 34–35, 37, 39, 45–46, 49–56, 65, 71, 71n1, 77, 85n1, 88, 94–95, 100, 105, 133

dialectic and, 40, 45, 52, Jews and, 15, 18–20, 44 labor of thought in, 53–57 philosophy of history of, 39–40, 43–44, 82 system of philosophy of, 44, 49–50, 52–56, 58n8, 89, 96 Hegelianism, fragmented, x, 44–46, 47n26 Heidegger, Martin, x, 5, 7–9, 14n15, 21, 33, 44, 51, 63–64, 70–71, 71n1, 72n2, 77, 83–84, 89, 93, 97–98, 159, 165 Heine, Heinrich, 22–23 Heraclitus, 21 hermeneutics, x, 30, 33–37, 66–67, 70–71, 80–81 idealist, 34–35 post-Holocaust, 36–37 Heschel, Susannah, 131–132n12 Heydrich, Reinhard, 10, 187, 190 Hilberg, Raul, 185 Himmler, Heinrich, 10, 186–187, 190 Hiroshima, 14n15, 98, 134 history, xi, 9, 17, 19–20, 24n8, 30, 32, 34, 42, 50, 53–54, 56, 61, 63, 67, 74n20, 82, 84, 93, 97, 100, 105–107, 150, 165, 173–174, 207, 212, 217 flesh and blood, 44, 56 Jewish, 6, 44, 219 labor of, 53–54 meaning of, 39, 45 necessary progress and, 40–41 rupture and, 50, 54, 56 Hitler, Adolf, 4, 10, 12–13n2, 15, 21–22, 23n3, 25n25, 42–43, 65, 74n20, 79, 100, 128, 131n11, 134–135, 152, 163, 166, 176, 179, 196, 208, 214 Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, vii, 3, 16, 87 Hodgson, Peter C., 18 Hoess, Rudolph, 13n2 Holocaust, see also Shoah as Christian issue, 117–129, 133–145, 148 denial, 5, 35, 143–144 historiography of, 12–13n2 memorializing of, 142, 164–165 State of Israel and, 78

Index as rupture of history, 54, 56–57 as rupture of philosophy, 56–57, 58n8, 59n32 as unprecedented, 31 as word, 114n4, 143 willfulness of, xi, 185, 196 hope, 65, 71 horror, vii–x, 4, 56, 67, 70–71, 79, 106, 117–118 Howe, Irving, xi, 163–171 Huber, Kurt, 99 human being, 75, 106; see also Dasein dignity of, 69, 98 grounding of existence of, 71, 72n7, 73n15 historicity of, 69, 71, 83 mortality of, 93 nature of, 97 will of, 93 humanity, 20, 69, 71 humility, 117 hunger, 154, 191 Husserl, Edmund, 16, 63–64, 71, 71n1, 72n2, 73n16 Ibn Ezra, Abraham, 155 Idealism, viii–ix, 61, 65, 70, 72n1, 93, 98–99 ideology, 98, 136, 169, 196 idols, idolatry, 110 illeity, 64, 68 Imitatio Christos, 131n9 infinity, 20, 53, 61–62, 66, 74n20, 107, 109 Inquisition, 131n9, 134 Institute for Contemporary Jewry, 6 intentionality, 72n2 Isaiah, 4, 7, 40, 155; see also Bible Islam, 18, 133 Israel, xi, 6, 16, 25n26, 32, 43–44, 78, 89, 96–97, 100, 102n23, 105, 107, 111–112, 123, 133–134, 136, 139–140, 142, 145, 164–165, 167, 169–171, 174–175, 180, 207–220 Israelites, 12, 40, 45, 132n14 Jacob, 10 Jaeckel, Eberhard, 10

233

Jeremiah, 7, 210; see also Bible Jerusalem, vii, 3, 6, 12, 19, 25n26, 84, 142, 169, 208, 214–215, 220 Athens and, 13n2, 100, 120, 165 Jesus, 91, 122–126; see also Christ as Jew, 127, 131n12 or Christ, 125 Jewish Brigade, 179 Jewish emancipation, 6, 20–21 Jewish people, ix, 6, 18–19, 25n22, 42, 67, 69, 73n17, 90, 93, 97, 102n8, 116n42, 133, 136 “the Jewish problem,” 15, 18–20, 89, 94, 102n8, 176 Jewish state; see Israel Jewishness, religious and secular, 163, 167, 169 Jews American, 164, 175, 181, 210 as “Christ killers,” 123–124 European, 10, 114, 147, 169, 173, 176–179, 184 German, x, 12, 164 hatred of; see anti-Semitism orthodox, 112 Polish, 9, 22, 127 religious, 40–43, 100, 164, 167 secularist, 41, 43, 67, 100, 115n31, 164, 167, 169–170 Job, 11, 18, 19, 24n14, 108, 110–113; see also Bible Jonas, Hans, 4–5, 17–18 Judaism, vii, ix, 4, 7, 10, 11, 14n18, 15–16, 18, 20, 23, 39, 40, 42–45, 65–67, 70, 76–77, 89, 91–93, 95–96, 117–118, 122, 135–136, 150, 160–161, 164, 166, 168, 217 Judenrat, 187, 191–193, 195–196 Jung, Carl, 7 justice, 84, 111, 131n9 Kant, Immanuel, vii, 8, 13n2, 16–18, 20, 24n9, 63, 65, 71n1, 83, 90, 93, 99, 159 Kaplan, Mordecai, 5–6 Katzetnik, 21 Kaufmann, Walter, 24n6 Kershaw, Ian, 12n2

234

Index

Kierkegaard, Søren, 7–8, 17, 65, 73n12, 100, 131n9 King Jr., Martin Luther, 131n9 Kittel, Gerhard, 6 Kittel, Rudolph, 6 Kojève, Alexandre, 82–83 Kol Nidre, 3, 219 Kovner, Abba, 179 Kraków, 188–189, 194–195 Kristallnacht, vii, 3, 6, 11, 12n2, 16, 127, 164 Krochmal, Rabbi Nahman, 39 Krüger, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 188–189

Lamentations, 110, 213; see also Bible language, 34–37, 62–63, 69–70, 82, 111, 155–156, 168, 209 Laquer, Walter, 174 Latin America, 134–135 Lavater, Johann Caspar, 6 Leibniz, Gottfried, 10 Levi, Primo, ix, xi, 8, 10, 21, 31, 36, 38n16, 97, 112, 147–156, 158–160 The Drowned and the Saved, ix, 38n16 Survival in Auschwitz (If this is a man), 31, 36, 38n16, 148, 154 Levinas, Emmanuel, x–xi, 9, 61–74, 152, 154, 157, 159 Leviticus, 117; see also Bible Lewin, Curt, 11 Lewinska, Pelagia, 31–32, 218 liberal democracy, 78, 88, 91, 94; see also freedom liberation, 175–178 Lingens, Dr. Ella, 14n13 Littell, Franklin H., xi, 130n8 logic, 18, 30–33, 35, 62, 80 love, xi, 4, 7, 61, 122, 180, 218 of neighbor, 117–119, 127 universal, 117 Löwith, Karl, 8, 17, 21 Lublin, district of, xi, 106, 185–187, 190–196 Ghetto of, 192 labor department of, 187–190

Luther, Martin, 22, 135 Maidanek, 167 Maimonides, 8, 77, 87–88, 91 Mankowitz, Zeev, xi Maritain, Jacques, 130n6 martyrs, martyrdom, 42, 118, 152, 167–168, 170 Marx, Karl, 17, 21, 100 Maser, Werner, 23n3 meaning, 151, 156, 159, 163, 167 ground of, 63 normativity and, 64, 66 memory, ix, 5, 37, 66, 142, 150–151, 155–158, 169 mending, 34–35, 37, 50, 57, 106, 149–151, 153, 157 Mendelssohn, Moses, 6 Mendelssohn, Felix, 11 Messiah, 43, 125, 130n5, 150, 210, 212, 216, 220 Messianic era, 45–46, 94, 213, 215, 219; see also redemption; salvation Messianism, secular, 165 metahistory, xii, 207–211, 213–217, 219, 220 metaphysics, 9, 63, 72n2, 74n20, 82, 90, 208 Metzger, Arnold, 16–17, 20 Middle Ages, 19, 24n9, 90 Midrash, 4, 12, 25n25, 40, 45, 106–107, 109, 111, 113–114, 138, 152, 156, 173, 207, 215, 218 Midrashic madness, 153 miracle, 34, 40, 46, 77, 89, 212 Modernism, 165–166 Modernity, 17–18, 21, 22, 24n9 Mohammed, 130n6 Morgan, Michael, x–xi, 130n8 Moses, 19, 91 Mossad Le’Aliyah Bet, 175, 181 Mount Sinai, 132n14, 153, 168, 214–216, 218–220 Murder, 9, 13n2, 14n13, 14n15, 19, 22, 43, 63, 100, 109, 118, 128, 137, 139, 148–149, 169, 178–180, 185–186, 190–192, 194, 196, 208, 210

Index Muselmann, Muselmänner, ix, xi, 10, 21, 31–33, 35–37, 97, 147–161 Muslims, 6, 119, 129, 130n6, 133–135, 143 name, loss of, 155, 156 National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel, 138 National Conference of Christians and Jews, 137 nature, 64, 93 Nazi, viii, xii, 3–4, 6, 9, 22, 40, 65, 67, 74n20, 79–80, 98–99, 117–119, 130n6, 147–151, 155, 157–158, 170, 177–178, 191 rule, viii, 16, 80, 98, 119, 134, 144, 148, 185–196, 209, 217 Nazism, vii, ix–x, xii, 6, 9–11, 12n2, 41, 64, 69–71, 134, 168, 181 negation, radical, 29–30 New Republic, 164, 170 New Testament, 6, 122–123, 131n10 Niebuhr, Reinhold, 142 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 17, 22, 24n6, 41, 47n9, 67, 78, 90–91, 97 nihilism, x, 17, 98, 176, 182 normativity, 62–64, 66, 70, 74n20, 107 Office of Religious Affairs in American Military Government in Germany, 137 Old Testament, 19, 21, 94, 122, 126 ontological category, 106, 157 ontology, 33, 37, 61, 70, 72n2, 217; see also being Operation Reinhard, 191, 196 orthodoxy, xii, 77, 88–89, 91–92, 95 Other, the, 6, 61, 62–64, 67, 72n2, 74n20 Otto, Rudolph, 19, 24n14 “overreaching,” 52–53, 56–57; see also aufheben Ozick, Cynthia, 168 paganism, 6–7, 55, 137, 219 Palestine, 167, 174–175, 178–181; see also Israel paradox, ix, 33, 43, 134

235

Passover, x, 39–41, 43–44, 46 Haggadah, 39–40, 46 Seder, 40–43, 46 Patterson, David, xi Perlov, Mordekhai, 215–216, 218, 220 phenomenology, 63–64, 70, 72n2, 73n16, 106 philosophia perennis, 79–80, 86n22, 98 philosopher, 6, 8, 19, 44–45, 49–51, 53, 55, 64, 66, 75, 78, 82, 88, 100–101 Jewish, vii, ix–x, 4–6, 9, 21, 39–40, 95 as separate sanctuary, 55–56 philosophy, vii–x, 5, 7, 9–10, 15, 17, 24n8, 44–45, 49–58, 63, 64–66, 70, 75–85, 89, 91–92, 99–101 ancient, ix–x, 58, 75–78, 81, 83, 88, 91, 93, 95, 102n9, 105–106, 163, 166, 180 as fragmented, 57–58 future of, 75, 78, 84–85 “. . . going to school with life,” 57, 61 history and, 39, 50, 53, 65, 79–80, 82 Holocaust and, vii, 16, 65, 75–80, 83–84 Jewish 5, 8, 10, 17, 166, 173 medieval, viii, 8, 88 modern, viii, 8, 17, 76–78, 87–88, 99 political, x, 81, 85, 91, 100 post-Holocaust, 29, 57, 65 as systematic, x, 49–57, 73n10 as “Systematic labor of thought,” 49, 51, 54–55, 57–58 wisdom and, 55, 82, 89 Picasso, Pablo, 128 Planet Auschwitz, 21, 152–153 Platonism, ix, x, 4, 8, 17, 61, 68, 71n1, 73n16, 88, 93 Plotinus, ix poetry, 17, 24n8, 61 Poland, xi, 171, 180, 185–186, 211, 214 politics, 6–7, 78, 81–85, 91, 94, 102n8 Pollock, Benjamin, x Pope John XXIII, 135 Pope John Paul II, 130n6, 135 Population and Welfare Department, 187, 192, 194–196 postmodernism, 51, 180

236

Index

Pound, Ezra, 165–166 prayer, 3–4, 19, 108, 147, 211–212, 217, 219–220 prophecy, 12n2, 24n14 prophet, 7, 20, 23, 40 protest, 113–114 Protestant Reformation, 20 Providence, 111, 115n31, 207, 212 Psalms, 11, 20, 108, 110–112, 212; see also Bible Radom, 189–190 rationalism, 70, 93, 99 rationality, 64, 89 reason, vii–viii, 5, 8, 20–21, 30, 32, 43, 45–46, 65, 70, 88–89, 92, 99–100, 102n9, 218 limits of, 89, 100 recovery, x, 22, 29–30, 32–35, 71, 79, 81, 99, 161 Re(e)d Sea, 12, 34, 40–42, 45–46 redemption, 42, 94, 139, 207–210, 212–220; see also Messianic era; salvation religion, 18, 63–65, 74n20, 76–77, 90, 92 absolute, 20 repentance, 119, 131n10 resistance, xii, 16, 30–35, 37, 66–67, 85n8, 106, 157, 178, 218, 220 as mandatory, 32, 99, 106–107 responsibility, ix, xi, 62–63, 65–71, 73n16, 73n19, 74n21, 127, 134, 151, 183 revelation, viii, x, 7–8, 65, 68, 72n7, 76–77, 88–89, 92–94, 96–97, 99–100, 102n9, 131n10; see also faith rhetoric, 30–33, 35, 59n32 Ricoeur, Paul, 33 Rokeah, Aaron, 212, 214 Romans, 124–126; see also New Testament Rosenberg, Alfred, 21 Rosenkranz, Karl, 16, 18, 23n1, 44 Rosenzweig, Franz, 7–12, 16, 20, 25n22, 39, 49–50, 63, 68, 72n7, 73n12, 76–77, 89–98, 101 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 142

Rubashoff, Shneur Zalman, 25n26 Rubenstein, Richard, 14n21 rupture, x, 9, 29–36, 50, 54, 56–58, 78–79, 99, 107, 110 Russia, 9 Sabbath, 53–54, 139 Sachsenhausen, vii, 164 sacred, 29, 35 salvation, 40–42, 121–122, 125, 213–214; see also Messianic era; redemption Samuel, 216; see also Bible Sartre, Jean-Paul, 7 Schelling, Friedrich, 13n2, 17, 20, 49, 52–53, 73n12 Schneerson, Rabbi Menachem Mendel, 149 Scotland, vii secularism, xi, 41, 94 Sefer HaChinuch, 131n11 shame, 63, 131n10 Shapira, Rabbi Kalonymos, 109–110 Shapiro, Susan, x, 37, 38n18, 59n32 Shazar, Salman; see Rubashoff, Shneur Zalman She’erith Hapleitah xi, 173–175, 177–184, 207, 214, 216, 219–220 Shoah, 29–32, 34–37, 106, 108–114, 145; see also Holocaust as word, 114n4, 137, 139, 147, 151, 175 Shofar, 207, 218–219 Siegfried, Dr. Josef, 195 Silberklang, David, xi silence, 5, 35, 37, 82, 97, 142, 153–155, 207, 209, 212, 214, 217, 220 sin, 3, 111, 128, 209–211 Six Day War, vii, 39, 137 614th commandment, 43, 65–66, 106, 127, 131n11, 134, 152, 161, 163– 164 Six million, 10, 12n2, 127, 168 Socialism, 165, 170 Socrates, 6, 75, 93, 99–100 Sonderkommandos, 21 Song of Songs, 4, 7; see also Bible Soviet Union, 93, 98, 186–187

Index Spinoza, Baruch, 20–21, 71n1, 76–77, 87–88, 91–97, 102n9 Spirit, 9, 17, 20, 22, 34–35, 37, 46, 165 Stewart, Jon, 24n21 Strauss, Leo, x, 8–10, 15, 75–102 Stroop, SS Brigadeführer Juergen, 22 substitution, 62, 67, 73n16 suffering, ix, 29, 69, 71, 73n17, 107–108, 118, 134, 183–184, 207, 214–215, 220 of innocents, pious, or righteous, 24n14, 207–209, 211–212, 214, 216 survival as Jews, 43, 163–164, 175, 218 Survivors, ix, 36, 42, 71, 108, 111–112, 139, 151, 167, 173–184, 208, 217 guilt of, 175 synagogue, 3, 11, 14n18, 16, 127, 208 Syria, 130n6, 135, 219 system, 49–54, 56, 57, 65, 70, 73n12, 92 Talmage, Frank Ephraim, 13n3 Talmud, 45, 89, 122, 158, 167, 215 Tanakh, 108 Tarfon, Rabbi, 58 tattoos, 155, 214 Täubler, Eugen, 16 teshuva, 88–89, 116n42, 209–211, 213 testimony, 29–37, 42, 59n32, 147, 151, 218; see also witness mute, 37 theodicy, 10, 20–21, 105, 108–110, 118, 209 theology, 5, 25n22, 49, 51, 65, 101, 121, 133–134, 173, 212 dual-covenant, 122 Jewish, xi, 6, 70, 105–106 Theresienstadt, 4–5 Third Reich; see Nazi, rule Thou, 7 divine, 7, 64–65, 68 Tikkun, xii, 57–58, 84, 105–107, 112–113, 157, 165, 168, 183, 208, 217–219 Torah, 89–91, 95–96, 100, 102n9, 102n23, 147–150, 152–153, 157, 160, 163, 167, 208–212, 214–218, 220 Toronto, vii University of, vii, 8, 17, 88

237

totality, 70, 98 Totalitarianism, 13n2, 183 transcendence, ix, 9, 30, 44, 46, 54, 56, 62–64, 69, 72n2, 73n16, 74n20, 94, 96, 98, 100, 170, 218 truth, ix, 5, 9, 15, 52–53, 72n2, 88–90, 94, 98–99, 110, 158 Türk, Richard, 187, 190, 192, 195–196 tyranny, 13n2, 83, 97 United Church of Canada, 139 United Nations, 174, 181 United States, 98, 134, 174–175; see also America Unsdorfer, Shlomoh Zalman, 210–212, 214, 220 Verein für die Kultur und Wissenschaft der Juden, 22 victim, 10, 19, 66–67, 70–71, 91, 106, 118, 139, 145, 167, 178, 180 Voltaire, 10 Waite, Robet G. 13n2 Wansee Conference, 190–191, 194 War of Independence, 180, 182 Warsaw, 188–189, 191, 219, Warsaw Ghetto, 106, 145, 171 fighters, 139, 218 underground, 43 uprising, 31, 44, 170, 215, 217, 219–220 Weimar Germany, 80, 88 Weinberg, Gerhard L., 13n2 Weltgeschichte, 19–20, 21, 23n3 Weltanschauung, 4, 10, 12–13n2, 14n15, 196 Wiesel, Elie, 36, 112, 139, 150, 173, 175 Wieseltier, Leon, 163–164 Wissenschaft des Judentums, 8, 22 witness, viii–x, xii, 10, 19, 29–30, 34–37, 43, 50, 57, 63, 97, 149, 151; see also testimony Wolin, Richard, 14n15 World War I, 9, 13n1, 24n6, 145 World War II, 12–13n2, 114n4, 138, 145, 165, 171

238 Wright, Tamra, 72n2 Wyschogrod, Michael, 131n11

Yablonka, Hanna, 182 Yiddish, 167, 168–169, 171, 175 Yom HaShoah, 129 Yom Kippur, 3, 219

Index Zimmermann, John, 144 Zionism, 23, 88, 106, 134, 165, 167, 169–171, 174–181, 208, 214 Christian, 135 Zörner, Ernst, 185, 188–190, 192, 196 Zuckerman, Yitzhak, 170 Zuckert, Catherine, x Zunz, Leopold, 22

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