If anyone ever bothered to take a census, the most oft-asked question posed to
Jewish theologians, by far, would be, “How can we understand the Holocaust from
a spiritual perspective?" Put another way, how can we reconcile the horrors of
the Holocaust with the idea of an all-powerful, compassionate God of justice?
This is not a question asked only by laymen. Every rabbi, including the most
learned, erudite philosophers among us, has attempted to unravel this Gordian
Knot, with little success. Oh, theories abound, no question, but few are very
satisfying. Some, trumpeting the sacred principle of Free Will, place the blame
squarely on Man – after all, it was men of flesh and blood who planned the
atrocities, who built the gas chambers, men who herded the Jews into cattle cars
and operated the death camps. But leaving God out of the equation invariably
creates many more questions than it answers. After all, if God is unwilling or
incapable of stopping the mega-destruction of His people, then to whom, exactly,
are we praying?
Then there are those who would put the onus on the victims, the
Jews themselves, maintaining that it was our multitude of sins which brought
this catastrophe about. (Along the way, they debate whether it was our passion
for Zionism or, conversely, our stubborn refusal to come to Israel, that kindled
God’s anger.) But if we accept this theory, how do we explain the deaths of so
many righteous people? In particular, how can we possibly justify the murder of
close to two million children who never tasted sin at all? And do we really want
to shift the blame away from the Germans, the perpetrators? So this approach, as
well, does little or nothing to soothe the soul.
I agonized over this
issue for many years. Although, on the one hand, my immediate family did not
suffer greatly in the Holocaust, my in-laws were caught in the thick of it, my
mother-inlaw having spent her 16th birthday in Auschwitz. And, through leading
six trips to Eastern Europe and what remains of its concentration camps, I came
face to face with the physical evidence of this greatest crime in history,
seeing the piles of human hair and shoes, standing in front of the ovens still
surrounded by the ashes of human remains. I found myself, at the very least,
“theologically challenged.”
That is, until one particular Passover
Seder.
I WAS sitting around the table, dressed in a new white kittel,
surrounded by family and friends. We were sipping glass after glass of fine wine
from goldedged crystal goblets, dining on a meal fit for a king, being served on
the best china. The mood was upbeat, the songs exhilarating, the spirit buoyant.
And then it hit me: What, exactly, was I celebrating? True, this was certainly
the Festival of Freedom, the grand liberation of our people from slavery and our
emergence as a sovereign nation. But at such a price! We suffered every form of
degradation and torture during our sojourn in Egypt. For more than a century
(the Sages say we spent 117 years in actual bondage) we were subjected to
demonization, humiliation, slave labor, beatings and, ultimately, genocide. When
we did not meet our quota of bricks, the Egyptian taskmasters stuffed our
children into the walls. The first plague – the turning of water into blood –
was a measure-for-measure punishment, say the Rabbis, for Pharaoh having
literally bathed in Jewish blood.
Rashi, the greatest of all commentators
on the Torah, declares that a full 80 percent of the Israelites never made it
out of Egypt – roughly the same percentage of European Jews who perished in the
Holocaust.
So why, I asked myself, is Passover such a joyous holiday? Are
we callously, cavalierly glossing over the tragedy that befell our people in
Egypt? Is it enough to say a few words about the slavery in our Haggada,
momentarily dip a vegetable in salt water – reminiscent of our tears – and then
eat some bitter herbs in haroset to simulate the mortar the Jews worked with? Is
that the sum total of our grief, before we move on to the spirited song of
“Dayenu” and the sumptuous banquet? Is this really dayenu – enough for us? The
answer, of course, is that we are no longer living in Egypt, nor in the shadow
of our degradation. We have 3,325 years of perspective through which to view and
review the Exodus.
And so we no longer focus on it as one specific era or
event, but rather as a chapter in a long and generally glorious book. When we
look at the entire continuum of events that sprang from Egypt, a very different
picture emerges.
We see the striking scenario of the Splitting of the
Sea; the Revelation on Mount Sinai and the giving of the Ten
Commandments.
We watch as our nascent nation moves through the
wilderness, protected by God’s twin pillars of cloud and fire. And we see the
triumphant entrance of our people into the Land of Israel, where we miraculously
defeated the nations arrayed against us and created a
commonwealth.
Viewed in this fashion, the centuryplus of slavery takes on
a markedly different mood. While we do not in any way dismiss or diminish its
trauma, we now see the whole picture, rather than one isolated snapshot. We know
that slavery gives way to salvation and suffering morphs into statehood. The
bitterness of our bondage is followed by one sweet miracle after another, and
that leaves a whole other taste in our mouths.
Fittingly, the Torah
portion we read during Passover perfectly reflects this concept. Moses asks God
to “show him His glory,” i.e. to explain to him why it is that good people
suffer and the wicked seem to prosper. God answers, somewhat cryptically, “You
shall see My back, but My front you shall not see.” God tells Moses that “from
the front,” looking only at the present, human beings cannot hope to understand
history or fathom the master plan of the universe. But from the back – with
hindsight and perspective – one can begin to appreciate the fullness of the
tapestry, seeing the events of the past from a different angle and with a
different attitude.
This, I suggest, is the way we must approach the
Holocaust. We still live in its dark shadow, far too close to the horrendous
events to be able to look beyond them. The stench of the crematoria still fills
our noses and we remain fixated on the cruelty, the inhumanity, the inexplicable
destruction that we endured.
But the time will come, I truly believe,
when we will see the Holocaust in a different context, as part of a chain of
events that ultimately brought about our Renaissance and reunification as a
people and the reclamation of Israel as our ancestral homeland – all of which
result in bringing unparalleled glory to Jews and to Judaism.
That day is
fast approaching, and we are blessed to be living in truly miraculous times. May
God gives us the vision to see it. ■
The writer is director of the Jewish
Outreach Center of Ra’anana; jocmtv@netvision.net.il,
www.rabbistewartweiss.com
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