The Philosopher as Witness: Fackenheim and Responses to the Holocaust

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

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Library 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)—Infl uence. 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 2007035784

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Preface vii

PART 1. REFLECTIONS

1. In Memory of Leo Baeck and Other Jewish Thinkers

in “Dark Times”: Once More, “After Auschwitz, Jerusalem” 3

Emil L. Fackenheim

2. Hegel and “The Jewish Problem” 15

Emil L. Fackenheim

PART 2. CRITIQUE

3. Hegel’s Ghost: “Witness” and “Testimony” in the

Post-Holocaust Philosophy of Emil Fackenheim 29

Susan E. Shapiro

4. Fackenheim on Passover after the Holocaust 39

Warren Zev Harvey

5. Of Systems and the Systematic Labor of Thought:

Fackenheim as Philosopher of His Time 49

Benjamin Pollock

6. Fackenheim and Levinas: Living and Thinking

after Auschwitz 61

Michael L. Morgan

7. The Holocaust and the Foundations of Future Philosophy:

Fackenheim and Strauss 75

Solomon Goldberg

vi Contents

8. Fackenheim and Strauss 87

Catherine H. Zuckert

PART 3. RESPONSE

9. Emil Fackenheim: Theodicy, and the Tikkun of Protest 105

David R. Blumenthal

10. The Holocaust Is a Christian Issue: Christology Revisited 117

Richard A. Cohen

11. The Holocaust—Tragedy for the Jewish People, Credibility

Crisis for Christendom 133

Franklin H. Littell

12. Man or Muselmann?: Fackenheim’s Elaboration on

Levi’s Question 147

David Patterson

13. Emil Fackenheim, Irving Howe, and the Fate of

Secular Jewishness 163

Edward Alexander

14. She’erith Hapleitah: Refl ections of a Historian 173

Zeev Mankowitz

15. Willful Murder in the Lublin District of Poland 185

David Silberklang

16. Metahistory, Redemption, and the Shofar of

Emil Fackenheim 207

Gershon Greenberg

List of Contributors 225

Index 227

Preface

Emil L. Fackenheim died at age eighty-seven in Jerusalem early Friday morn-

ing, 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 Juda-

ism 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 fl ight—fi rst to England and Scotland and fi nally 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

viii Preface

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 refl ection 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 histori-

cal 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 confl ict 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 confer-

ence 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 perplex-

ity 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 his-

torical events. A witness is one who testifi es, 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 confi rm 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, infl uential 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,

ixPreface

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 philo-

sophical tradition from its ancient beginnings. In some cases that witnessing

involves appreciating the defi ciencies of everyday experience and testifying to

the existence and signifi cance 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 testifi es 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 confl icted 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 classifi es 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

affi rms 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

x Preface

the Nazi menace. The other deals with philosophy and primarily with Hegel;

if the fi rst 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 theo-

logical 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 fi nds 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 exemplifi es 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 signifi cant infl uence 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

fl ourished, as the nadir of a process of relativism and nihilism that emerged

from debates in the late nineteenth century. Strauss’s response was to refl ect

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.” Fack-

enheim, 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 in-

volvement with it to seek a depth that Heidegger had failed to uncover. In

xiPreface

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 fi nd 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 defi ciencies of Christianity that any honest and serious post-

Holocaust 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 refl ected 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 refl ection on the phenomenon, its place in literary responses

to the death camps, and more. In his fascinating piece, Edward Alexander

takes up a fi gure, 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 unacknowl-

edged—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 Facken-

heim in his essay, “Holocaust and Weltanschauung: Philosophical Refl ections

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

xii Preface

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 Holo-

caust 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 effi cacy 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 se-

cure, 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 infl uenced him, those he himself discussed and debated, and those who

are contemporary intellectuals of signifi cance. The method and content of his

thought also should be analyzed, clarifi ed, 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 gen-

der and social justice, for environmental issues and international confl ict, 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 be-

gin a process that is as important as it will be diffi cult, to hold together the

universality and impartiality of intellectual refl ection 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.

PART 1

Refl ections

yanulada

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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

4 Philosopher As Witness

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 homi-

letics: 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 refl ection ahead of us. Hence

I will mention just one more fact—just one horror Baeck knew: in Theresien-

stadt, 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

5In Memory of Leo Baeck

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 briefl y what Jonas put

all-too-briefl y, 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 phi-

losophy, 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-insuf-

fi cient philosophy be recognized for what it was. And of the 100 years only

just over sixty are gone.

I call philosophy “insuffi cient” because a philosophy that truly faces

the Holocaust does not need to be told: it knows its own insuffi ciency 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 fi nal lecture, at the end of this conference, will be on general philosophy;

this, my fi rst, at its opening, is on Jewish philosophy, hence, to be compre-

hensive 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


Moshe Davis: he had absorbed Kaplan’s critique of Jewish theology as ignor-

ing Jewish “peoplehood,” hence, invented a concept of “Jewish civilization.”

Davis had applied this concept radically, fi rst by making Aliyah and then, in

Jerusalem, with the help of that concept founded an “Institute for Contempo-

rary 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 com-

pelled to rise to tough politics. Two hundred years earlier, with Jewish eman-

cipation 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 “an-

other 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 fi rst modern Jew-

ish 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

defi nition, but for twelve years the impossible-by-defi nition was empirically

real.” Kittel’s father, Rudolph, had edited Biblia Hebraica. The son was the

fi rst 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 Mendels-

sohn. 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


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 fl ight 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 pos-

sibility of human-Divine “dialogue”: he persisted in it, as long as possible—pos-

sibly 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 allu-

sion 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 testifi es 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 “Gottesfi nsternis 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 Gottesfi nsternis

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:


“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. Specifi cally,

even back in Berlin, Strauss disturbed and enlightened me with one question:

“Which is more critical, modern philosophy when, simply qua modern, it dis-

misses 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 ac-

cept 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 fi nally turned to Plato, I to the “golden age” of Ger-

man philosophy, climaxing with Hegel. But neither Strauss nor I could ever

become indifferent to what was happening to Jews.11


Strauss and I had Franz Rosenzweig in common: he dedicated his fi rst

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 perma-

nently—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 fi rst 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

fi nal 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 fi rst 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 sub-

sequently 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 re-

publishing 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 irrel-

evant but also offensive, indeed, philosophically mendacious, for it still evades

what Heidegger never faced—that his—possibly once—“metaphysical Volk”


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 testifi ed 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 fl esh-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 Hei-

matstadt: 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


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 Sehen-

swürdigkeiten, “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 fi rst spoke of

the “614th commandment.”

At the fi nal 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.)


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 defi ance 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, fi ve 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 Gottesfi nsternis is still here, still with us, yet I say to all Jews

here in Jerusalem tonight—to Jews anywhere—that we are a collective Nah-

shon. The Midrash imagines that this biblical fi gure 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, fi rst as “Marks of a

Genocidal Mentality” (ch. 3) and in the end, in terrible, logical fulfi llment of a “proph-

ecy” (ch. 10). Germans reading the book can now relate to what is called the Rausch

of their grandparents, while Raul Hilberg, the fi rst and still most intrepid witness, can

now be satisfi ed.

Yet despite Kershaw, the “race” of which I have spoken is unfi nished, for simul-

taneous 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, imply-

ing that, of 50 million, 6 million Jews are not that many, especially since “war-related

deaths” are “not easy to defi ne” (555).


Murray and Millett are thus far only last in a long line. The fi rst 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 fi nds 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 “psy-

cho- 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 fi rst, 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 fi rst

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 Refl ections.”

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-


ily—our answers were fi nal. The text is Good and Evil after Auschwitz: Ethical Implica-

tions 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 offi cer named Flacke. “How he did it I do not know,” she testifi ed. His

camp was clean and the food also.” The Frankfurt judge, who had heard endless pro-

testations 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 classifi es 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 glorifi cation of the Jewish Yahwe of vengeance, while world Judaism

prepares the mobilization of all humanity, for annihilating the Aryan race” (353). Under

the infl uence 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 as-

serted 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 refl ection—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

suffi ce, 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, how-

ever, 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


to say. Rosenkranz was right in calling Hegel “repelled” but also “fascinated”

by Judaism. However, unlike Rosenkranz, here I am not satisfi ed 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 fi rst-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 any-

where else, this is still my view reached, of course, only after many years

of thought.)

Here is one characteristic passage from Hegel’s work:

17Hegel and “The Jewish Problem”

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 fi ndet.

The Life of Spirit does not shun death, thereby preserving itself

pure from devastation, but endures it, and in just this way main-

tains itself: only in being torn apart absolutely does it fi nd 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 fi nal 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 Phenomenol-

ogy til retirement.

I never got to its end, however, and always warned students of famous-

but-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 philoso-

phy 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


reports “the actual”—then the dictum could be tautological, that is, meaning-

less; 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 translat-

able, 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-His-

tory” 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 strug-

gling 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 Juda-

ism 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 confi dence”—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 “confi dence 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”


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 specifi cally 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 fi rst, 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 them-

selves, 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 “col-

lective” 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,


with which he truly wrestles—through nearly all of it. Hence, there is a “note-

worthy, infi nitely 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,” “infi nitely” so, since for him God is

“not jealous,” hence he rejects—must reject—in Jewish Geschichte what theo-

logians 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 fi nd 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 baffl ing, 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

“fi nite 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 fi nitude, that is, itself be

human divine. This, a staggering presumption on Hegel’s part, also is a stag-

gering 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 Weltge-

schichte as follows: “This is the true theodicy, the justifi cation of God in history.

To develop this course of World-Spirit has been my endeavor.”20


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 perfi diousness 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 humilia-

tion, even to destroying themselves.23

The Sonderkommandos, Levi goes on, were “deprived even of the solace

of innocence.”24


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,” fi nds 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 “fi nd 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 cel-

ebration 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-mo-

dernity had been too unhistorical: some of the seven, gripped by the thought

of modernity historically, stated that their “fi rst 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 re-

mained faithful to its “fi rst 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 fi ve years the Verein lasted, that Jewish

Aufgehen, “merging,” in Europe would not mean Untergehen, “perishing,” as-

sertions 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 “fi rst dogma,” became an articulate Hegelian;


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 fl iessen

Nach Sueden in stillem Verein

Sie fl iessen 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 fi nd 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 fi rst 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 fi rst 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 “confi dence,” 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 Uni-

versity Press, 1977).


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

fi ght 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 his-

tory, 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 defi nes 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


also Hegel’s Rechtsphilosophie (# 270 Anmerkung). In my view # 358 of the same work

is highly signifi cant in that barely two paragraphs before its end, the Jewish people ap-

pear 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

fi nally 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” fi rst to Bergen-Belsen, then to Jerusalem, see my “From Bergen-

Belsen to Jerusalem” (World Jewish Congress, 1975). Comments on my address were

made by Arthur Morse, Piotr Rwicz, Manes Sperber, and Alfred Kazin.

yanulada


PART 2

Critique

yanulada


CHAPTER 3

Hegel’s Ghost

“Witness” and “Testimony” in the Post-Holocaust

Philosophy of Emil Fackenheim

SUSAN E. SHAPIRO

I have been strongly infl uenced 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

signifi cant 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 affi rmation, 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 justifi ed 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 affi rmation, without

necessarily effacing one claim or the other.

29


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 diffi culty, 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 Holo-

caust 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 ar-

gument moves from radical negation to affi rmation and how he fi gures 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, fi nally, its utter fi nitude and loss of transcendence in its disastrous

confrontation with one historical event in particular: the Holocaust. As Fack-

enheim states, “Where the Holocaust is, no thought can be, and where there

is thought, it is in fl ight 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 rhe-

torical 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 accom-

plished 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

31Hegel’s Ghost

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 mis-

fortune, 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 argu-

ment 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 impos-

sible. 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 re-

orientation 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 theo-

logically 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 be-

ing. 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


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 fi rst 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 em-

ployed 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 ontologi-

cal 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 affi rmation, 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 fi rst part of his text.

The testimony of resistance has logical and ethical status such that it neces-

sitates 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.

33Hegel’s Ghost

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 Facken-

heim 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 foun-

dations 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


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 Af-

fi rmations and Philosophical Refl ections,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 prefi gured, by the text’s interpretative assumptions.

The securing of language from the effects of catastrophe is especially sur-

prising 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

35Hegel’s Ghost

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 justifi ed, 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 justifi ed, 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 fi rmly 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, fi nally, 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

artifi cial and external proof. Because language and experience cannot fi nally

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


discourse. Almost inevitably, one function—negation or affi rmation—is fi g-

ured 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 intensifi es 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 signifi cance. 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-Ho-

locaust 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 fi rst 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:

37Hegel’s Ghost

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 tes-

timony 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 hermeneu-

tics 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 fulfi llment of his own goals; it is precisely to make a post-

Holocaust 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.


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);

fi rst published as Se questo e un uomo (Torino: Giulio Einaudi editore, 1958); fi rst

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 Affi rmations and

Philosophical Refl ections (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1972); fi rst 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 Li-

brary), 75.

12. Fackenheim, To Mend the World, xxv.

13. Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved (New York: Vintage Books,

1989); fi rst edition of this translation, (New York: Summit Books, 1988), trans.

Raymond Rosenthal; fi rst 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 Facken-

heim’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 argu-

ment for a solution.”

CHAPTER 4

Fackenheim on Passoverafter the Holocaust

WARREN ZEV HARVEY

Emil Fackenheim’s classic little book God’s Presence in History: Jewish Affi rma-

tions and Philosophic Refl ections 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 infl uenced by Hegel’s philosophy of history.

THE PARAMOUNT QUESTION

In God’s Presence in History, Fackenheim raises the question of how it is pos-

sible 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 ev-

ery 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


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 individu-

alistic 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 His-

tory 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 phi-

losophy of history.

Already in 1955, in his essay, “Judaism and the Idea of Progress,” he

affi rmed unequivocally that the Hegelian theory of necessary progress cannot

be maintained after the Holocaust:

41Fackenheim on Passover after the Holocaust

This evil phenomenon [Nazism] . . . gave the fi nal lie to the view

that history is necessary progress. . . . History 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 mean-

ing, that there is a profound dialectic between past and present, and that God

is revealed in history. It is this commitment to the signifi cance of history that

makes Passover after the Holocaust so diffi cult 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, affi rm 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—what-

ever the changing fortunes of contemporary history—that the Di-

vinity 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 His-

tory but provides alternative explanations and claims that “the God hypothesis”

is superfl uous: 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 Holo-

caust does seem to refute the God of History. He then addresses himself to

the question of the Passover Seder after the Holocaust:


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

affi rmation 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 Jew-

ish 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 pres-

ence 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 fi nal 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

defi ance 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 defi ance. Jews do continue to celebrate the Passover. The faith

in the messianic redemption in history was affi rmed even by martyrs in the

death camps. According to testimony of survivors, many Jews went to their

death reciting defi antly Maimonides’ Twelfth Principle of Faith, as formulated


by a later liturgist: “I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah,

and though he tarry, nevertheless I believe.” They thus affi rmed 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 his-

tory 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 defi ance.

The very affi rmation of Jewish existence after the Holocaust, Facken-

heim argues, is an expression of this faith and defi ance. 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 affi rmation of Jewish existence after the Holocaust is

what Fackenheim had called, in an unforgettable 1967 essay, “the 614th com-

mandment.”13 Citing that essay, he repeats in God’s Presence in History that

“Jews are forbidden to hand Hitler posthumous victories.” The “command-

ing 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 affi rms the God of History in confl ict,

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 defi ance

in the midst of hopelessness.” In spite of everything, “our footsteps confi rm,

we are here!” Mir zeinen do. And he adds: “We are here, exist, survive, endure,


witnesses to God and man, even if abandoned by God and man.”20 The Warsaw

Ghetto uprising of 1943, he notes, began on the fi rst 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 refl ects 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 Jew-

ish religious existence just because it would not fi t into his system, for as a

true philosopher “he was unable to ignore a millennial historical fact simply

because it would not fi t into his system.”23

Hegel’s inability to ignore historical facts, writes Fackenheim, sets him

apart from Heidegger:

Heidegger ignored fl esh-and-blood history—even the torture cellars

of the Gestapo, to say nothing of the Holocaust. . . . In contrast, in

his time Hegel passed through fl esh-and-blood history before tran-

scending it, and would have to attempt doing likewise today. Mak-

ing the attempt with the fl esh-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 Ho-

locaust 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 Juda-

ism 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,


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, affi rmed 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 briefl y 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 signifi cant

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 infi nite joy of the

moment . . . is mingled with sorrow, and the sorrow is infi nite

because the joy is infi nite. Thus the root experience in Judaism is

fragmentary and points to a future consummation because of its

fragmentariness.29


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 affi rmation of the

conservative version of fragmented Hegelianism. However, Fackenheim also

cites a striking rabbinic teaching (Mekhilta, Pisha, 16), included in the Pass-

over 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 superfl uous 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 diffi cult and painful question for Fackenheim. He is unable to give an

affi rmative 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 Affi rmations and

Philosophic Refl ections (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 an-

thology 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 justifi ed necessity.”

7. Fackenheim, God’s Presence in History, 46 (paragraph division added).

8. Ibid., 43; cf. 44–49.


9. Ibid., 49–61. Cf. already Fackenheim’s Metaphysics and Historicity (Mil-

waukee: 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 Uni-

versity 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, unantici-

pated 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 confi rmed, 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. Facken-

heim, To Mend the World, 312–13, 328–30.

29. Fackenheim, God’s Presence in History, 25, emphasis in original.

30. Ibid., 10–11.

yanulada


CHAPTER 5

Of Systems and the SystematicLabor of Thought

Fackenheim as Philosopher of His Time

BENJAMIN POLLOCK

In the opening pages of To Mend the World, Emil Fackenheim refl ects back

on the development of his work in the fi elds of philosophy and theology

and comments: “The fi rst . . . 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 Rosen-

zweig 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, ramifi ed form of a scientifi c system. As Facken-

heim 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 fi nds its “greatest expression in the system of Hegel.”3

Fackenheim devoted ten years of study to making sense of this seem-

ingly 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 pre-

sumptuousness it is also marked by an equally unprecedented philosophical

humility,”4 for Hegel believes that he can and must complete philosophy in

49


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 refl ective beginnings,

through its search for philosophical models, onto its painful confrontation with

the Holocaust world itself, and fi nally, 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 compre-

hensive, 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.

51Of Systems and the Systematic Labor of Thought

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 Facken-

heim 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.

�

Before delving into the product of Fackenheim’s “systematic labor of

thought,” To Mend the World, it behooves us fi rst to come to a better under-

standing of the nature of “system” as such, the very system that Hegel takes

as his task and that Fackenheim himself explores before articulating, in oppo-

sition 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 unifi cation in thinking of all that is.11 The question is whether

such systematic unifi cation can occur without the denial of the very real dif-

ferences that always exist between the different beings that are to be unifi ed.

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


According to Fackenheim, we see, the “connotation of closedness”

commonly attributed to philosophical systems refl ects 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 fulfi lled 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 defi ning 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 com-

pleteness 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 sacrifi cing 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]


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 inher-

ent 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 signifi cance that this “laboring” char-

acter 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 in-

fi nity unsullied by fi niteness. It is a laboring rise to infi nity 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 real-

ity 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 real-

ity 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 his-

tory. 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 fi nal 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


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 refl ections on Hegel’s system and his labor

of thought has led us to a rather precise picture of how Fackenheim under-

stands 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 tran-

scendent truth; it is the way it grasps a reality that is itself laborious, painful;

and it is both a refl ection on and a product of the labor of history, which

alone has brought about the systematic wholeness, the sabbatical completion

that Hegel asserts.

�

What began as a preliminary inquiry into the nature of system has led

us seemingly by chance to a discussion of the specifi c sense in which Facken-

heim 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 philo-

sophical 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 unifi cation 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 philoso-

phy 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 refl ect on the way


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 refl ects on

the selfi shness, 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 fi nd 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 fl ee

from the ancient-pagan world. Are we to understand that the Hegelian philosophy

too is, in the end, forced into fl ight?”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 seri-

ously Hegel’s fl ight in the face of a desperately fragmented reality, for such a

fl ight is all the more telling in the case of a philosopher who does his utmost

to labor with the world. Such a fl ight tells us two things in particular about

how Hegel understands philosophy: fi rst of all, it tells us that, as a philosopher,

Hegel’s fi rst 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 fi rst 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 fl ight from the world for the sake of

wisdom. What is remarkable is that Fackenheim rejects Hegel’s fl ight 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. Refl ecting on how Hegel


might respond to the thought-shattering events of our own day, Fackenheim

asserts, in the Religious Dimension in Hegel’s Thought, “A 20th-century Hege-

lianism 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, fi nally, in To Mend the World: “In his time, Hegel passed

through fl esh-and-blood history before transcending it, and would have to at-

tempt doing likewise today.”27

No less startling than Hegel’s own fl ight 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 re-

garding 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 fl ee 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 “over-

reaching” 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 fl ee 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 fl ee, not

even thought itself. He writes: “We are faced with the possibility that the Ho-

locaust 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;


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 fragmenta-

tion. Indeed, we could have gathered as much from the fact that Fackenheim

does not defi ne 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 unifi cation 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 ramifi cations of this notion. Earlier we asserted

that system can be understood as the culmination of the original idea of “logos,”

of philosophy as a unifi cation, 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 unifi ed, 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

�


Refl ecting 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,

insuffi ciently 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 “fi tting 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 (Bloom-

ington: 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 refl ection on the alternative ques-

tion of whether or not ancient philosophy would view the Holocaust as a unique

philosophical problem, see Solomon Goldberg’s chapter 7 in this book.


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. Stew-

art, 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 philosophi-

cal thought.

33. Ibid., 29–30.

34. Ibid., 30.

yanulada


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 some-

thing 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 infi nite, of the otherness and radical distinct-

ness of the other—Plato’s Form of the Good, the One in Plotinus, and the

idea of infi nity 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


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 Infi nity 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, de-

scriptions, 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 responsi-

bility 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 ques-

tion” 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

infi nite 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, identifi es itself with

them.5 From one perspective, the other is poor, absolutely powerless, and un-

conditionally 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-

63Fackenheim and Levinas

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 refl ects these attitudes is valued,

but even it only partially and defi ciently expresses what is primordial and ba-

sic, 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 be-

ing, and its content—what Levinas calls “ethics”and “religion,” among other

things—is fi rst 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 specifi cally 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 refl ection 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 philosophi-

cal 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 fi rst 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 Infi nity 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


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 specifi cally, 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 fl eeting, 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 fi rst 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, infl uenced the substance of Levinas’s philosophy


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 infl uence and began

to fi nd a way to deal with it. What did that beginning look like?

From very early in his academic career, Fackenheim’s interest in phi-

losophy and in Judaism centered on the relationship between faith and rea-

son. 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 historic-

ity of philosophical thought. In these years, then, Fackenheim is struggling

to fi nd 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 Juda-

ism 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


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 philosophi-

cal 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 fi nds us situ-

ated in worlds in part defi ned 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 resis-

tance is both a condition of and a standard for post-Holocaust existence, Jewish

and otherwise. And while for Levinas this responsibility is infi nite—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 defi ned. 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


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 suffi cient: the 614th commandment combines two

ideas—fi rst, 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 mean-

ing 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 com-

munity, 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 identifi es 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 benefi ciary. 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 identifi es 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 fi nally arrive at

a unique event of resistance—at the same time, an event that incorporates

an awareness that is surprised, horrifi ed, refl ective, and assured of its com-

mandedness—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


would agree about God. In fact, however, the relationship with God, although

contested and then recovered, nonetheless remains, for Fackenheim, philo-

sophically the same, while psychologically and historically it is troubled and

confl icted. 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 diffi culty,

also not without hope.

Perhaps, then, a chief distinction between Fackenheim and Levinas con-

cerns 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 superfi cial, sense.

Levinas’s Platonism, while rooted in experience and then, indeed, beyond expe-

rience, 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


not a historical episode but rather a transcendental structure—both constitutive

and ideal, that distant, indirect revelation also is a transcendental feature of hu-

man 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 signifi cance for Jews and for others as well;17

Fackenheim too recognizes the special signifi cance of that suffering and that

evil. But for Levinas, the suffering signifi es human abandonment of the univer-

sal, abiding responsibility that we all have for each other; for Fackenheim, the

suffering signifi es 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 testifi es to the fact that the Nazi destruction and the Ho-

locaust 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.


For Levinas the Holocaust dramatized the need for a philosophical ac-

count 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 defi cient 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 commit-

ment 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 suffi cient

responsibility. Only then, as he has since put it, did he feel able to take seri-

ously both the Holocaust and God. If part of the response to Enlightenment

rationalism and the tradition of German idealism was a fi deist commitment to

a God and a faith that engaged the individual from beyond reason and phi-

losophy, 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 particular-

ity. 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 fi nd the mark of the greatest difference between Fackenheim

and Levinas. It is not simply a matter of method, the transcendental phenom-

enology 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, signifi cant 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 signifi cantly

from their distinctive attempts to keep philosophy separate from Jewish thought

and yet to bring them together in productive ways. No, what distinguishes


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 Heideg-

gerian 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 infi nite re-

sponsibility 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 fi nd 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 sympa-

thies, I am inclined to think that each would fi nd 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 Infi nite,”

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 fi rst at Husserl and Heidegger but also includes Plato, Descartes, and


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 Be-

ing 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 chal-

lenges 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 infi nite 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 dif-

ferent 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 Infi nity.

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-


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 fi rst 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 fi nally the third

chapter of To Mend the World (New York: Schocken Books, 1982).

15. Auschwitz challenges the Jewish and human confi dence in the meaning-

fulness of human existence. One can hope that our commitment to such meaning

will be confi rmed 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 com-

mitment.

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 disclos-

ing a transcendental subjectivity and then transcendental intersubjectivity. To be

sure, Levinas modifi es 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 Infi nity, 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


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 infi nite, 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 qualifi ed;

Fackenheim’s challenge is unqualifi ed 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 un-

likely 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 ad-

dress our fundamental existential concerns. However, because they disagree

about the nature of philosophy, they identify different concerns as fundamental.

75


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 fi nd 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. Signifi cantly, 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 affi liation 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 Rosen-

zweig that Strauss largely implies. When Strauss’s Die Religionskritik Spinozas

originally appeared in 1930, few if any could have detected the philosophical

signifi cance of its dedication due to the simple facts that Rosenzweig is not

mentioned anywhere else in the book, and that Spinoza fi gures 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.

77The Holocaust and the Foundations of Future Philosophy

While Strauss’s doubts about modern philosophy take him back to Mai-

monides, Aristotle, and Plato, Fackenheim’s confi dence 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 infl uence Fackenheim openly

acknowledges.4 But one certainly could not fi nd 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 phi-

losophers 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 sacrifi ce. 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,


in demonstrating only modern philosophy’s limitations vis-à-vis the Holocaust,

Fackenheim has not perhaps indicated the necessity of a return to the think-

ing 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 specifi cally in its ability to provide if not a

foundation then at least an orientation for post-Holocaust philosophy. Accord-

ingly, 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 ques-

tion 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 identifi cation of the problem apparently takes a political situation as the

defi ning 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 defi nition 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 Phi-

losophy after the Holocaust,” Fackenheim quotes a comment by Strauss that

originally appears in a discussion of the crisis of liberal democracy but that


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 with-

out 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 Ho-

locaust,” 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 think-

ing 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 wit-

ness 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


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 fi rst 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 re-

state 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

insuffi ciently grounded, but, moreover, it is entirely unclear how they ever

could be. By no means am I proposing that these premises are therefore er-

roneous. 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 fi rst premise—that the Holocaust is unprec-

edented—Strauss seems perfectly willing to accept. Indeed, on this point, con-

sider 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 mis-

take 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


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 con-

cerned, 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 briefl y 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 judg-

ment 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 confl icting

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 unqualifi ed, fundamental good. On the contrary, Strauss contends that

these differences of opinion are the precondition for the philosophical enter-

prise, 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


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 sum-

marize his position on the philosophical relevance of history. Neither specifi c

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’ refl ections 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 benevo-

lence 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 specula-

tions that lead the philosopher beyond the political community and the philo-

sophical 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


relevance of history. One view, endorsed by Strauss, says that Being is im-

mutable 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 refl ect

two fundamentally different ideas of philosophy, do not allow for any media-

tion. 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 phi-

losophy, 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 confl icting 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 diffi culties

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, un-

able to dispense with their concern for human affairs not merely despite but

precisely because of their concern for what is beyond human affairs.


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

(fi rstly, if not fi nally) 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 specifi cally.28 On the other

hand, Strauss feels no compulsion to accommodate either the general question

of radical evil or the specifi c 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 fi rmly established. But all is not therefore lost.

For besides fi nding 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


cannot establish philosophy’s fi nal cause, they do instruct us on its fi rst 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 Rosen-

zweig, see the footnote on page 89.

5. Fackenheim, To Mend the World, 74. Cf. 6: “By ‘Jewish faith’ I under-

stand . . . 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 fi rst place on “premises” as such but rather on

“experiences,” specifi cally 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 briefl y, 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.


14. Ibid., 15.

15. Ibid., 9–13.

16. Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, 3, emphasis added. A similar state-

ment 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 man-

ner 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 con-

nection 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 signifi cantly 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 infl uenced 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 Wis-

senschaft 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 under-

standing—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


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—fi rst 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 accord-

ing 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 defi ned 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 fi gure one has to choose as an

alternative to Plato. That fi gure 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, fi rst 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).

89Fackenheim and Strauss

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 sacrifi cing 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 diffi cult. 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 fi ndings 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 scientifi c

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 Rosensz-

weig 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 phi-

losophers, Hegel had claimed to bring the search for wisdom or “philosophy”


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 real-

ity) in the Absolute Idea. That “absolute” understanding could fi nd 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 infi nitely

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 coun-

teracted 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 artifi cial 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 aware-

ness 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 phi-

losophy, 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 na-

tion. As Rosenzweig himself observed, Jewish dogmatists of the Middle Ages


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 mani-

festly constituted by the Torah, it is necessarily preceded by the

Torah. . . . The dogma of Israel’s chosenness becomes for Rosenz-

weig “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 ex-

perience” was not truly absolute or fundamental.

Contrary to those (following Nietzsche) who had thought that intellec-

tual 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 sum-

mary 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 “ac-

cepts 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 Chris-

tians 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 benefi ting 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


Nevertheless, Strauss thought Spinoza’s understanding of the “harsh politi-

cal verities” was superior to, that is, truer than, Cohen’s moralizing pacifi sm.

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 fi ghts the religious “delusion” because of

its terrible character, modern unbelief fi ghts it because it is a delu-

sion: 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


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 scientifi c or techno-

logical 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] think-

ing” 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


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 modifi ed form of Rosenzweig’s “new thinking.”

In To Mend the World, Fackenheim began his own account of the “ex-

tremes of Jewish modernity, that is, secularism and a postsecularist commit-

ment 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

fi nds 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

signifi cance 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 fi rst 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-


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 be-

lieve 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 pos-

sible 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 fi rst instance

because he thought Rosenzweig had substituted the existence of the Jewish

people for that which defi ned 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 non-

dogmatic and nonparticularistic version of the truth of Judaism.

This bold thinker did not hesitate to ascribe religious signifi cance

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” Jew-

ish thinking accepted the covenant on the authority of the Torah,


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

reaffi rm 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 confl ict between

a “new” Jewish and an equally new Christian thinking, while at the

same time reaffi rming 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 think-

ing.” 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 experi-

ment 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 in-

sisted, 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 consumma-

tion 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-


thy”: He would be indifferent to the world. A God “overfl owing”

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 affi rms it in

its otherness. And only in a world thus affi rmed can revelation take

place. (75, emphasis in original)

The absolute experience of such a revelation cannot be verifi ed—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. Un-

like 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 non-

men 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

modifi ed, 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 fi nitude 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 refl ections 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:


“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, Fack-

enheim 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 technologi-

cal 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 signifi cance, of the people who

did—the Allies who successfully resisted and destroyed the racist frenzy of

the Nazis, in the fi rst 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 infi nite 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—fi rst in thought,

but then “in overt, fl esh-and-blood action and life” (239).

Strauss did not pay suffi cient 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


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 fl eeting experience. “Perhaps

the . . . recovery . . . [could arise] from a new reading of the old great texts of

Western philosophy. . . . It may also fi nd 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 engag-

ing 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


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 equal-

ity plus private ‘discrimination.’ ”22 In other words, what it is to be a Jew is

defi ned, in the fi rst instance, by others. Jews may, of course, organize and

defi ne 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 [Her-

mann] 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 ingredi-

ents 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”:


No one can be both a philosopher and a theologian, or, for that matter,

a third which is beyond the confl ict between philosophy and theol-

ogy, 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 pre-

supposes 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 fi rst 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 Philoso-

phy: 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, “infi nite, ab-

solute 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


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.

PART 3

Response

yanulada


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 contribu-

tion to the fi eld of philosophy, especially to Hegel studies, has been of capital

importance,2 his contribution to the fi eld 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


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 para-

lyzing 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 epistemologi-

cally 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

107Emil Fackenheim

world.”10 They must affi rm 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 dialogi-

cal 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 philo-

sophic 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 fi gured 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

infi nite 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.


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 fel-

low 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 pro-

foundly 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 fi nd Buber’s ‘eclipse of God’ insuffi cient

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 signifi cant speech19; second, Buber’s

call to the survivors did not include the children of survivors and subsequent

generations.20

109Emil Fackenheim

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 bibli-

cal 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 be-

ing 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 intellectu-

ally 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

infi nite so His pain is infi nite, 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 infi nity was not completely broken;

because God so loved the world that He hid the infi nity of His pain

from it lest it be destroyed.24

But how is this an answer to amcha’s question “Where was God dur-

ing the shoah?” How does saying that God hid God’s infi nite 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 fi rst


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 (specifi cally,

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-`Atsma’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 theodi-

cal 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 liturgi-

cal problem, are to be found in the thinking of both men.

“ ‘Who is a Jew?’ One who testifi es 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 unjustifi ed. 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,

111Emil Fackenheim

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 jus-

tice 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 unjustifi able, 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 al-

lowing 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, fi rst, 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


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 fi nd 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 fi nd 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 fi nd 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 modifi cations 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 ad-

dress 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:

113Emil Fackenheim

‘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 diffi cult,

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 fi ll 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 fl ames. 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 argu-

ment 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 ar-

gument 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 fi re out? Per-

haps 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 fi re out himself.”47 The


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 post-

shoah Jew standing fi rmly 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 qualifi ed 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: fi rst, it bears the additional

meaning of “a whole burnt offering,” which is certainly not the theological over-

tone 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,” “fi nal solution,” “shoah,” “holocaust,” and so

on, except in quotations. I am indebted to Hana Goldman, a plucky ten-year-old

girl, who defi ed 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 fi delity 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 Fack-

enheim extends this principle to Germans. Hereinafter JBible.

115Emil Fackenheim

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 argu-

ments, 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 “Ar-

ticles” 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.


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 unjustifi ed 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 modifi cations 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 un-

derstands and admits that this palace has a master and that it was built by a wise

artist. But, when ones sees a palace in fl ames, 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 testifi es 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 fi re to ruin and devastate [everything] at the time of the fl ood 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.

CHAPTER 10

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 at-

titude. 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 glorifi cation 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-Ho-

locaust 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 Jew-

117


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. Christian-

ity 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

119The Holocaust Is a Christian Issue

and Christianity, to hide the deeper, more troubling, and darker relation that

binds Christianity to the Holocaust.

Before entering into theological considerations, let us fi rst consider

certain striking historical and sociological facts. They are well known. There

is the matter of people and place, spiritual place. While Christians as Chris-

tians 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 col-

laborators) 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—excom-

municated 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 diffi culty of resisting any totalitar-

ian 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 fi nally 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 specifi c failure—a

failure to protect Jews.

If this is so, then what the Holocaust signifi es 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-refl ection, self-evaluation, and genuine repentance. Repentance

does not simply mean a mea culpa, which is the start of repentance, but more


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 specifi c spiritual question to be asked by a specifi c 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 fi rst question also

answers the second.

Certainly the Holocaust is an issue for self-refl ection and concrete indi-

vidual, 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 specifi cally. 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, artifi cially 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 pro-

vided 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


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 fi nd 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 specifi cally 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 fi rmly 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 “diffi cult to draw,” that is precisely

part of the problem in Christian theology that this chapter is attempting to

address anew. He writes:

A distinction—diffi cult to draw—must be recognized, however, be-

tween 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 theo-

logical 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

diffi cult 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


to see all people on the path to salvation—are profoundly obligated to con-

vert 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 fi nally ir-

relevant 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

fi nal 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 theologi-

cal 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

fulfi llment of their own Jewish spirituality. Yes, pagans and Hindus and Bud-

dhists 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 Testa-

ment, 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 righteous-

ness (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 non-

Christian religions indiscriminately, Christian anti-Semitism is more specifi cally


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 Chris-

tology. The death and resurrection of Jesus is certainly the most central nar-

rative-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 unjus-

tifi ed death and martyrdom of one of God’s beloved creatures. During that

same epoch thousands of Jews were crucifi ed 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 crucifi ed

Christ. Infi nitely profound and unsettling, this event represents the sacrifi ce

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-sacrifi ce 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 sacrifi ce of Isaac.

The special character of Jesus, what quickly, in Christian theological his-

tory, 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-sacrifi ce lightly. It is the greatest and unsurpassable

spiritual sacrifi ce. Temple sacrifi ces and Jewish prayers pale in signifi cance. The

spiritual benefi t of the unique sacrifi ce of God’s only son is no less weighty:

the one path to God. The greatest and unique sacrifi ce 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 suffi cient 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 Ju-

daism for special derision. In this “teaching of contempt,” Judaism is not only


not a path to God, like all other non-Christian paths to God, but it signifi es 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

crucifi ed 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 Je-

rusalem 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 crucifi ed him (crucifi xion 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, fi nally, 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 fi rmly supported by theological justifi cation, actual

Christian theology has overwhelmingly preferred the fi rst, 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 fi rst 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 fi rst reading, which

blames the Jews.8 Of course, because they are Christians and Christian theo-

logians, Jesus does not by means of this reinterpretation simply become a

historical fi gure. 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 fi rst option, that the Jews are guilty, is considered

a reactionary, offensive, and highly insensitive theological outlook. Their own


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 fi rst, 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 Ro-

mans 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 crucifi ed Jesus, as they crucifi ed

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 suffi ciently 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 fi gure,

and as such a man who was born, lived, and died, Christ is from the fi rst a

theological fi gure. 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 fi gure. 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 differ-

ently, 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


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 suffi cient 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 deni-

als 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 non-

Christians 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 fi rst-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

suffi ciently 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.


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 fi rst and most important exegesis of the fi rst commandment

of Christianity, of Christ: to love your neighbor as yourself you must fi rst take

responsibility for your neighbor. Evil and its rectifi cation are not fi rst 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 Crucifi xion and Resurrection paintings

of Marc Chagall, the most famous of which is probably the “White Crucifi x-

ion” of 1938. In these paintings, made from 1938 to 1948, Chagall depicts the

Crucifi xion. What is striking about these crucifi xions, however, is that the man

crucifi ed, clearly Jesus, wears a loincloth that is a Jewish prayer shawl (tallis).

Thus he is unmistakably a Jewish Jesus.12 And Chagall sets the crucifi ed Jewish

Jesus among fi gures 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

Crucifi xion, in particular, “a direct response to specifi c 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 Nurem-

berg 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 Crucifi xion paintings graphically depict the concrete anguish of

the Jews by means of the central fi gure and symbol of Christianity.

When I fi rst saw Chagall’s Resurrection and Crucifi xion paintings I was

repulsed and perplexed by them. I wondered why a Jew (Chagall, with his


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 Crucifi xion

have always been, in both their Roman and Christian manifestations, dark

symbols of murder, violence, and destruction, symbols of Jew hatred. But

fi nally 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 paint-

ings 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 crucifi ed 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 fl ee

from their tyranny into a safe haven of sentimental spiritual salvation, as the

Jews fl ed 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 perfi dious 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 affi rm

or deny Christ.

To be sure, Jews and Romans killed Jesus. Such is the unalterable nar-

rative of the Gospels. When did the Christians kill Christ? When do they kill


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 fi nally 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 fi nally, 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 justifi ed 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 confi nes 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—be-

come 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 fi rst 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 refl ection on

the Holocaust. An incomplete, short list of selected authors would include the fol-

lowing: 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.


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: Macmil-

lan, 1965), 60.

4. See, especially, Franklin H. Littell, The Crucifi xion of the Jews (Macon,

GA: Mercer University Press, 1986; originally 1975); Joel Carmichael, The Sata-

nizing 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 Confl ict 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 infl uential Christian

theologians. It is almost amazing to fi nd 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

transfi guration.” 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: Double-

day, 1965; originally 1955). More recently, in May 2001, in Damascus, welcoming

Pope John Paul on his fi rst 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


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 becom-

ing 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 fi gures 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, ac-

cording 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 signifi cance 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,


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 dif-

ferent 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 wor-

shipped a Golden Calf, thereby committing, they themselves, their greatest sin—for

which the Jews have forever thereafter taken responsibility.

CHAPTER 11

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. Never-

theless, 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 im-

pact 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 fi rst 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


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

specifi city 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 com-

mandment, 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 fi rst 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 fl eeing 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 sur-

vived 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 infl uence of both the

Reformation and the Counter-Reformation.

135The Holocaust

Now this once intact culture, protected from both Erasmus and Luther,

is in a state of dissolution. The once-powerful, coercive religious establish-

ment 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-Chris-

tendom 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 fl ourishing 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 anti-

Semitism. 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 Mus-

lim 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 primi-

tive 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 fl ourishing.

This miracle of recovery—in the Christian idiom “resurrection”—is evi-

dent just a few decades after the most massive military force and malevolent

dictatorship in human history was dedicated to the destruction of what the


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 con-

fi dence 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 offi cial 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 fl ed 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 fl esh-and-blood people.6

The leaders of the Christian establishments still fi nd it possible, though fol-

137The Holocaust

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 offi ce with the vow “to

uphold sound teaching and practice.” In 1934, 1936, or 1938, Church offi cials

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 every-

thing: 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 Chris-

tians and Jews (NCCJ). At that time the NCCJ was led by veterans of the Offi ce

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


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 confl ict 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 fi rst 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 fi rst 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 fi rst 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 twenty-

fi ve countries, is now called “The Annual Scholars’ Conference on the Holocaust

and the Church Struggle.” We always open the fi rst 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 diffi culty 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

139The Holocaust

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 neces-

sary 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 com-

munities easily miss hearing and obeying the commanding Word. The Jews

tend to slide into victimology, forgetting the sanctifi cation of life (Kiddush

ha-Hayyim), which—as our colleague emphasizes—among others, the ghetto

fi ghters so nobly represented.11 The Christians, when deaf to the Word, tend

to theological triumphalism on an intellectual fl ight into outer space. From

supersessionism to Gnosticism, Christianity has been perenially tempted fi rst

to sever its roots in Judaism and then to abandon the working world altogether.

I am constantly astonished to fi nd 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 cen-

turies 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. Con-

sider, 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

signifi cant initiatives to share fraternally in Jewish history: I am thinking


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 offi cial leader-

ships 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 offi cial

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 anti-

Semitism (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 offi cial post-Holocaust Church position

on “the Relationship of Christians and Jews,” still stands far in front of other

offi cial 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 reckon-

ing 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 fi rst 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-

141The Holocaust

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 identifi cation

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 sanctifi ers of mere

patriotic cults.

For scandalous contemporary illustrations of betrayal of calling there is a

suffi ciency. Milosevic’s excuses for the genocide of the Kosovars might suffi ce,

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 establish-

ment 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 repudia-

tion of Constantinianism and the constitutional affi rmation of Religious Liberty.

The fi rst 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


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 fi eld 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 anti-

Semitism 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, confi ned

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,

sanctifi ed 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, diffi cult,

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 affi rmative 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

143The Holocaust

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 Sa-

che, vielmehr eine gegenwärtige Sache.”19 If nothing else, we can be sure that

without vigorous affi rmative interpretations, the deniers and other anti-Semites

will fi ll 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 Holo-

caust “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 fl ood 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 in-

vented 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 help-

fully 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 sophisti-

cated as the sleight of hand practiced by David Irving and exposed by Deborah

Lipstadt. Soft denial is more diffi cult. 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,


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 diffi cult, and much more widespread in Christendom, is the

anti-Semitism of the good people—those who condemn the vulgar manifesta-

tions 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 paci-

fi sts 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 fi ne 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 fi rst 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 chil-

dren 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 chil-

dren. 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 fi lm I made for BBC, The Shadow on the Cross, and

in a video message I received from him when the Arab militants launched

145The Holocaust

their recent “Children’s Crusade” against Jewish Israel. In his writings ref-

erencing the Holocaust, our colleague returns again and again to the plight

of the children, for the children are sacrifi ces 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 fi rst targets and the fi rst sacrifi ces—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 rifl es and hand grenades.

The child civilians are only the most vulnerable of those once catego-

rized 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 confl ict between uniformed soldiers.24 Military historians date

the turning point with Sherman’s march to the sea at the fi nal 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 in-

terpretation 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 begin-

nings, 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 Jeru-

salem in celebration of the eighty-fi fth birthday of Emil Fackenheim.

1. Gregory Baum, “Fackenheim and Christianity,” in Fackenheim: Ger-

man Philosophy and Jewish Thought, ed. Louis Greenspan and Graeme Nicholson

(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), 177.


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 Refl ection on the Shoah” (issued by the Vatican,

March 16, 1998).

8. See Emil L. Fackenheim, The Jewish Bible after the Holocaust (Bloom-

ington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 18, 74–77.

9. See his important current book: Hubert G. Locke, Learning from His-

tory: 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 Rela-

tion,” 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 Westfi eld Press International, 1997).

14. Mark Chmiel, Elie Wiesel and the Politics of Moral Leadership (Philadel-

phia, 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 Ecu-

menical 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.

CHAPTER 12

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 sur-

passes 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 stifl e this Shema Yisrael

on Jewish lips before it murdered Jews themselves.1 To stifl e the prayer’s holy

word is to strangle the man’s holy image, and that was the Nazis’ defi nitive

147


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 previ-

ous 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 defi nes 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 affi rm

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 signifi es both. Thus the presence of

the Jew affi rms the infi nite dearness of the other human being, which means

the Jew affi rms 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

defi nes the Nazi, just as the Torah defi nes 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 singular-

ity of the Holocaust, and it makes the Holocaust decisive for all humanity, for

149Man or Muselmann?

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 concern-

ing a man and Fackenheim’s elaboration on the Muselmann tell us about the

wound that the Nazis infl icted 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 defi ne the opposition between man and Muselmann, which is

the unprecedented opposition that not only defi nes the Holocaust but also

implicates us in our own humanity.

THE MENDING OF TIME

All the Muselmänner who fi nished 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 be-

ing is the divine spark that is made of his tale and his tradition. Receiving


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 falsifi cation of memory, falsifi cation 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. Ac-

cording 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 infl icts.

In manufacturing Muselmänner, says Fackenheim, the Auschwitz crimi-

nals 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-


ing. All three—memory, time, and meaning—are interwoven to create life,

but the fi rst of these is memory. When memory is broken, both identity and

direction are lost; what remains are the walking dead, blank and aimless—the

“shuffl ers,” 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 shuffl es 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 fulfi lled. 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 signifi es 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 di-

vine 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 memory, that the summons comes to us from beyond the survivor.

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


Bible.18 Pursuing one implication of Levi’s assertion, Fackenheim maintains

that an encounter with the biblical text has become a necessity for post-

Holocaust 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 inescap-

able 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 ap-

ply 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 fl esh 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 fi nd

its way from the anti-world into the world, then what is needed is the insertion


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 fl ows contrary to the

fl ow of all other rivers. Having fl owed to what Levi calls the bottom, this river

now fl ows 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 ano-

nymity, 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 defi nes the human be-

ing 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 defi nes 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 every-

thing was as silent as an aquarium.30 Yes, the shouting and screaming, brutal


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 defi nitive. 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 defi nes 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 char-

acterize 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 resem-

blance 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 signifi cato, or destitute of meaning.


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 fi lled 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 affi rms 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 signifi es 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 fl esh and stains the image of the human being; through the fl esh, it enters


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

signifi cance 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 rela-

tion. Since relation requires difference, the murder of relation comes with the

collapse of difference into indifference. Indeed, if he signifi es anything, the

Muselmann signifi es 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 indif-

ferent. The Voice of Auschwitz, he writes, manifests a divine Presence which,


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 revela-

tion 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-his-

torical 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 acci-

dent 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.


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 Fack-

enheim 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 excre-

mental assault,54 and it is a key contributor to the creation of a Muselmann.

The purpose of covering the Jew with fi lth, in other words, is not to infl ict

the self with illness but to transform the self into illness through an increas-

ingly 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-gratifi cation 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 signifi es 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 com-

mands the mending of relation, for it takes us beyond the confi nes 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 defi nitive link between

idolatry and Auschwitz, as Fackenheim suggests,57 then it is because there is

a defi nitive link between idolatry and the Nazi blindness to the neighbor. To

a Jew, whom the Talmud defi nes 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

infl icted 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 fi ghters inside and outside Nazi-occupied Europe, resistance was a


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 infi nitely 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 suc-

cumbs to indifference.

As we have seen, the Muselmann is much more than a victim of starva-

tion. 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 defi nes human relation,

the assault on the soul is possible only for a being of fl esh and blood, for the

non-indifference that affi rms the dearness of another is possible only among

beings of fl esh and blood. The being for-the-other that characterizes non-indif-

ference 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 affi rms 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 signifi er 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 bread-

brot-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: sub-

jectivity is responsibility. The Commanding Voice of Auschwitz is a voice that


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 con-

cerning 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 com-

ments 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 defi nes 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, ac-

cording 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

affi rm the absolute purity of the soul that is the divine spark within the hu-

man being, only Judaism can affi rm the absolute link between the meaning

of the word and the value of the human being, and only Judaism can affi rm

the absolute commandment to love thy neighbor, who is every man. And how


shall the Jewish thinker join his thought to Judaism and accomplish this af-

fi rmation? 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, trans-

lated 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 Founda-

tion, 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.



19. Fackenheim, To Mend, 18.

20. Emmanuel Levinas, Nine Talmudic Readings, translated by Annette

Aronowicz (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 41.


22. Emil L. Fackenheim, Encounters between Judaism and Modern Philosophy

(New York: Basic Books, 1973), 167.


24. Ibid., 247.

25. Emil L. Fackenheim, The Jewish Bible after the Holocaust (Bloomington:

Indiana University Press, 1990), 67.


27. Ibid., 269.




30. Ibid., 19.

31. Ibid., 74.


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 Infi nity, translated by Richard A. Cohen

(Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1985), 52.


37. Levi, Drowned, 93–94. See Primo Levi, I sommersi e I salvati (Torino:

Einaudi, 1986), 72.


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.


48. See, for example, Fackenheim, To Mend, 310.

49. Fackenheim, God’s Presence, p.88.

50. Levinas, Nine Talmudic Readings, 168.


52. Ibid., 300.




56. Fackenheim, Encounters, 49.


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.


62. Ibid., 160.

63. Ibid., 166.

64. Fackenheim, What Is Judaism?, 109.

65. See Fackenheim, Encounters, 192–93.

CHAPTER 13

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 spiritualiza-

tion 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


language is Emil Fackenheim. But if Wieseltier here shows just enough cour-

age 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 signifi cant omission when addressing a readership affl icted

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 senti-

ment 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 signifi cant

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 Febru-

ary 1939, three months before he fl ed 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 reputa-

tions. 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 com-

mitment 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 Mar-

galit, 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,

165Emil Fackenheim, Irving Howe, and the Fate of Secular Jewishness

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 Is-

rael 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 character-

istic 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. Hav-

ing 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

confi ne 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 fi nd similarities not only

intriguing but perhaps of more than accidental or personal signifi cance.

First, both men recognized that they could no longer pursue their intel-

lectual 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 confl icts 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


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 writ-

ten, or badly written. That is all.”7 But now the Pound controversy brought

literary and moral values into sharp confl ict. 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 liter-

ary work acknowledged to be autonomous and the external world to which

it was nevertheless related, the relation between literature and history? Hav-

ing 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

fi gure 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: phi-

losophy 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.


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 distinc-

tions between religious and secularist: Israel was a community of faith, both

because it affi rmed the will to live of a martyred people and because nothing

short of faith, however ill defi ned, 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

fi nd 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 explana-

tion of the Holocaust. But unlike Fackenheim, he did not (at fi rst) 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


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 fi rst 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 in-

tensely 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” lan-

guage 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,/fi ll it with faith, make it holy again.”18

Howe was too intelligent and honest a man to scant the problems bound

to affl ict 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 liter-

ary Jewishness that Howe began, in the early fi fties, the fi rst 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


Jews to remember those who had been murdered in Europe; like Fackenheim,

who lamented that “the world always forgets,”21 Howe deplored historical amne-

sia—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 fl ourished in the historical interim between the domi-

nance of religion and the ascendance of nationality. Yiddish literature “became

a central means of collective expression for the East European Jews, fulfi lling

some of the functions of both religion and the idea of nationality.”22

Unwittingly, perhaps, Howe here suggested the eventual triumph of Zi-

onism—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 adversar-

ies—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 refl ected 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 dis-

possessed, the sanctity of the insulted and the injured—these, fi nally, 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 justifi ed

when there was no alternative to it.

Writing at a time when the State of Israel had already for fi ve years

been under what would prove a permanent state of siege by the Arab na-

tions, Howe defi antly 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 fi nding large portions of Yiddish literature an impedi-

ment. 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


“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 as-

sertion 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 affi rm 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 signifi ed a conversion to Zionism. Although he did not hesitate to

sign petitions of American Friends of Peace Now that identifi ed 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 Zion-

ism 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 fi nally 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, fi ve

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.


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

fi rst 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 fi ght. “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 Yid-

dish 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 signifi cance of the uprising, something is missing.

“From a military point of view,” says Howe, “the Warsaw Ghetto uprising was

of slight signifi cance. From . . . a human point of view, its signifi cance 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 fi ve 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 signifi cance, but he could not bring himself to say that it

was indeed a calculable signifi cance: 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.


6. The American Newness: Culture and Politics in the Age of Emerson (Cam-

bridge, 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 (Novem-

ber 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 Whit-

man (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.

CHAPTER 14

She’erith Hapleitah

Refl ections of a Historian

ZEEV MANKOWITZ

I am doubly glad to be contributing to this volume—fi rstly 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 Fack-

enheim’s refusal to fl ee the messiness of history for the symmetries of theol-

ogy—he has always sought to maintain a painfully honest conversation between

the two and thus formulations that could otherwise slip into the rarefi ed 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

fi ndings 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


who survived the Nazi onslaught, including the hundreds of thousands of Pol-

ish, 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 pro-

tection in a land they despised, it was primarily these survivors who publicly

identifi ed 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 signifi cant 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 Hap-

leitah 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 hap-

pened. 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-

175She’erith Hapleitah

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 fi rst 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 fi xed 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

fl urry 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 net-

work 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 fi nd the fi rst 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 fi rst clue about the hidden history of She’erith Hap-

leitah 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,


Shmuel Goldsmith tells how astonished he was to fi nd the Zionist fl ag fl ying

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 fi rst 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 deter-

mined fi ght 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 selfi sh nihilism that threatened

to weaken the bonds of solidarity necessary for any social organization. The

fi rst 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 suste-

nance 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 politi-

cal title of being the movement that will save the remnants of our

people. There is no point in dreaming anymore about the liquida-

tion of European Jewry for it has been wiped out already by the

fi re and swords of German soldiers. . . . The Jewish question has

already been solved by Adolph Hitler; he has, without doubt, suc-

ceeded 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


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 distin-

guish 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 clarifi cation: throughout their brief moment in occu-

pied 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 mil-

lennial tradition of community into which they were born and bred.

The cultural refl exes 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 selfi sh disregard of all social responsibility

nor to the bewildered paralysis of total despair. Instead, where conditions al-

lowed, 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 justifi cation, a fortiori, not to do the same in the infi nitely

easier conditions of liberation. This conscious tie between the vigor of the

Surviving Remnant and spiritual resilience during the Holocaust appears

to confi rm the view of historians who see the sanctifi cation 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 behav-

ior 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


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 defi ning 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 Zion-

ists—some opted for Palestine in order to join family and friends, those pes-

simistic 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 fi rmly 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 fulfi ll 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 fi nd 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 neigh-

bors stand by and watch with equanimity as they were marched off to their


death? What had now to change in the wake of what had happened? These

issues were worried over and clarifi ed 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 defi ant affi rmation of life and

national rebirth. Nothing must permit Hitler a fi nal 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 Shafi r wrote in late 1944

that Hitler had “solved” the Jewish problem, he was among the fi rst 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 fi rst to advocate and promote the

creation of a temporary enclave under the protection of the American occupa-

tion. 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 unifi ed 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 be-

lieved 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 Jew-

ish 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


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 confi dence 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

confi dence 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 un-

derstanding 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 fi rst to a consideration of the former.

With the intial organization of She’erith Hapleitah on the morrow of

liberation, one of their fi rst 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 fi rst 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 benefi ts 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


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 affi rm 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 enfl amed anew, so assuring

the resistance movements of widespread public support; and, fi nally, once the

internment camps in Cyprus were fi lled 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 escala-

tion 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 fl edgling

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 clarifi ca-

tion of the disturbing attitudes and diffi cult moral questions of the time goes

beyond the contents of this chapter, some of the facts and fi gures adduced in


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 fi ghting force,

and that the Holocaust survivors played a signifi cant 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

confi rmed 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, ren-

dered 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 fail-

ings 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 defi nitive of human reality.

Put differently, there seems to be a cultural a priori at work, a fundamental

affi rmation of life that has largely kept the destructive and nihilistic implica-


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, fi lled a defi ning 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 af-

fi rmation 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 fi rst 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 civiliza-

tion 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 central-

ized 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 affi rm the survival of the fi ttest as the

norm of human conduct was the crucial fi rst 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:


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 fi nd, therefore, is the

drive to tikkun olam, to what Emil Fackenheim has elaborated in To Mend

the World.

As a historian I echo and confi rm 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 de-

struction 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, Refl ections, 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).

CHAPTER 15

Willful Murder in theLublin 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 agree-

ment 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 fi nger 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 at-

tempts 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 offi cials; 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-z.ec labor camp complex in the summer of 1940 and the or-

ganization 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 offi cer in the

district, SS- und Polizeiführer (SS and police commander) Odilo Globocnik, and

his staff, on the other, was arguably the fi ercest. The two case studies to be

185


discussed refl ect not only the disagreements, competition, and animosity but

also the basic agreement among the various offi cials regarding the Jews.

HERMANN DOLP AND THE BEL- Z.EC CAMPS, 1940

On February 8, 1940, Heinrich Himmler wrote a stern note to SS-Sturmban-

nführer 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 fi rst 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 offi cial. Dolp pulled

a gun on the offi cial, 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 fi rst assigned to the Selbstschutz, where he distin-

guished 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-z.ec 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-z.ec, Globocnik praised Dolp’s

good work under diffi cult 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-z.ec.7 His efforts were

rewarded with a promotion to Obersturmbannführer in April 1944.8

SETTING UP BEL- Z.EC

The Bel-z.ec forced-labor camps originated in discussions in early 1940 among

senior SS and army offi cers regarding border fortifi cations between Germany

187Willful Murder in the Lublin District of Poland

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 fortifi cations.10 When Lublin district civilian

and SS offi cials 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-z.ec in the southern

part of the Lublin district as the center of the fortifi cation project. The fi rst

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-z.ec just prior to the fi rst 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-z.ec Camp Affairs, whose func-

tions included administration, health and sanitation, all care for the laborers,

preparing additional camps, and fi nancing 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-z.ec camp functionaries, who were in effect the Lagerrat (camp coun-

cil). Two offi cials and a cook were sent there on June 13. The terrible camp

conditions that prevailed are refl ected, 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 fi rst sixteen days in the camp.

An additional 180 Lublin and Piaski Jews were sent to Bel-z.ec on July

8 and then three additional offi cials 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 (Was-

serwirtschaftsinspektion), 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 fi rms 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 offi cials met periodically during the

spring and summer to work out a cooperative arrangement for exploiting Jew-

ish 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


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 offi cials unprepared when on July 15, 1940,

he submitted a demand for 3,000 Jews for the border fortifi cations at Bel-z.ec

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 offi cials com-

plained, Globocnik’s subordinates dismissed them. Civilian offi cials 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 ar-

range transferring 1,000 Jewish craftsmen from there to the border fortifi cations

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 fi nding themselves being shipped off

to Bel-z.ec in pajamas and barefoot,23 but also the German civilian authorities

were surprised. Lublin Labor Department and county offi cials either received

notifi cation just before the raids began, or else they received no notifi cation

at all. Calls came streaming in to civilian government offi ces 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 identifi cation 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 behav-

ior. 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


round ups, at least temporarily, in order to give the Labor Department offi cials

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-z.ec-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 offi cials in

Kraków that placed the civilian authorities in charge of Jewish forced labor

and obligated Globocnik to submit his Jewish labor requirements in central-

ized 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-z.ec forced-

labor 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-z.ec

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-z.ec camp complex operated at full capacity for only two months.

In mid-October the fi rst trainloads of Jews began to be released from the

camps, and the excavation work was largely completed by November. The fi rst

Jews were to begin leaving the Bel-z.ec 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 offi cials were very soon complaining of the disruption

in labor projects in all the general government. In a report on Jewish forced


labor in October, Governor Zörner could account for only 4,331 of these Jews.

The fi rst 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 Debica and Tarnów on October 19, Dolp

agreed to 1,000. Of these, only 590 actually left Bel-z.ec 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 proj-

ects there actually carried mostly Lublin Jews. This was the general pattern

for the departures from the Bel-z.ec 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 as-

serting 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-z.ec, 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-z.ec 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-z.ec and forced-labor precedents, we might expect to fi nd

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 refl ection 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 fi gure 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


the murder operation. Frank’s enthusiasm regarding the upcoming “solution,”

as expressed in his well-known December 16, 1941, speech to general govern-

ment offi cials, 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 diffi cult

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 fi rst, 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 admin-

istrations in Janów-Lubelski and Radzyn counties ceased providing Jews with

food altogether.37 Nazi violence against the Jews and shootings increased

signifi cantly 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 offi cials. The Gestapo imposed its informers and collaborators on the

Jews. Various Jewish belongings were confi scated. 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 infl ux 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


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 confi scated 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, confi scations 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 confi scations, 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

unfi nished meals still on the table.44

Sorting the Jews

Sorting the Jews involved census-taking, counting and marking essential la-

borers, 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 Ger-

mans. 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


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 authori-

ties 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, fi rst setting aside all Jews who worked for the Germans

and later narrowing this pool to essential laborers. It was a cooperative selec-

tion 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 neces-

sary.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 identifi cation cards.

The same sorting preparations were undertaken throughout the Lublin

district during the following two months, leaving a small minority of the Jew-

ish population marked for a temporary stay of execution. Lists of necessary

laborers and craftsmen were produced for each locality, with full names, ad-

dresses, 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

fl uid 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


Cooperation

The civilian and SS bureaucracies were informed of the substance of the Wann-

see 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-z.ec) 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 upcom-

ing measures.54

Globocnik had kept the civilians uninformed regarding details of the

organization of the murder. Civilian offi cials in Lublin did not know at fi rst

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 fi nd

what turned out to be the wrong person (Globocnik’s adjutant, SS-Hauptstur-

mführer 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 Höfl e, Globocnik’s deputy in the

murder operation. Reuter and Höfl e fi nally met at 5:30 p.m. on March 16, only

hours before the fi rst 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. Höfl e 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-z.ec, from whence they would cross the border, “never to

be seen in the General Government again.”56

This phrasing refl ects 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 Höfl e 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


points for incoming Reich and Slovakian Jews; and the need to preserve the

Jewish laborers employed by the Germans. Issues regarding specifi c places

were dealt with in detail, such as the schedules and numbers of incoming

and outgoing Jewish traffi c 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 sug-

gested that the local county offi cials take up the matter directly with Höfl e or

Pohl. In one case, Höfl e 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 offi cial in Lublin, had been mis-

takenly 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

fi nd any responsible SS person with whom to raise the issue. Since Türk and

his staff were then in daily contact and close coordination with Höfl e 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 fi rst county without Jews.61

For their part, Höfl e and his men made a genuine effort to inform the

local civilian authorities of their plans. The county chiefs of Krasnystaw and

Zamosc (Adolf Schmidt and Helmuth Weihenmeier) reported on March 20 that

they were well informed, and that the deportations from their counties were

proceeding well. Höfl e had even come to inform Schmidt personally regarding

plans and schedules.62 On March 30, Pohl came to Türk’s offi ce to give him

a progress report on the deportations: 24,550 had been deported to Bel-z.ec,

while 8,000 Reich Jews had been brought in, and approximately another 8,000

were on the way.63

Some civilian offi cials 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 Höfl e on May 9. However, Türk’s Population


and Welfare Department was responsible for population statistics, and Höfl e’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 signifi -

cantly, 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 ideologi-

cal agreement regarding the Jews. Many historians have noted the widespread

willingness among various offi cials 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 offi cial would contend. However,

no offi cial evaded it either.

Fackenheim has suggested that weltanschauung is the key to understand-

ing this willfulness in massive murder.67

The murderous harmony that had been achieved is refl ected in the fol-

lowing story. In February 1942, Therese Borger learned that her mother, sixty-

fi ve-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, affi rming that she had the fi nancial 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 offi ce ten days later. Since Türk’s staff was then very busy

with the mass deportations of Jews to Bel-z.ec 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


NOTES

1. See Emil Fackenheim, “Holocaust and Weltanschauung: Philosophical

Refl ections 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 fi le from the Berlin

Document Center (BDC).

3. All biographical data on Dolp taken from Dolp fi le, ibid. His SS number

was 1293. See also YVA, M.9/576, the Jewish Agency Political Department’s Re-

cords of War Criminals, fi le 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

Panstwowe w Lublinie (WAPL), Rada Z.ydowski (RZ) 26 (fi le copied in YVA,

O.6/47.1).

6. Globocnik to Krüger, “Halbjährige Berichterstattung” (on Dolp), August

13, 1940, YVA, O.68/28, Dolp fi le.

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 notifi cation to Dolp, April 9, 1944, YVA, O.68/28, Dolp fi le.

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 (fi le 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-z.ec and

other camps. Globocnik’s order came in addition to this. “Sprawozdanie zdzial-alnosci Gremium Bel-z

.eckiego oraz Komitetu Pomocy dla pracujacych w Obozach

Pracy” (Report on the Activities of the Association for Bel-z.ec of the Committee

for Aid to Laborers in Labor Camps), WAPL, RZ 46 (hereafter Gremium Report);

“Sprawozdanie z dzial-alnosci 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-z.ec from 13 June to 5 December 1941 [1940]), WAPL, RZ 47

(copy in YVA, O.6/322; hereafter Bel-z.ec Report), 25–26.


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-z.ec 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 Noz.yk 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—Mas-

senmord; 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 Z.ydów na zi-

emiach 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

fi le 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 offi cials, 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 fi le copied in YVA, O.6/11a).

19. “Vermerk” by Jache on discussion with Globocnik, July 17, 1940, WAPL,

GDL 746.

20. The offi cers 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 Beren-

stein, et al., Faschismus, 213.

22. “Protokoll über die Judeneinsatz besprechung vom 6. August 1940, 10

Uhr,” WAPL, GDL 748. “Protokoll über die Judeneinsatzbesprechung,” ibid.; “Ver-

merk,” by Hecht, August 6, 1940, on meeting that day in Kraków, and “Vermerk,”


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,

Krasnik, Krasnystaw, Lubartów, Lublin, L-uków, Miedzyrzec-Podlaski, Parczew,

Pul-awy, Radzyn, Tarnogrod, Tomaszów-Lubelski, Werbkowice, Wl-odawa, Zaklików,

Zamosc, 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 Offi ce; “Vermerk,” Hecht, Au-

gust 13, 1940, on conversation between Lerch and Ramm regarding raids, Chel-m,

Zamosc, 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, Zamosc Labor Offi ce, August

16; Bial-a-Podlaska Labor Offi ce to Lublin Labor Department, August 17; Lublin

Labor Department to Globocnik, August 20, on new raids in Zamosc; “Vermerk,”

Ramm, August 20, on call from Zamosc Labor Offi ce. All of the aforementioned

can be found in WAPL, GDL 748 and 749 (many are in both fi les; copies are in

YVA, O.53/79).

25. Heinz Ramm, head of the Lublin Labor Department, brought his com-

plaints 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 Govern-

ment Labor Department. See Ramm to Frauendorfer, August 20, 1940; Ramm to

Geschlisser, August 20, WAPL, GDL 749. Ramm added that relations with Globoc-

nik 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 Offi ce heads in the

District, August 20, 1940; Hecht, “Vermerk” on Ramm’s notifi cation to all labor

offi ces 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.


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 coopera-

tion 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 Zamosc Labor Offi ce, 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, “Ver-

merk,” October 21, 1940, and Jache, “Vermerk,” October 21, both on the missing

Jews from the transport to Debica, 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 Na-

tions 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 Eu-

ropean 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 Docu-

ment 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., Docu-

ments 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-a-

Podlaska, 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


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 signifi cantly between Sep-

tember 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 Lublin-

Land 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 Ger-

trud 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 Jew-

ish 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 dur-

ing 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 Holz-

man, 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:


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 confi scated, 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, Proto-

cols 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 confi scated 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 Z.ydowska 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, Zamosc,

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 deporta-

tion 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 offi ce, 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 (fi le 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 offi cers in Lublin, April 1, YVA,

O.53/82; Türk memo, March 19 (on meeting Helmut Pohl), WAPL, GDL 273 (fi le

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 Zamosc, 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


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 offi ce, 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 identifi cation 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 Fischergenossen-

schaft 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 offi ce of Kreishaupt-

mann Pul-awy, May 12, 1942; Interior Offi ce Pulawy to BuF Lublin, May 13, 1942

(ca. 2,000 laborers); BuF Zamosc to BuF Lublin, May 13, 1942, with attached

“Liste der in Judenwohnbezirk in Zamosc ansässigen jüdischen Handwerker


und Facharbeiter,” dated May 12, 1942 (519 laborers); Reuter to Pohl, May 13,

1942; “Liste der im Kreise Bilgoraj befi ndlichen 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 handwrit-

ten 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 develop-

ment 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 Höfl e, March 24, 1942, WAPL, GDL 273; Türk to Brandt, March

24, 1942, ibid.

61. See, for example, Lenk, Kreishauptmann Janów-Lubelski, to SSPF Lub-

lin, 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 fi ve 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


the “cleansing” of the district of Jews would soon be completed. See Frank, Di-

ensttagebuch, 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; “Ger-

man 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 Extermina-

tion,” 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 Zeitge-

schichte 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 fi nancial means,

signed by Bekker, February 21, 1942; Therese Borger to BuF Lublin, February

23; Türk to Bürgermeister, Brünn, February 24; Dr. Karafi at, 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.

yanulada


CHAPTER 16

Metahistory, Redemption, and theShofar of Emil Fackenheim

GERSHON GREENBERG

This chapter is concerned with religious-philosophical approaches to the Holo-

caust 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 refl ection. 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 verifi cation; 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, specifi cally 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 identifi ed

practical ways to endure (and even reduce) the crisis spiritually until redemp-

tion came and lifted the threat to metahistory presented by the suffering.

After the war, in the Displaced Persons camp, the metahistorical structure

was redefi ned according to Mesirut nefesh (submission of the soul in terms of

suffering self-sacrifi ce) and restored. Some three decades later, Fackenheim

affi rmed metahistory in terms of the commanding voice of Auschwitz and the

207


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 fi nally through the expulsion to a ghetto fi ve

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 refl ections, 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 fi ngers 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

specifi c 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

209Metahistory, Redemption, and the Shofar of Emil Fackenheim

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 acknowl-

edged that the evil was deeply ingrained among the perpetrators. Citing the

Kedushat Levi (Levi Yitshak of Berdichev), he averred that otherwise the at-

tackers 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 pres-

ence in history, combined the traditional concept of Esau-Jacob alienation

conditioned by Torah reality, contemporary factors of Torah loss, and ele-

ments 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

fi re started in a fi eld to burn the thorns but inevitably burned the cornstalks

as well (Exodus 22:6, see also “together with the thorn the cabbage is smit-

ten,” 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 refl ect 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 metahis-

torical 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 instru-

ment 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 fi ll

his congregants’ lives in the present with positive activity, which also helped


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 purifi ed the Jew, qualifying him for and contributing to the ad-

vancement 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 re-

sembled 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 stan-

dard-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 fl ed 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 explana-

tion 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). Specifi cally, 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


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 specifi c and balanced to a degree possible only for God:

Jews were confi ned 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 meta-

historical 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 Tefi llin 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 affi rmed 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 bro-

ken 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 sacrifi ced themselves in sanctifi cation of Your name.15


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

fi re breaks out, and catch in thorns, so that the stacks of corn, or the standing

corn, or the fi eld, be consumed therewith, he that kindled the fi re 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 reali-

ties of the world, these two thinkers believed that God’s presence was refl ected

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 certifi cates for the Land of Israel.


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 Ha-

banim 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

diffi culty giving birth. Following his advisors, the king had the witches who

were causing the diffi culty 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 fi rst 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 fi rst

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 (San-

hedrin 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 defi ned

questions. For Rashi, Mordekhai pointed out, divine promises came from El

Shaddai (almighty) rather than Adonai (eternal truth) and were not necessarily

fulfi lled during the lifetime of those to whom God made his promises. More-

over, 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


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 me-

tahistorical concept of divine presence in history. But with the Rebbe there

was a signifi cant exception to the process—his own imminent escape as a

manifestation of divine presence. Ehrenreich and Unsdorfer awaited redemp-

tion 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, discern-

ing God’s presence in history, was central—along with Israel’s active and

direct path to redemption. The two thinkers cited later affi rmed 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 suffer-

ing 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 his-

torical 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 pe-

riod, through the adherence to Jewish faith in the modern world where no

choice existed. He interpreted the Holocaust as an explosion of Mesirut nefesh.

Specifi cally, 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


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 confl agrations 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 defi ned 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 outfl ow of blood, our pain-

ful 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 his-

torical 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 mil-

lennia 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?”


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 refl ections 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 fi lth (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 na-

tions), 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 suf-

fering 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—pos-

sibly moving him to perceive (in a retroactive way) divine presence up until

that point in Israel’s history.24


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 demysti-

fi ed 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 sacrifi ce, 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, discern-

ing 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 metahis-

tory as to allow for words of redemption. The ingredients drawn upon for this

process by Fackenheim were in some instances unlike those of the predeces-

sors—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


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 fi rst, Fackenheim wrote, to affi rm 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 be-

came real in the midst of time. At such moments the resistance of the secular

Warsaw ghetto fi ghter, 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 Te-

kiyot 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 Con-

tingencies 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 fi rst morning of Rosh

Hashanah, September 30, 1943, in Hasag-Skarysko. After that it was brought


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

Tefi llah 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 Syr-

ian 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 fi ve 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 fi ghters 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

testifi ed against the groundless hate, the madness, the denial of Judaism, which

erupted in Europe. It testifi ed 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 fulfi llment 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

fi elds 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,


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 redemp-

tion 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 metahis-

tory blended with Mesirut nefesh. Two decades later, Fackenheim began to

bring forward the path. He identifi ed 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 Mes-

siah 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, “Ex-

ile and Redemption in the Thought of Isaac Breuer,” Tradition 26 (1992): nr. 2:


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 she-

darashti 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 confi -

dence that the Jews of Hungary would live in tranquility. That was three months

before the campaign to destroy Hungarian Jewry began.


Many were saying they had tremendous fears, and that our departure

was diffi cult 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 com-

manded 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 re-

turn 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 (Jeru-

salem: 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 (Ber-

rien 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).


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 Skar-

zysko-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: Refl ections 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: Insti-

tute 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.

yanulada


Contributors

Edward Alexander is professor emeritus of English at the University of

Washington. The Jewish Wars: Refl ections 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 Stud-

ies 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 Harvey 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 Cru-

cifi xion of the Jews, the fi rst systematic Christian response to the Holocaust,

The German Phoenix, Religious Liberties in the Crossfi re 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 Univer-

sity 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 Stud-

ies at Michigan State University. He has published articles on the thought of

227Contributors

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 di-

rects 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 Radi-

cal 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.

yanulada


Index

229

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

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

crucifi xion, 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

231Index

exteriority, 65

Ezekiel, 40, 152; see also Bible

face 73n16

face-to-face, 62–64, 72n6, 72n7

Fackenheim, Emil L.,

Encounters between Judaism and Mod-

ern Philosophy, 56, 65

“From Bergen-Belsen to Jerusalem,”

25n26

God’s Presence in History: Jewish Affi r-

mations and Philosophical Refl ec-

tions, x, 34, 39–45, 65, 109, 131n11

“Hegel and Judaism: A Flaw in the

Hegelian Mediation,” 15, 44

“Holocaust and Weltanschauung:

Philosophical Refl ections on Why

They Did It,” xi

“Israel and the Diaspora: Political Con-

tingencies 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 Philoso-

phy, 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

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

fi nitude, 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 au-

tonomy

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

Gottesfi nsternis; 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

fl esh 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

233Index

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

infi nity, 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

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

235Index

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 Confer-

ence 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

Offi ce 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

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

237Index

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

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

fi ghters, 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 Index

Wright, Tamra, 72n2

Wyschogrod, Michael, 131n11

Yablonka, Hanna, 182

Yiddish, 167, 168–169, 171, 175

Yom HaShoah, 129

Yom Kippur, 3, 219

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

The Philosopher as Witness: Fackenheim and Responses to the Holocaust

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