Holocaust Day
On Holocaust Martyrs and Fighters Memorial Day (Yom Hashoah) I reflect on the terrible things that were done to our people during WWII and ask why. From the hindsight of history and the safety of the Israeli State, it is hard to understand and explain some human behavior. I do not and cannot say that I would have acted any differently.
This evening we went to a Memorial service at the Conservative Synagogue Beth Israel. Rabbi Birnbaum, who is himself a survivor, organized a very meaningful program. This year they focussed on the Ghetto in Vilna. To summarize, at the beginning of the war there were 75,000 Jews in Vilna, and at the end barely 500 survived. Two days after capturing Vilna the Germans took a labor battalion of 5,000 Jewish men and marched them out of town and they were never seen again. This continued regularly for two years, and eventually the Jews discovered that these people were being murdered in the nearby forest of Ponar. A resistance movement sprang up, but it was very difficult and dangerous. The head of the resistance was Itzhak Wittenberg. He was betrayed to the Germans and they issued an ultimatum, either WIttenberg gives himself up or the Ghetto will be attacked. The Judenrat under Yaakov Gens which had been set up by the Germans in order to collaborate with them, demanded that he do so, although the fighters were against it. In the end, to avoid internal conflict, Wittenberg gave himself up on July 13, 1943, and died a hero's death. His name should be remembered forever as a blessing.
The Holocaust destroyed any belief I might have had in God. For centuries Jews prayed for God's intercession to help them, and what did they get, untold suffering and persecution. It seems profoundly stupid to keep praying for something that does not happen. To accept that God punishes people for their actions or lack thereof seems simply primitive. So either God does not exist or if he does he did not care. I agree with Einstein, who did not believe in the idea of a "personal" God. How would he/she/it keep track of the billions of humans (and animals?) and all their thoughts and actions? He would indeed need a big computer to do that, and if so where does it exist?
The alternative is a God who is remote from human behavior, who plays no moral role in what happens, who leaves us to our free will. If such a God exists he would be concerned only with the bigger events, the earthquakes, the eclipses, the tornadoes. But, most of these events can be explained by purely physical factors. Earthquakes occur because of movements of tectonic plates that make up the earth. If thousands of children were killed in China during an earthquake because of the collapse of shoddily built schools, can that be ascribed to God? I think not. We know that eclipses occur with great accuracy, we don't need God to explain them. Tornadoes occur with regularity in an area of the Gulf of Mexico and can be followed with radar with great detail. Does anyone nowadays believe that thunder represents God's anger, and lightning his retribution.
So if there is neither a personal nor a remote God, so why do we need God at all. Some might think that we need him to keep the laws of the universe operating smoothly, as we try to understand them. But, it seems fair to say that the laws of the universe operate smoothly without any intervention of any external power, be that of God or not. In any case this is a long way from the excessively pleading and complimentary platitudes that fill many prayer books.
Here we can digress to note that Western religions (Christianity) are activist religions in which man is expected to exercise free will and to act in the world, that is why Christian-based cultures conquered the globe. Meanwhile Eastern religons (Islam, Hinduism) are more passive, since they believe that God has already determined our fate, action by man is pointless. Judaism is somewhere between these two, balanced on a fine edge. Through the centuries of oppression and persecution Judaism became a passive religion, with excessive pleading to God and demanding less self-action by its adherents. Zionism not only gave Jews an active goal of self-determination, but freed Jews from the yoke of passivity.
Most experts agree that the majority of Germans who participated in massacres of Jews during the Holocaust were not themselves pathological or psychotic. Perhaps some of the leaders were, but few of the perpetrators. Most people agree that the majority of Jewish victims were not excessively passive or self-destructive. Studies of several cases of genocide, of Armenians in Turkey, of Tutsi in Rwanda, of Muslims in Bosnia, tend to show that the circumstances leave the victims defenseless and the perpetrators motivated by murderous group psychology. The terrible truth is that both sides were just ordinary people.
This evening we went to a Memorial service at the Conservative Synagogue Beth Israel. Rabbi Birnbaum, who is himself a survivor, organized a very meaningful program. This year they focussed on the Ghetto in Vilna. To summarize, at the beginning of the war there were 75,000 Jews in Vilna, and at the end barely 500 survived. Two days after capturing Vilna the Germans took a labor battalion of 5,000 Jewish men and marched them out of town and they were never seen again. This continued regularly for two years, and eventually the Jews discovered that these people were being murdered in the nearby forest of Ponar. A resistance movement sprang up, but it was very difficult and dangerous. The head of the resistance was Itzhak Wittenberg. He was betrayed to the Germans and they issued an ultimatum, either WIttenberg gives himself up or the Ghetto will be attacked. The Judenrat under Yaakov Gens which had been set up by the Germans in order to collaborate with them, demanded that he do so, although the fighters were against it. In the end, to avoid internal conflict, Wittenberg gave himself up on July 13, 1943, and died a hero's death. His name should be remembered forever as a blessing.
The Holocaust destroyed any belief I might have had in God. For centuries Jews prayed for God's intercession to help them, and what did they get, untold suffering and persecution. It seems profoundly stupid to keep praying for something that does not happen. To accept that God punishes people for their actions or lack thereof seems simply primitive. So either God does not exist or if he does he did not care. I agree with Einstein, who did not believe in the idea of a "personal" God. How would he/she/it keep track of the billions of humans (and animals?) and all their thoughts and actions? He would indeed need a big computer to do that, and if so where does it exist?
The alternative is a God who is remote from human behavior, who plays no moral role in what happens, who leaves us to our free will. If such a God exists he would be concerned only with the bigger events, the earthquakes, the eclipses, the tornadoes. But, most of these events can be explained by purely physical factors. Earthquakes occur because of movements of tectonic plates that make up the earth. If thousands of children were killed in China during an earthquake because of the collapse of shoddily built schools, can that be ascribed to God? I think not. We know that eclipses occur with great accuracy, we don't need God to explain them. Tornadoes occur with regularity in an area of the Gulf of Mexico and can be followed with radar with great detail. Does anyone nowadays believe that thunder represents God's anger, and lightning his retribution.
So if there is neither a personal nor a remote God, so why do we need God at all. Some might think that we need him to keep the laws of the universe operating smoothly, as we try to understand them. But, it seems fair to say that the laws of the universe operate smoothly without any intervention of any external power, be that of God or not. In any case this is a long way from the excessively pleading and complimentary platitudes that fill many prayer books.
Here we can digress to note that Western religions (Christianity) are activist religions in which man is expected to exercise free will and to act in the world, that is why Christian-based cultures conquered the globe. Meanwhile Eastern religons (Islam, Hinduism) are more passive, since they believe that God has already determined our fate, action by man is pointless. Judaism is somewhere between these two, balanced on a fine edge. Through the centuries of oppression and persecution Judaism became a passive religion, with excessive pleading to God and demanding less self-action by its adherents. Zionism not only gave Jews an active goal of self-determination, but freed Jews from the yoke of passivity.
Most experts agree that the majority of Germans who participated in massacres of Jews during the Holocaust were not themselves pathological or psychotic. Perhaps some of the leaders were, but few of the perpetrators. Most people agree that the majority of Jewish victims were not excessively passive or self-destructive. Studies of several cases of genocide, of Armenians in Turkey, of Tutsi in Rwanda, of Muslims in Bosnia, tend to show that the circumstances leave the victims defenseless and the perpetrators motivated by murderous group psychology. The terrible truth is that both sides were just ordinary people.
posted by Jack Cohen at 3:28 PM
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