The Holocaust And Halakhah

Centrist Orthodox theologians here reject the "God's judgment theory" of the Holocaust. Contributors include Rabbis J.B. Soloveitchik, Norman Lamm, Emanuel Rackman, Haskel Lookstein, Louis Bernstein, Reuven Bulka, Emanual Feldman and Eliezer Berkovits.

This breathtakingly moving book documents the remarkable continuity of religious life under the horrendous conditions of Nazi-occupied Lithuania. The Jews of the Kovno ghetto went to Rabbi Ephraim Oshry, one of the remaining religious authorities in the ghetto, and posed their questions to him. He answered their questions and recorded each and every query by copying it onto scraps that he tore off of cement sacks. He then buried these scraps of papers in cans in the soil around the ghetto. This book brings to light these unearthed questions and answers, and bears witness to the power of faith to survive in the most dire of circumstances.

Based on documentation from various archives, discusses religious and halakhic issues which affected the lives of observant Jews during the Holocaust. Includes chapters on the reactions of rabbis in various towns to reports on the extermination of Jews; the persecution and suffering of rabbis and the rescue of some hasidic rabbis; halakhic rulings in ghettos and camps, e.g. concerning the desire of individual Jews to sacrifice themselves for others; rulings on problems involved in posing as a non-Jew; marriage, prayers, and the sanctification of God's name during the Holocaust; responsa of Rabbi Yehoshua Moshe Aronzon, a rabbi in Sanniki, Poland, who survived Nazi camps; sermons delivered by Rabbi Kalonimus Kalmish Shapira in the Warsaw ghetto; diaries, memoirs, and letters of survivors.

The number of books and articles dealing with various aspects of World War II has increased at a phenomenal rate since the end of the hostilities. Perhaps no other chapter in this bloodiest of all wars has received as much attention as the Holo caust. The Nazis' program for the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" - this ideologically conceived, diabolical plan for the physicalliquidation of European Jewry - has emerged as a subject of agonizing and intense interest to laypersons and scholars alike. The centrality of the Holocaust in the study of the Third Reich and the Nazi phenomenon is almost universally recognized. The source materials for many of the books published during the immediate postwar period were the notes and diaries kept by many camp and ghetto dwellers, who were sustained during their unbelievable ordeal by the unusual drive to bear witness. These were supplemented after the liberation by a large number of personal narratives collected from survivors alI over Europe. Understandably, the books published shortly after the war ended were mainly martyrological and lachrymological, reflecting the trauma of the Holocaust at the personal, individual level. These were soon followed by a considerable number of books dealing with the moral and religious questions revolving around the role ofthe lay and spiritual leaders of the doomed Jewish communities, especially those involved in the Jewish Councils, as well as God' s responsibility toward the "chosen people.

A translation of 14 rabbinic responsa (halakhic rulings) issued during and immediately after the Holocaust, which "reveal the tragic situations occurring daily at this time." The issues discussed include: whether one is obliged to object to the sterilization of a mentally ill woman, whether it is permissible to stun an animal before ritual slaughter, the status of Jewish prisoners' ashes which were returned to their families (after "Kristallnacht"), whether one must repent for inadvertently suffocating a crying infant while hiding from the Nazis, the status of Jews who converted to Christianity in order to avoid deportation, whether one may ransom a family member at the expense of another's life, and whether one may volunteer to die in order to save a Torah scholar.

Rabbi Soloveitchik presents an extended theological meditation on the Holocaust and the rise of the State of Israel, a profound examination of the Jewish covenant of faith and the covenant of fate and destiny which links all Jews, religious, irreligious and non-religious. This covenant of faith manifests itself in shared circumstances, shared responsibility and shared activity. Fate and destiny likewise links all Jews, but while fate is thrust upon the Jews, destiny is freely chosen by the individual Jew and the Jewish people by adopting a Torah lifestyle and possesses both significance and purpose.

David Weiss Halivni emerges his original approach to critical study of the Talmudic text not only in its modern printed form but as it was in its original form, the Oral Torah from the mouths of countless sages.