Abstract

The Holocaust, and the re-emergence of Israel as an autonomous political entity, constitute the two most important events in Jewish history since the destruction of the Second Temple and the millenial Exile which it inaugurated. Although both events resonate with the deepest religious implications, it is the Holocaust which has come to dominate the landscape of contemporary Jewish theology. Under its influence the question of theodicy has received its most profound and insistent expression in Jewish literature since the Spanish Expulsion. Three principal approaches may be discerned in this effort. At one extreme is the view which re-affirms the normative teaching of traditional Judaism and sees in the Holocaust God's retribution for sin. Orthodox rabbinic opinion constitutes the basic advocacy for this position. Directly opposing this view is the position most commonly associated with Richard Rubenstein, i.e., that after Auschwitz the belief in God's superintendance of history and the election of Israel can no longer be justified. Between these extremes fall the theological investigations of Eliezer Berkovits and Emil Fackenheim. Notwithstanding fundamental differences of emphasis and interpretation, their Holocaust teachings exhibit a common ground: each acknowledges God's continued presence in history while affirming the innocence of the Jewish people. The attempt to maintain both positions results in fundamental tensions. In order to overcome the latter, Berkovits relies on the expediency of free-will defense theodicy, whereas Fackenheim appeals to a theological vantage which bases itself on the dialectic of root and epochal experience. In the final analysis, however these strategies prove inadequate for the positions which they are intended to sustain. Berkovits' argument culminates in a defense of Providence which disengages God from the meaning which may be attributed to events in their historical particularity; Fackenheim perserves that particularity but assigns to it a meaning which collapses into historicism. Neither Berkovits nor Fackenheim, therefore, is able to deal with the specific case of the Holocaust in a manner which is consistent with the principles upon which their general theologies of Judaism proceed