Holocaust and the State of Israel

The historical structure of that time is complex, outside the scope of this essay. The Holocaust transformed the whole of Jewish life: its destruction of Sephardi Jewry is often ignored, partly because the enormity of the destruc­tion of Eastern European Jewry overshadows everything else.

Leo Baeck had refused to leave his community for the many offers which had come to him. As shepherd, he remained with them, and entered a concentration camp (Terezin). It was one of the ‘better’ camps—almost 20,000 of the 170,000 sent there survived! Baeck continued to be a teacher, and wrote a book on scraps of paper (This People Israel: The Meaning of Jewish Existence), a clear movement from ‘essence’ to ‘existence’. In it, he affirmed the ‘people Israel’ as a divine revelation, and discovered the dimensions of their faith through their life, as he had earlier seen the teachings defining the Jews. It was a steadfast faith. Baeck continued to teach, to guide, to be a ‘beacon of light’—as others saw him in that darkness. And he survived to continue his instruction to the next generation. The Leo Baeck College in London is a monument to his work.

The survivors and the next generation often chal­lenged the traditional faith at this point. For the Orthodox, the Holocaust was often the ‘third Churban’ (time of destruction), following upon the two destructions of the Temple in 586 bce and in 70 ce.

We cannot ignore those who refused such teaching. Often, both the poets and writers who died and those who emerged from the camps left their teaching which has entered Jewish life and thought. Paul Celan’s Death Fugue and his Psalm addressed to ‘No-One’ are a challenge into the void which yet waits for an answer. Ebe Wiesel’s body of work is a profound spiritual testimony and a continuing search for a God who will yet be found. Images from his texts (Night tells of the child hung between two adults and has become central to Christian Holocaust theology: where is God? There, hanging upon the gallows) can lead to misinterpretation: the basic teaching is that God is with the sufferers and not the oppressors. And the child is not a symbol—it lived and died. Auschwitz and Calvary cannot be seen together: one means death, the other meant life.

Rabbis also struggled with the concept of a God who permits such evil. Richard Rubinstein is the first and clearest challenge; but he moved from a ‘God is dead’ theology to the mystic’s search for the Eh Sof, the Ultimate Nothingness which still gives unlimited frontiers to the seeker. After Auschwitz, his first book, changed Jewish theological inquiry; his later texts on the technology of death informed contemporary historiography.

The State of Israel, by its very existence, constitutes one answer to the anguish of the Holocaust. At times, the answer must be questioned, as in the frequent assertion of shlillat ha-galut (negating Diaspora life) which sees Israel as the one viable option of Jewish life. Yet its remark­able achievements in all areas of Jewish life: scholarship, literature, Hebrew reborn as a living language, the saving of the remnant, the haven for Sephardi life threatened in Arab countries (which forced as great an exodus from their lands as the Palestinian Exodus from Israel with its tragic consequences)—all these make us see the centrality of Israel to contemporary Jewish life and thought.

Israel has seen a rebirth of traditional Jewish learn­ing, with the seeds of Eastern European yeshivot producing new harvests. Its presence has been a foundation for the self-assertion of the secular Jew who at times makes Zionism his religious faith. It is the centre of a new Hebrew culture, and unites Jews from all over the world who find at least part of their identity in its presence and in its future. As such, it cannot be ignored in any contemporary definition of Judaism—even its challenges bring new vigour to all aspects of Jewish theological discourse.