[This week's Haveil Havalim is here]
Note: I first published most of this article in a different venue, before Tisha b'Av of 5767. I still find it relevant, so I'm posting it here. [I did not end up airing the video in question.]
I think I need a reality check, so please help me out here.
A major Kiruv organization is advertising a video for Tisha b'Av. I watched their preview, and I'm not sure I can use the video.
The opening segment of the preview includes the following declaration: “…but there’s something quite harsh and that is that HaShem has demands. HaShem made demands on Klal Yisrael, Europe was destroyed because of the spiritual state of Klal Yisrael there, and if that happened then, it's very scary as to where we are holding today. If we understand that what the Holocaust did was, destroyed what Gedolei Yisrael called a business that was running bankrupt, because Klal Yisrael was really falling part, the minority, just the minority was still Torah-true, if that happened there, well, what's going to happen to Jewry today? And that's scary.”
The same theme runs throughout the preview.
I am a fan of this kiruv organization, which has done an incredible amount of good with a high degree of professionalism. I know and respect quite a few of their personnel, and I like a great many of the programs they put out. But is this a kiruv message, or a richuk [distancing] message?
As a relevant aside, the accuracy of the message is debatable. Suffering is, sometimes, Divine punishment; that's clear in Tanach and Gemara. But it's equally clear in Tanach and Gemara that suffering, sometimes, comes about for reasons other than Divine punishment, as we have discussed elsewhere.
Certainly, one could argue that the Holocaust, at least in some part, may have involved punishment for sin. Nonetheless, the words of Rav Aharon Soloveitchik, from a public shiur recorded in 1989, come back to me:
Because if one tries to explain the Holocaust, he will be nichshal [stumble] in one of two things. If he will try to explain the Holocaust under the secular perspective he will be nichshal in blasphemy. And if he will try to explain from a religious perspective, and point a finger at certain people, why the Holocaust took place, then he will speak stupidity and gasus haruach [arrogance].
But beyond the debatable accuracy, to return to our main point: Is this something to disseminate? Is the Jewish public ready to use the Holocaust as a kiruv tool? “Gd punished you sixty years ago, so you had better shape up now before you get whacked again?”
Perhaps the makers of the video weren't hearing the screams of tortured Jews when they taped those words. Perhaps they weren't thinking about the raped women of the liquidated ghettoes, the rabbis whose beards were torn off and who were otherwise disgraced before they were killed. Perhaps the staff that reviewed the film didn't, during their work, call to mind the thousands of babies who were brutally massacred.
Or the opposite - perhaps they did call all of those things to mind, and that's exactly what motivated them to call Jewry to Wake Up, in a Kahanaesque attempt to wake the masses with harsh truths... but I'm not sure that Kahanaism works as good kiruv. My experience is that it does not.
The key questions, to me:
Is the message going to make a single Jew commit herself to greater observance?
Or is the message going to turn off a single Jew who feels that the memory of her parents, grandparents, cousins, uncles and aunts is being sullied?
My gut feeling is that this does not qualify as proper תוכחה (instruction). The Holocaust is still אבילות חדשה (mourning for recent loss), an open and fresh wound; I think that calling it Divine punishment would be a turnoff. Rabbonim far greater than me have balked at that approach.
What do you think?
Showing posts with label Judaism: Holocaust. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Judaism: Holocaust. Show all posts
Monday, July 12, 2010
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Science and Religion and Explaining the Holocaust
From time to time I attend a funeral at which the officiant begins by quoting these lines from Ben Sira: “Seek not to understand what is too difficult for you, search not for what is hidden from you, be not over-occupied with what is beyond you, for you have been shown more than you can understand.”
I always wonder how secular people take that sentiment, which strikes me as so offensive to the modern ear. “That which is too difficult for me?” “More than you can understand?” What happened to modern science, to exploration, to the idea that mystery is only that which I have yet to comprehend?*
But it’s certainly a Jewish perspective. See the mishnah in Chagigah (2:1), that one should not investigate certain matters related to Gd. See the innumerable Jewish sources delineating the ways in which a human being cannot comprehend the infinite.
I believe that this issue of a defined limit to human comprehension is one of the major points that separate Science and Religion within Judaism. Much about them is reconcilable, but this point, I think, is simply one of disagreement.
The scientific approach takes as axiomatic that given enough data, I will be able to reach an accurate conclusion. New tools/formulae may be required for data acquisition as well as analysis, but those, too, are within my grasp.
The religious approach of Jewish tradition, on the other hand, takes as a given that intellect is not the sole actor on the stage of exploration; other forces define/shape/limit my comprehension. These may include my spiritual character, the alienness of the subject matter, or some deus ex machina intervening to put a halt to my understanding, but there are non-neural factors which affect my ability to absorb and analyze.
This is on my mind because last night, while packing up some old tapes, I found a recording of a parshah class Rav Aharon Soloveitchik taught at Yeshiva University in the late ‘80s. I think it was Fall of 1989, because I was in my Junior year in high school, and the parshah under discussion was Ki Tavo.
One day I’ll have to blog about those classes, and the impact they had on me. I was looking for direction, and even though I only attended a handful of those shiurim, and I can’t say I grasped everything being said, they were still a key experience. But enough about that for now.
Rav Ahron discussed the problem of reward and punishment, and Divine oversight and theodicy. In the course of addressing various questions, he came to the Holocaust, and he said:
Because if one tries to explain the Holocaust, he will be nichshal [stumble] in one of two things. If he will try to explain the Holocaust under the secular perspective he will be nichshal in blasphemy. And if he will try to explain from a religious perspective, and point a finger at certain people, why the Holocaust took place, then he will speak stupidity and gasus haruach [arrogance].
[Speak might actually have been spout – it’s hard to tell on the recording, and my mental recollection is spout.]
From a scientific perspective, this answer is entirely unacceptable. I have data about Gd, I should be able to determine how Gd could permit the Holocaust. But from the religious perspective of Jewish tradition, Rav Aharon’s answer makes perfect sense – there is, indeed, a non-intellectual limit on what I will ever comprehend, so that none of my answers, from any approach, will ever be accurate.
One could, of course, try to harmonize the Science and Religion approaches. One could claim that what Religion calls the limit on comprehension, Science calls a lack of data – we cannot understand Gd because we lack the tools to collect the relevant data.
But I don’t believe that this is what Religion is saying; Religion, in Jewish tradition, states definitively that human beings will never possess the tools to collect the data. We will simply live in philosophical limbo, trying to contend with our world while avoiding blasphemy, stupidity and arrogance.
[*The use of Ben Sira is all the more remarkable to me because non-Orthodox officiants are the ones who cite this passage. Ben Sira is not generally considered to be in the Orthodox liturgical canon, his presence in the Talmud notwithstanding.]
I always wonder how secular people take that sentiment, which strikes me as so offensive to the modern ear. “That which is too difficult for me?” “More than you can understand?” What happened to modern science, to exploration, to the idea that mystery is only that which I have yet to comprehend?*
But it’s certainly a Jewish perspective. See the mishnah in Chagigah (2:1), that one should not investigate certain matters related to Gd. See the innumerable Jewish sources delineating the ways in which a human being cannot comprehend the infinite.
I believe that this issue of a defined limit to human comprehension is one of the major points that separate Science and Religion within Judaism. Much about them is reconcilable, but this point, I think, is simply one of disagreement.
The scientific approach takes as axiomatic that given enough data, I will be able to reach an accurate conclusion. New tools/formulae may be required for data acquisition as well as analysis, but those, too, are within my grasp.
The religious approach of Jewish tradition, on the other hand, takes as a given that intellect is not the sole actor on the stage of exploration; other forces define/shape/limit my comprehension. These may include my spiritual character, the alienness of the subject matter, or some deus ex machina intervening to put a halt to my understanding, but there are non-neural factors which affect my ability to absorb and analyze.
This is on my mind because last night, while packing up some old tapes, I found a recording of a parshah class Rav Aharon Soloveitchik taught at Yeshiva University in the late ‘80s. I think it was Fall of 1989, because I was in my Junior year in high school, and the parshah under discussion was Ki Tavo.
One day I’ll have to blog about those classes, and the impact they had on me. I was looking for direction, and even though I only attended a handful of those shiurim, and I can’t say I grasped everything being said, they were still a key experience. But enough about that for now.
Rav Ahron discussed the problem of reward and punishment, and Divine oversight and theodicy. In the course of addressing various questions, he came to the Holocaust, and he said:
Because if one tries to explain the Holocaust, he will be nichshal [stumble] in one of two things. If he will try to explain the Holocaust under the secular perspective he will be nichshal in blasphemy. And if he will try to explain from a religious perspective, and point a finger at certain people, why the Holocaust took place, then he will speak stupidity and gasus haruach [arrogance].
[Speak might actually have been spout – it’s hard to tell on the recording, and my mental recollection is spout.]
From a scientific perspective, this answer is entirely unacceptable. I have data about Gd, I should be able to determine how Gd could permit the Holocaust. But from the religious perspective of Jewish tradition, Rav Aharon’s answer makes perfect sense – there is, indeed, a non-intellectual limit on what I will ever comprehend, so that none of my answers, from any approach, will ever be accurate.
One could, of course, try to harmonize the Science and Religion approaches. One could claim that what Religion calls the limit on comprehension, Science calls a lack of data – we cannot understand Gd because we lack the tools to collect the relevant data.
But I don’t believe that this is what Religion is saying; Religion, in Jewish tradition, states definitively that human beings will never possess the tools to collect the data. We will simply live in philosophical limbo, trying to contend with our world while avoiding blasphemy, stupidity and arrogance.
[*The use of Ben Sira is all the more remarkable to me because non-Orthodox officiants are the ones who cite this passage. Ben Sira is not generally considered to be in the Orthodox liturgical canon, his presence in the Talmud notwithstanding.]
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