Faith After the Holocaust

by Eliezer Berkovits

Book Overview

Rabbi Dr. Eliezer Berkovits's Faith after the Holocaust - recognized as a classic immediately upon publication - boldly and forthrightly addresses the most theologically fraught question of our times:... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0870681931
• ISBN13: 9780870681936
• Release Date: January 1973
• Publisher: Ktav Publishing House
• Length: 180 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Excellent book.

Excellent book. Too bad no longer published forcing me to buy a quality used product

Grappling WIth The Ultimate Question

The Holocaust is the most searing wound the modern Jew, both Orthodox/religious or non-religious has to deal with. Of course, catastophes of this sort have occurred in previous generations, the destruction of the First and Second Temples, the Crusades, the Black Death Massacres, the Chmielnicki Pogroms, the Expulsion from Spain and others too numerous to mention. Yet, the Jewish people held on and recovered from them. However, each generation that has to confront these horrors has to deal with them in a different way than in the past. Rabbi Dr. Eliezer Berkovits, having lived in Nazi Germany and also having the scholarly erudition, both in Torah and in general Philosophy, and being aware of modern movements to abandon religious belief altogether which may not have existed in those earlier generations, is one of the few who can elucidate the questions and dilemmas posed by this most recent horror to the modern Jew. For the Jew, a catastrophe like the Holocaust poses two separate questions : (1) Why do particular individuals have to suffer when it seem most unmerited? (what I meant by "the ultimate question", and (2) How can the Jewish people, who were chosen by G-d to receive the Torah, be subjected to such unparalled debasement and humiliation? Although some religious thinkers have spouted platitudes about the Holocaust being a "punishment" for a large part of Jewry abandoning religious observance, even a child can point out the fallacy of that line of reasoning...the communities that suffered the greatest destruction were the most traditionalist and observant in Eastern Europe, whereas American Jewry which had a very low level of observance was spared. Others claim it was a punishment for "Zionism" even though Eretz Israel was spared and in fact became the Torah center of the world after the Holocaust. Berkovits vehemently rejects the idea that the Holocaust was a "punishment". So how does he deal with the idea of evil things happening to good people? The answer is - this is the price we must pay for man having freedom. If man was a robot and could only do good, he would not be free. In fact, if everything was "good", then nothing would be "good" because "good" exists only in counterpoint to "evil". Berkovits brilliantly develops this idea. Berkovits also points out how people, facing this ultimate horror reached the highest peaks of spiritual greatness, comparing it to the well-known story in the Talmud of Rabbi Akiva's saying the Shema Yisrael while his skin was being ripped off him. He shows how an individual who suffers can have his soul purified and false values that existed before can be rejected. Of course, as I indicated in the first question, there is no answer as to why one suffers and another doesn't, but these are not new questions and Jews have, one way or another, found their answers, including those who went through this hell and yet maintained their religious faith. Regarding the second question I pointed out, Berkovits poi

Good advice to get calm and think

Dr. Berkovits' work is a wonderful answer to skeptics who use the example of Holocoast as an excuse to criticize Judaism. The queston of G-d's place in human history is as old as human history. Berkovits shows masterfully how the main thesis of Judaism has been challenged by people during the Biblical and Talmudic times. Contrasting the questions of old against modern philosophies, such as existentialism, he also shows how little the phraseology of the same old criticism has changed.

Learning Faith by Example

The gist of Rabbi Berkovits' thesis is that while it is understandable that some survivors of the Holocaust lost faith in G-d because of their experiences, it is insult to those who survived the camps and maintained their faith for one to use the Holocaust as an excuse for apostacy. An important point we should all remember.Also important is his opening chapter which is a scathing attack on ecumenicalism.