Holocaust

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Holocaust

The word "holocaust" is derived from the biblical term "holocauston" (Septuagint) "for "burnt offering" made in sacrifice to God. The term—capitalized—began to be used by scholars in the late 1960s and early 1970s to refer to the death of approximately six million Jews at the hands of the Nazis during World War II. Two historical events in the 1960s brought Jews and Christians in America to reflect on its religious implications. For Jews it was the 1967 Arab-Israeli War (also known as the "Six-Day War"). For Christians it was the Second Vatican Council of the Roman Catholic Church (1962–1965) and its declaration concerning the Jews in the document Nostra Aetate (1964).

Before the 1967 war, the death of six million was too painful for most to speak of. To talk about it raised deep and troubling religious questions for traditional Jewish identity: Where was God during the Holocaust? Why did God not rescue Jews from the Nazis, as he had rescued them from the ancient Egyptians? How can Jews continue to believe in the covenant of Sinai when God seems to have abandoned them to near-annihilation? Then the 1967 war seemed to repeat the threat of total annihilation but reverse the outcome. Against all odds, the Israeli Army overwhelmed the Arab armies who seemed to be intent on obliterating the Jewish state created by the United Nations in 1948. To many Jews the State of Israel became a symbol of God's saving presence in history, counterbalancing the devastation of the Holocaust. After this the Holocaust could be talked about and examined without leading to despair. Therefore the decades following the 1967 war gave rise to intense and unprecedented theological reflection by Jews on the Holocaust.

These reflections explored the crisis of Jewish identity created by the Holocaust and offered a variety of responses. For example, at one extreme the key author has been Richard Rubenstein, whose book After Auschwitz was published in 1966, on the eve of the 1967 war. For Rubenstein the covenantal God of Exodus died at Auschwitz. Jews must stop looking at history mythologically and expecting God to come and rescue them. However, this does not mean the end of Judaism; on the contrary, Jewish ritual and Jewish identity become more important, not less, as ways for Jews to sustain their identity in a hostile world.

In the middle, several Jewish authors responded to Rubenstein. These authors agreed with him that traditional pre-Holocaust Jewish identity was no longer viable, while disagreeing that this requires abandoning all belief in God. For example, Elie Wiesel chose instead to "wrestle with God." Putting God on trial, he accused God of being the one who broke the covenant, while Jews have chosen to remain faithful to it. Emil Fackenheim argued that God was present in history, even at Auschwitz. As proof he indicates that the persistence of Jews in affirming their identity after the Holocaust indicates that both secular and religious Jews seem to have heard a silent yet commanding voice from Auschwitz, commanding them to remain Jews so as not to grant Hitler a posthumous victory in his attempt to destroy Jews and Judaism. Irving Greenberg argued that Jews are tossed back and forth between belief and unbelief and are reduced to "momentary faith." In some moments the promise of the Sinai covenant sustains them, whereas in other moments Sinai is overwhelmed by the smoke and flames of Auschwitz, and faith seems impossible. What continues to give each of these authors hope is the rebirth of the State of Israel, giving rise to a shared theme of Holocaust and redemption.

Finally, at the other extreme one can find authors who deny that the Holocaust should have any impact at all on Jewish faith. Jacob Neusner, for example, argues that the focus on Holocaust and redemption through the rebirth of the State of Israel has led American Jews to embrace a superficial Jewish identity that requires nothing from them. He urges a return to the observance of the dual Torah of rabbinic Judaism.

The Holocaust creates a different sort of crisis of identity for Christians. For Christians the problem focuses on the role that the long history of Christian anti-Judaism played in supporting Nazi anti-Semitism, the high level of cooperation with the Nazis, and the lack of widespread Christian efforts to save Jews from the Nazis. For two thousand years Christianity taught that Jews were a people rejected by God for failing to recognize Jesus as the messiah and for orchestrating his crucifixion—a people superseded or replaced by Christians as God's new chosen people. But the Holocaust seems to have forced a reversal of those teachings. The Vatican II document Nostra Aetate was the first in Christian history to acknowledge the ongoing legitimacy of God's covenant with Israel. It also rejected all anti-Semitism, including Christian attempts to blame the Jews, as a people, for the death of Christ.

Some three and a half decades later, at the turn of the millennium, most of the major denominations of Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant, have issued official church proclamations acknowledging guilt for the history of Christian anti-Judaic teachings and for the moral failure of Christians during the Holocaust, and affirming the ongoing validity of the Jewish covenant. Indeed, it is one of the ironies of the Holocaust that precisely at the point when Jews are questioning the validity of the Jewish covenant, Christians, for the first time in history, are affirming it.

Three of the most important issues left unsettled by these official church declarations are: (1) how the "new covenant" of Christianity is related to the Mosaic covenant of the Jews; (2) how Christians can consider Jesus the messiah without claiming to "supersede" Judaism; and (3) how Christian ethics will need to be reformed. The first two questions are widely explored by contemporary Christian theologians. Protestant theologians such as Paul van Buren and A. Roy Eckhardt have argued for a one-covenant theory, whereas others, such as Catholic theologian John Pawlikowski, have argued for a two-covenant theory. Both groups have generally tended to look to Paul's letter to the Romans (especially chapters 9 to 11) for an alternative to the "myth of supersession." Paul suggests that gentiles are a "wild olive branch" grafted onto the natural olive tree of Judaism through their faith in Jesus. The one-covenant theorists generally read Paul as saying that Christianity adds nothing new except to extend the promises of Abraham to include the Gentiles, whereas the two-covenant theorists suggest that Christianity offers a new covenant that in various ways adds to and complements the Jewish covenant.

On the messianic question there has arisen a considerable theological consensus that Jesus is not the messiah of Judaism, at least not yet, for only when Jesus returns to create a new heaven and earth will he have fulfilled the messianic role. On this view, both Jews and Christians still await the coming of the messiah. It remains to be seen which of these positions, if any, the churches adopt into their official teachings in the new millennium.

Finally, the neglected question of the impact of the Holocaust on Christian ethics has been taken up by Protestant theologian Darrell J. Fasching. He criticizes the traditional Christian ethic of obedience as playing into the hands of the Nazis and seeks to learn something from a dialogue with Jewish authors such as Elie Wiesel and Irving Greenberg about the Abrahamic chutzpah, or audacity (Genesis 18:25) to question all authority, even God if necessary, to avoid the kind of unquestioning obedience that made the Holocaust possible in the heart of Christendom.