Language:
English
Year of publication:
1999
Titel der Quelle:
Modern Judaism
Angaben zur Quelle:
19,3 (1999) 255-275
Keywords:
Heschel, Abraham Joshua,
;
Holocaust (Jewish theology)
Abstract:
Disputes the impression that the Holocaust was not central to Heschel's theological thought. Heschel confronted the Holocaust directly in his Yiddish writings (intended for survivors), e.g. in his review of poems by Aaron Zeitlin, which appears in translation as appendix 1 (pp. 264-271). His reluctance to theologize directly about the Holocaust may reflect a loss of confidence in Western civilization and an inability to deal with the Holocaust in traditional Jewish terms. His avoidance of speaking of the Holocaust in English reflects the contemporary lack of interest in the Holocaust among American Jewry. Two "eulogies" for East European Jewry were his Yiddish lecture of 1945, which in English became "The Earth Is the Lord's, " and his continuing attempt to memorialize Hasidism, for him the spiritual peak of that Jewry destroyed by the Nazis. Appendix 2 (pp. 272-274) contains the text of an interview conducted by Gershon Jacobson with Heschel, originally published in "The Day-Morning Journal" (13 September 1963).
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