God After The Holocaust Analysis

2007 Words9 Pages
The Holocaust was the brutal and state-sponsored persecution, mass murder and attempted annihilation of an entire community—the European Jews—under the German Nazi regime in World War II. During this period, the Jews suffered indescribable hardships and were victims of countless atrocities. In the midst of this trying time, some Jews lost faith in their religion while others remained unswerving towards their belief in the existence of God. But the question that was on everyone’s mind at one time or another was: How can one believe in God after the Holocaust? If God is all-loving and all-powerful, why did he let such a terrible thing happen? I believe that the Holocaust makes it impossible to believe in an omnibenevolent, omniscient and omnipotent…show more content…
This was rabbi and Jewish theologian Ignaz Maybaum’s controversial conclusion to the horror of the Holocaust. He thinks that the Jews were atoned for humanity’s wickedness, similarly to when Jesus bore the penalty of mankind’s sin when he died on the cross. Isaiah 53, from the Book of Isaiah (a Hebrew Bible), describes a “Man of Sorrows” or “God’s suffering servant”. Christians believe that this man was Jesus. "For he was cut off from the land of the living; because of the transgression of My people, He was stricken..." (53:8) "My servant would vindicate the just for many, and their iniquities he would bear ..."(53:11) Some people, like Maybaum, believe that the Jews suffered for the sins of mankind, likening Auschwitz to Golgotha, the place where Jesus was crucified, and the gas chambers to the…show more content…
Then why call him God? J.L. Mackie, an Australian philosopher, called this the Inconsistent Triad. This is a trilemma argument—if God is omnipotent, He would be aware of evil and should be able to stop it; if He is omnibenevolent then He would want to end pain and suffering. However, evil and suffering truly exist in this world, the Holocaust being a prime example of this. Therefore, according to this argument, God either did not care about the Jewish people, had no power to stop it, or does not exist, so we cannot believe in such a God. Richard Rubenstein, an American Jewish writer and theologian and Conservative rabbi, was born and raised in the United States. After the Holocaust, he published a book called After Auschwitz: Radical Theology and Contemporary Judaism. In it, he denied the existence of God as well the fact that the Jews were God’s chosen people. He believes that God is dead. However, he argues that he is not atheist, but in fact living in a world after the death of God. Later on, he developed his ideas, introducing the concept of God as a Holy Nothingness—without definition, but is still the creator of everything on earth. Another rabbi, Sherwin Wine, had similar views to him. However, unlike Rubenstein, he became atheist and founded a community of Jews who do not believe in God but still upholds some traditions and ethical values of Judaism. This was called the Society for Humanistic Judaism. He urged Jewish families who

More about God After The Holocaust Analysis

Open Document