God on Trial

[cellio]

There is a legend that, one night in Aushwitz, the prisoners held a court, putting God on trial for allowing the Holocaust to happen. As part of marking Yom HaShoah this past week, my congregation held a viewing of a PBS film, God on Trial, dramatizing this.
It's a powerful film, and at some point I plan to borrow the DVD so I

Comments

[siderea]

Not my religion and all, but I have to comment that, in the context of Judaism, it strikes me as very odd to say:

"But God didn't stop it either, and I don't think that makes God evil. The only way to avoid evil is to not permit us to do it, to reduce us from independent, thinking beings to characters in a play."

Did God intervening at the Red Sea reduce Moses, et al., from independent, thinking beings to characters in a play?

[cellio]

It sure seems that way, doesn't it? This strikes me every time I read those passages, starting with the first plague. Moreso than pretty much anywhere else in tanakh, it feels like the people are laregly tools in something bigger -- a fight between our God and the Egyptian gods. This might be part of why the midrash about Nachshon ben Aminadav arose; the story is that the sea did not part until Nachshon strode into the water up to his nostrils. So the people, or at least a person, had to display faith/trust before everyone was redeemed, giving us an important role to play.

Tradition says, by the way, that certain miracles were programmed into the world at the beginning, including the parting of the sea and the appearance of the ram at the binding of Yitzchak. Tradition and I don't always see things exactly the same way.

[mabfan]

The concept of God you discuss here is very similar to the one presented in the book When Bad Things Happen to Good People. That book actually helped me refine my own concept of what God will and won't do.

[ariannawyn]

Half of my maternal grandfather's many siblings (he was the youngest of 13) died in the Holocaust. Obviously, I'm not religious, but knowing that does affect me and some of my attitudes - for instance, it's why I still identify as culturally Jewish even if I'm not observant, and make sure my kids know something of their background. FWIW, it does not bother me that you view the Holocaust as a co-religionist of those who were persecuted, even if you don't share their ethnicity.

[cellio]

Judaism isn't just a religion, so even though you aren't religious it's good that you're teaching your kids about their heritage.

[browngirl]

But God is available to us in some ways; God doesn't help me with external matters but can very much help me with me. The prayers I pray most strongly are the ones where I ask God to help me be a better person. So yes, God is both hands-off at the macro level and available at the micro level, and that doesn't bother me one bit.

Oh, this is very interesting.

[chaos_wrangler]

It is, by the way, with some trepidation that I write anything at all about the Holocaust. I'm a convert; my family wasn't targetted, and a voice in the back of my head persists in asking "how dare you?". I don't know if I'll ever be able to change that. For better or for worse, I'm trying to tackle broader issues, not just this instance.

(1) IMO trying to understand God / the Holocaust seems is a human issue and not just a Jewish one.

(2) Both of my parents were born in the US, 3 of my grandparents were born here and all 4 were living here before the Holocaust, and 5 of 8 in the generation before were born here and all had come here before the Holocaust. Any relatives of mine who were killed in the Holocaust are distant enough on the family tree that I don't know about them. So, the fact that I can trace my Jewish ancestry back more generations than you can doesn't mean my (known) family was any more targeted than yours. Nor does it mean that you would be in any less danger than I would be if someone decided to target Jews now.