Based on this statement by DocCathode: “the Lord who brought us forth from Egypt”, in this thread, it got me thinking:
Do religious Jews think God actively tries to help them out in day-to-day life?
If so, then how do they explain the Holocaust? (it was, after all, a horrific thing that happened to his *chosen *people).
Do they think that:
They were behaving badly in some way and so were punished (a la Sodom and Gomorrah?)
It was God’s will, and we can’t fathom why he does what he does (a la Job’s suffering)
Something else?
If they don’t think that God actively interferes in day-to-day life, then how can they believe that God was “the Lord who brought us forth from Egypt”?
Well, I’m pretty familiar with Christian explanations, and I was curious to see how Jews might attack such issues.
Also, one difference between bad things happening to Christians and the Holocaust, is that usually the bad things that happen to Christians are somewhat random (hurricanes, earthquakes, etc), and during these events they were not explicitly targeted simply because they are Christian. In the Holocaust though, Jews were the only target, and they were targeted simply because they were Jewish.
Add to that the fact that, according to their religion, they are the chosen ones (correct me if I’m wrong), and it makes a mass disaster specifically targeted towards Jews even more puzzling and difficult to explain within a religious framework.
“Chosen” does not specifically mean “priveledged”. In fact, I belief “chosen” means “held to a higher standard than anyone else, and forced to suffer more for failures”.
But perhaps someone who is actually Jewish could be more specific.
Uh… I don’t think you want to go there. Many Jewish people think of Israel as a good thing, and I don’t know that anybody thinks of the Holocaust as anything but an irredeemably bad thing. Some clouds have no silver lining.
All I can say is that I’ve heard it said. I’ve never heard it put in the sense of “well, I’m glad that happened,” but people apparently can find a silver lining.
And if the creation of Israel isn’t a silver lining for some people, I’m tempted to suggest that the humor that Mel Brooks has gotten at the expense of the Nazis over the last four decades is also a silver lining.
Why wouldn’t he want to go there? I’ve heard the same thing expressed by other Jews. Holocaust survivor and Nobel prize winner Elie Weisel seems to feel that since the Holocaust was so horrible, we should try to get as much good out of it as we can. He received the Nobel Peace prize for using his status as a survivor to get attention and resources to stop other genocides.
Weisel does tell of several other inmates who became atheists. Weisel and many others felt that by ceasing to be Jews, they did Hitlers work for him. Some Jews refer to a six hundred and fourteenth commandment ‘Don’t grant the Nazi’s posthumous victories.’
I don’t remember if it was Weisel or another writer who summed up their experience with “I believe in the sun, though it is not shining. I believe in laughter, though I see only tears. I believe in G-d, though He is silent.” John Corrado has it right. We were chosen to receive the covenant. This does not make us better than anybody else. It means we have to follow more rules.
I don’t know how developed this idea RE the Holocaust had been in Jewish thought but I know that the “Suffering Servant” passages in Isaiah has been applied to the underserved suffering of righteous Jews.
No, He didn’t. After each plague (and I’ve heard arguments for 10, 40, and 50 but not 7) G-d ‘hardened pharaoh’s heart’. In other words, He rendered him immune to the overpowering terror that had caused him to agree to free the Jews and allowed him to reach a decision through an exercise of his free will.
No reason why He couldn’t. However, the pharaoh had all the Jews. The Nazis had millions of us, but not all.