Early Theological Responses to the Holocaust

• In Event: Re/Considering Religious Traditions at the Time of the Holocaust Jewish and Christian Theological Attitudes

Abstract

Mystical thinkers of the Holocaust went further than the Orthodox (Mizrahi, Agudat yisrael, Musar, Hasidic) by drawing the anchor of thought away from historical events and casting it above to the outer borderline of metahistory. Drawing from the Lurianic tradition, they retreated from, or transcended beyond, historical reality and grounded themselves in a cosmic drama - one which governed history and metahistory together. By moving from the arena of history into a spiritual reality, they believed they could enable that reality to continue.

Menahem Rizikoff (Brooklyn 1939 ) focused on the messianic-era transition from Be’ita to Ahishena, and applied it to priestly ritual which could evoke Ahishena and redemption, Yitshak Messer (wartime Siberia) situated himself within a dialectic process between higher cosmic Hesed and acts of piety below, grounded in spiritual reality and completed through the descent of Shefa. Yehiel Meir Morgenshtern (London 1947) turned to Kabbalah after other explanations for the tragedy left him in silence. He located the people of Israel at the explosive turning point from deepest descent into Kelippot to release.
For Ya’akov Mosheh Harlap (wartime Jerusalem) the Holocaust was a metahistorical drama of passage from the Messiah son of Joseph to the Messiah son of David, in which each Jew ascended with the inner light of the first into the all-encompassing light of the second. Lastly, Mordechai Atiyah (Mexico City), drawing from the principles of Nitsotsot, Kelippot, Shekhinah and exile, and thinking in terms of metaphysical planes of reality rather than causal sequence, predicted that the people of Israel were facing a second holocaust.

Author

• Gershon Greenberg, American University