meta: {"file": "/data/tomer/Sefaria-Export/txt_done/Modern Works/Works of Eliezer Berkovits/With God in hell/English/New York Sanhedrin Press, c1979.txt"}
text: With God in hell
  עמו אנכי בצרה
  New York: Sanhedrin Press, c1979
  
  
  With God in hell
  
  Preface
  
  Some time after the publication of my book, <i>Faith After the Holocaust</i>, and after having delivered numerous lectures on that subject, I came to the realization that while I had attempted to show how it was possible to maintain one’s faith in spite of the fact that not all the problems emanating from the Holocaust can be solved, I had overlooked dealing with the key issue, with the question: What is faith? There were some significant references to the question in my writing, but a thoroughgoing analysis of the nature of the faith of the authentic Jew was lacking. Not only was I remiss in this respect, but other writers were, too. Questions were asked: How is it possible still to believe in divine providence after what happened in the ghettos and the concentration camps? If, indeed, there is a God, how could He have remained silent in view of the Germans’ inhuman bestiality, of a kind previously unknown in the annals of man? These were, of course, valid questions. However, both those who denied the possibility of belief in a providential divine power after what had happened, and those, too, who affirmed it in spite of everything, forgot to deal with the most important aspect of this awesome issue — the essence of faith within the system of Judaism.
  This realization came to me as the result of a conversation with someone whom I met on the flight home to Chicago after a scholars’ conference in New York. I found myself sitting beside a gentleman who turned out to be the cultural director of a Jewish secular organization. He was familiar with my previous book on the Holocaust and in the course of our conversation he told me the following episode. On a Holocaust memorial day, his organization’s guest speaker, a rabbi, declared that in view of what happened in the concentration camps and the crematoria, he could no longer believe in God. His confession greatly upset the audience. I told my neighbor that it was not clear to me why the members of his organization should have been so deeply perturbed by the rabbi’s statement. After all, theirs was a secular group. His answer was: “Many of them were concentration camp survivors,” and for him this was a sufficient explanation. He meant to say that these survivors, who might well have lost their faith as a result of their experiences, were angered by this “successful” American rabbi’s facile dismissal of the possibility of faith in God. They must have thought, “This man, who grew up in the most prosperous country on earth, who never went hungry to bed, whose life was, most probably, never seriously threatened, who never spent a day in a ghetto or a concentration camp, who never watched the clouds of smoke over the crematoria, he is lecturing to us about loss of faith! What does he know of the anguish of the believing Jew who loses his faith because he is so overwhelmed by the inhumanity of man that he can no longer believe!”
  I began then to understand that we have been talking and writing about faith lightly, without fully appreciating what we were about. Suddenly I saw before me tens of thousands of Jews for whom Judaism was the sustaining well of their entire existence — Jews for whom the loss of faith was, indeed, a greater disaster than the loss of all their wordly possessions. I could not help thinking of the multitude of Jews who, having lost their faith as well as their lives in the gas chambers, pleaded before the heavenly court: “Almighty God! We can forgive You everything that was done to us on Your polluted earth. Only one thing we cannot forgive: that You did not look after our faith in You; that You allowed such trials to be heaped upon our heads to which our faith was unable to stand up!”
  That survivors, who had lost their faith, could be deeply hurt by the facile disbelief of one completely alien to their own experience made one doubt that the modern Western Jew knew what he was talking about when he spoke of belief or disbelief. This made it a demanding necessity to attempt to unravel the mystery of faith with the help of numerous testimonies to its continued manifestations, even in the ghettos and the concentration camps. Forever preoccupied with the problem of faith after the Holocaust, many of us often overlook the fact that in the ghettos and concentration camps there were untold numbers of Jews who to the very end lived and died as Jews. We know of many thousands who walked to the mass graves and the gas chambers with the dignity of an all-conquering trust in the God of Israel and in the future of the Jewish people, and with the superior knowledge of the ultimate defeat of the Nazi monster. Only by making the effort of establishing empathetic contact with the authentic Jew of the ghettos and the camps dare we hope to gain some inkling of the mystery of Jewish faith, and a more significant understanding of the nature of Judaism and of the historic destiny of the Jewish people.
  Eliezer Berkovits
  <i>Jerusalem, July 1978</i>
  
  1 The Continuity of Existence
  
  In a volume of Holocaust eyewitness testimonies published by the labor movement in Israel, the point is made that although the Jews in Europe knew well what had happened to many of their brethren, and what was awaiting them should they, too, be caught, many of them did not depart from their customary ways. In numerous places in the ghettos one could see through the windows Jews studying, or wearing <i>tallit</i> (prayer shawl) and <i>tefillin</i> (phylacteries), praying the daily services in the midst of the required quorum of at least a <i>minyan</i> (ten men). On the High Holy Days they would put on the traditional <i>kittel</i> (white robe) and would pray with loud voices. Some of them even permitted themselves to walk in the streets clad in prayer shawls as if they were living in Jerusalem. It was as if the Jews had ceased being afraid.1<i class="footnote">Ya’akov Kurtz, <i>Sefer Edut</i>, Tel-Aviv, 1944, p. 323.</i>
  These practices were fairly widespread in all the ghettos; throughout Eastern Europe the Jews were the same. In Warsaw groups of <i>baḥurim</i>, young Talmud students, hid in bunkers scattered all over the ghetto, praying and studying Torah all day, unconcerned with the world outside. Only at night would some of them crawl out of their hiding places in search of food for the minimum needs of their sustenance. 2<i class="footnote">See, for example, Menashe Unger, <i>Der Geistiker Viderstand fun Yidn in Ghettos und Lagern</i>, Tel-Aviv, 1970, pp. 103–4 (quoted from Hillel Seidman, <i>Yoman Ghetto Varsha</i>, Tel-Aviv, 1946; New York, 1957).</i> Similar groups were found in many other ghettos. For instance, a member of such a <i>ḥavurah</i> (fellowship), located at 47 Marinarska Street in the ghetto of Lodz, relates:
  “From the outside our <i>shtiebel</i> looked like a deserted hut or like a partially broken-down cowshed; but inside — there was real <i>Gan Eden</i> (paradise). We studied Torah diligently; we prayed with great devotion; and occupied ourselves with <i>ḥasidic</i> teachings as in former times. We even had a kitchen and places to sleep. At night, the windows were boarded up; in general the camouflage was extremely successful. However, one day the voices of Torah study betrayed our hiding place to the <i>Sonderkommando</i>.”
  The <i>Sonders</i> thought that they had discovered a group of ghetto smugglers, and instead they beheld a ḥasidic cell. “You are not of them (the smugglers)?” they asked, astounded. However, when they started inquiring about the young men’s status in the ghetto (why they did not have any “work cards,” why they did not work in any of the German shops), one of the young men hit upon the idea of betraying the “truth.” He took the leader of the <i>Sonders</i> aside and told him that they were indeed smugglers and fed him a long imaginary tale about their supposed underground activities. Finally, he bribed him with some money that they had in reserve to meet unexpected crises of this nature. This satisfied the <i>Sonders</i> who, for a while, even extended some protection to the “smugglers.” When, in the vast expulsions from the ghetto in 1942, their hiding place was again discovered, they managed to escape once more and reassembled in secret under another “address.” This sort of situation was indeed widespread; one must not forget that the overwhelming majority of Jews in Eastern Europe were Torah-observant.
  The Germans saw to it that, judged by any standards, the conditions in the ghettos were intolerable. But things were incomparably worse in the labor and concentration camps and the insistence of religious Jews on continuing even there “as before” reached an even higher degree of heroism. In a volume published by <i>Sifriat Po’alim</i>, an enterprise of the left-wing <i>Hashomer Haẓa’ir</i> in Israel, we find the following description of religious life in Auschwitz:
  “There were in the camp religious people who did not lose their faithfulness and even tried to fulfill the <i>mitzvot ma’asiyot</i>, the practical religious commandments. In Auschwitz there existed a <i>ḥavurah</i> of religious Jews that would meet daily in secret for <i>tefillah beẓibbur</i> (communal prayer).”
  Writing in the same book, a survivor tells of a Jew in Auschwitz who stubbornly adhered to the dietary laws and refused to work on the Sabbath and the festivals:
  “At first we thought he was mentally disturbed. In the course of the years, however, we learned to appreciate that his ‘madness’ was a manifestation of a strong personality and an exalted faith. He would eat only bread and water. Only seldom did he touch the warm food. On the Sabbath he would go out to work but only pretend to perform actual work…This man got himself <i>tefillin</i> and daily he would get up before all of us and pray in them. Not many had this kind of attachment of Jewish religious practice, but those who did were elevated to a high moral plateau.”3<i class="footnote"><i>Anashim vaEfer — Sefer Auschwitz-Birkenau</i>, ed. Israel Gutman, Merhavya, 1957, p. 86.</i>
  It is of course unlikely that this eyewitness was familiar with all the Jewish observances that were kept in that vast camp. There are other testimonies of many more such occurrences and practices in Auschwitz and, of course, Auschwitz was no exception. What Jews did in Auschwitz they did in other camps as well.
  Young people originating from practically every country in Europe would assemble in a corner of the youth barracks in Auschwitz for daily services. One of the participants tells: “Praying ‘in community’ and the keeping of the <i>mitzvot</i> brought us near to each other, though by origin and background we differed widely.” 4<i class="footnote">Unger, p. 258.</i> Needless to say, the “community” effect of Jewish observance was the same wherever it occurred. We know of prayer services held with some regularity in other camps, too. Secret daily morning and evening services were held in Treblinka, for example. A halakhic question was asked about the propriety of such early morning services. The participants had to rise before the rest of the inmates. It was still night, and the morning service should normally not be prayed before sunrise. The halakhic ruling was that since there was no other possibility for such services, and especially since they could only take place in secret, it was permissible to arrange them while it was still night.5<i class="footnote">Shimon Efrati, <i>Kuntres meEmek haBakka</i>, Jerusalem, 1948.</i>
  Among the eyewitness accounts of such traditional prayer practices in the camps and ghettos, several episodes stand out. Since prayer books were not readily available, they had to be smuggled in. Often, some people would pray by heart aloud, while others listened and responded <i>Amen</i>. Sometimes prayers or complete prayer books would be written by hand on odd pieces of paper or other material. We have the following report:
  “Itsche prays every day. He moves into a corner and sinks his eyes into the <i>siddur</i> (prayer book). Through a small opening, a narrow shaft of light falls into the pit. He moves his lips lightly; still he prays, word by word, deeply. We had made a <i>siddur</i> before in an attic. Frauman and I dictated the prayers and Ephraim transcribed them in a notebook. Now, Frauman and I pray by heart and Ephraim and Itsche from our <i>siddur</i>, one after another. Ephraim reads every word clearly with the <i>Sefaradi</i> pronunciation as he had learned it at the <i>Tarbut</i> school. The women too prayed every day; they said the <i>Shema</i> and the <i>Modeh Ani</i>.”
  Yet another report:
  “I carry along with me on my odyssey through all the camps this unique <i>siddur.</i> It helps me to get relief every time fear and darkness descend upon me. It carries to me the message that it is possible to be sunk in abysmal misery and yet do as Moshe Borochowicz from Zelichow, near Warsaw, did.
  “In the hard times that pass over me, I turn the pages of that <i>siddur;</i> I look at them and see them crowded with prayers, letters guarded more than any treasure in the world. And I am full of wonder at the holy and bold simplicity of this ordinary Jew, Moshe Borochowicz of Zelichow. At a time of danger and threatening ultimate destruction, the worry that preoccupied him was that the world might be left without a <i>siddur</i>, and the holy martyrs without remembrance.”6<i class="footnote">Mordekhai Eliav, <i>Ani Ma’amin</i>, Jerusalem, 1965, 1969, pp. 90–93 (quoted from Halper Leivick, <i>Mit der She’eris haPleito</i>, New York, 1947).</i>
  What was it that made Moshe Borochowicz so renowned? Most of his family had been murdered — his wife, his daughter, his sisters and their children. Together with them and all the other Jews, all the <i>siddurim</i> and <i>taliyot</i> were also destroyed. Hiding in a bunker in some forsaken village, cut off completely from the outside, Moshe Borochowicz was worried: will the world remain without a <i>siddur?</i> Most of the pages of his only little <i>siddur</i> were torn. What if he should survive, he would be without a <i>siddur!</i> He resolved to write a <i>siddur</i> for himself there in his hiding place, in memory of the martyrs of his family and also as a memorial to his own name, should he not survive. His main concern, however, was that, God forbid, the world be left without a <i>siddur</i>. Month after month he worked on his <i>siddur</i>, on long and broad pages, in the holy script in which the <i>Sefer Torah</i>, the Torah itself, is traditionally written. In many places between the prayers, at times in the midst of the prayers themselves, he would introduce names of the holy martyrs of his family. His prayer book is now preserved in the Yizhak Katzenelson Museum of Ghetto Fighters.
  The <i>Sefer Edut</i>, Book of Testimonies, tells of a Jew who was looking for a place where he could pray undisturbed. In one of the various camps in which he stayed there was a vast open pit in which they used to bury the people who were killed. In that pit he found a quiet corner where he could pray regularly. From then on, his comrades would call that death pit <i>Das Beit-medreshel</i>, the little <i>Bet haMidrash</i>.7<i class="footnote">Kurtz, p. 14.</i>
  It was much more difficult to find <i>tefillin</i> in the camps than prayer books. There were many small-size <i>siddurim</i> and it was relatively easy to smuggle them in. But <i>tefillin</i> are quite a bit bulkier and they are always in pairs. Nevertheless, there were Jews who hardly ever missed saying a few words of prayer with <i>tefillin</i> on, in Auschwitz, in Buchenwald, in Maidanek, and in other places as well. We know of some remarkable stories of the devotion and self-sacrifice that Jews invested in their efforts to secure a pair of <i>tefillin</i> and to put them on daily.
  During their long wanderings from labor camp to labor camp, the main worry of the brothers Moshe and Mendel Brachfeld seems to have been how to keep a pair of <i>tefillin</i> and to snatch a few minutes early in the morning to pray in them. But when they were moved to the slave labor camp at Gross-Rosen, the body search was so thorough that their pair of <i>tefillin</i> was found and, together with their other belongings, was confiscated. Mendel especially was greatly worried where he might obtain a pair of <i>tefillin.</i> However, the brothers chanced to come across a Pole who was in charge of burning all useless objects found on the incoming slave laborers. The “organizing,” often the life line of survival in the camps, started between Mendel and the Pole. In the end it was agreed that the Pole would receive one ration of bread from Mendel in return for salvaging a pair of <i>tefillin</i> for the brothers from among the objects to be burned. (Not that the Pole was himself hungry. But a ration of bread was itself a treasure in the camps, for which one could “organize” all kinds of other treasures that camp inmates might have been able either to smuggle into the camps or had succeeded in obtaining there.) After some difficulties and complications, due to the fact that the Pole, at first, did not understand the difference between a <i>shel yad</i> and a <i>shel rosh</i> (phylacteries for the arm and those for the head), the brothers got a complete pair. From then on, together with about fifty other Jews, they put on <i>tefillin</i> daily at Gross-Rosen. But again they were overtaken by misfortune. One of the Kapos tricked them into lending him the <i>tefillin</i>, which he then sold to Jews in another camp. However, once again — according to their view of the matter, as if by a miracle — <i>tefillin</i> were at hand. Among a group of Hungarian Jews who had been brought to the camp was a <i>teirer Yid</i>, a precious Jew, Lippe Lefkovitz from Grosswardein, who succeeded in smuggling in his <i>tefillin</i> which the brothers then used until, soon afterwards, they were moved to the camp at Dornau.
  Another eyewitness report reaches us from the pen of Rabbi Z.H. Meisels, who writes of the wonder at Auschwitz and other camps, of Jews standing in line day after day to put on <i>tefillin</i>, to say a blessing and to recite the first verse of the <i>Shema</i> prayer, although the risk of discovery made it extremely dangerous to do so. Rabbi Meisels speaks of miracles in the fulfillment of that “beloved <i>mitzvah</i>.” All belongings and even clothing were taken from new arrivals at the camp. In addition, numerous searches were made even after admission. Anyone on whom anything was found was severely punished. Yet Jews succeeded in concealing <i>tefillin</i> and putting them on daily. In this alone they saw the miracles of the Creator.8<i class="footnote">Eliav, p. 99 (quoted from Z.H. Meisels, <i>She’elot uTeshuvot Mekadshei Hashem</i>, Chicago, 1955).</i>
  No less strong was the determination of many Jews to continue to study Torah no matter what the external conditions might be. We have heard earlier of secret <i>ḥavurot</i> for prayer and study. One of the best known of these was the study group of Rabbi Avreimele Weinberg in the Warsaw ghetto. There were in the ghetto a number of German workshops in which those employed were given special “work cards.” These cards represented a measure of protection for their holders and so everybody was anxious to get them. Those without cards were the “illegal” ones whose chances of survival were minimal. The secret prayer and study groups, including that of Rabbi Weinberg, despised those cards and were “illegals.” They utterly disregarded the German commands, retaining even their traditional ḥasidic garb. Rabbi Avreimele continued his regular discourses on the Talmud and its commentaries. Day and night the voice of Torah study could be heard in their hiding place. After they were discovered and taken away, the volumes they had been studying were found open on page 19 of tractate <i>Bekhorot</i> of the Talmud, as if waiting for others to come and complete the study of that tractate.
  Even among those who did avail themselves of the “work cards” and who were employed in the various shops, there were many who pursued the study of the Torah even at their working places. In Plaszow, near Cracow, there was a large factory that produced brushes for the Germans. In charge was a Jew from Cracow, a former brush manufacturer who, because of his expertise in the field, had been ordered to set up the factory and was now in charge of running it under German control. He was allowed to employ two hundred workers. The majority of his “experts” were pious ḥasidic Jews from among the remnant of the liquidated Cracow ghetto. The workers were known among the Germans as the <i>Burstengemeinschaft</i>, the “Brushes Fraternity.” This “fraternity” studied together the traditional “daily page” of the Talmud. In the closets where the brushes were stored, they hid a volume of the small <i>Horeb</i> edition of the Talmud. The workers sat at a long table doing their job, with the <i>Maggid She’ur</i>, the lecturer, at its head, holding in his hand a half-finished brush, as if in the middle of his work. When the German control appeared, the <i>Gemorehle</i> (the little Talmud volume) would disappear and the lecturer would “continue” sewing up the brush in his hand. 9<i class="footnote">Moshe Prager, <i>Eleh Shelo Nikhne’u</i>, 2 vols., B’nei B’rak, 1969; vol. II, p. 111.</i>
  Notwithstanding the much more difficult conditions in the concentration camps, many Jews fulfilled the <i>mitzvah</i> of Torah study there, too. There were no volumes of the Talmud available in the camps, but there were Jews who knew large portions of the Talmud by heart and thus it became once again “Oral Torah,” but in a manner and in circumstances never imagined before. The best opportunity for this kind of “Oral Torah” learning and teaching was on the way from the camps to the place of work outside and again on the road back. In the Eichenwald camp near Posen, for instance, one had to get up at three o’clock in the morning and walk eight kilometers to work. On the way back, though the prisoners normally had to carry the bodies of those people who had perished during the day, they would repeat by heart sections of the Mishnah or recite aloud chapters from the Book of Psalms.10<i class="footnote"><i>Ibid.</i>, p. 145.</i>
  When Natan Pick was taken from Auschwitz to the Gorlitz camp, within the network of slave labor camps of Gross-Rosen, he unexpectedly met his brother Yankel there. Knowing a great part of the Talmud by heart, Yankel would select for review those tractates dealing with the subject matter of the day. Thus on the Sabbath he would go over chapters of the tractate <i>Shabbat</i> from memory. Similarly, he would prepare himself for each holiday by studying by heart the relevant passages of the Talmud. The most suitable time for his “studies” were the marches from camp to work and back, which was a distance of six or seven kilometers. As there were a number of other Talmud scholars in this camp, he would invite them to walk together with him. Thus they would march side by side, close together, and all along the way, Yankel Pick would teach various sections of the Talmud, enthusiastically and loudly, in the traditional sing-song of Talmud study. 11<i class="footnote"><i>Ibid.</i>, p. 122.</i>
  In the camp of Dautmergen in the south of Germany a group of yeshivah students assembled to study <i>mishnayot</i> together after an exhausting day of slave labor and before climbing into their bunks for their night’s rest. They had no texts, but there was among them a <i>baḥur</i> (young man) from Novogrudok who would recite the text from memory, and thus they would study <i>Mishnah</i>.12<i class="footnote">Unger, p. 120.</i>
  Occasionally there were, in fact, texts at hand. Testimonies from the hell of Maidanek tell of two Dutch Jews who somehow managed to lay their hands on a copy of the <i>Tanakh</i> (Bible). They would squeeze into the middle of the ranks of the slave laborers and, while marching to and from work, they would study Torah together. After the Warsaw ghetto revolt in 1943, some Jews were taken to Bendzin, which was an outlying branch of Maidanek. There were about three thousand Jews there, many of whom did not miss their daily services. On a garbage dump they found some pages of the Talmud that had been used by the Poles as wrapping paper and thrown away. These pages were a godsend for many of the prisoners. Rabbi Yitzhak Zemba gave talmudic lectures based on those pages. He also had a small edition of the <i>Tanakh</i> and so the Bible, too, was taught. In one concentration camp in Estland, the tractate of <i>Rosh Hashanah</i> was studied. Some inmates chanced upon a bundle of faded papers. As they unwrapped it, they found that it was a volume of the Talmud.13<i class="footnote"><i>Ibid.</i></i>
  Occasionally Jews would write texts themselves, copying them with pencil on odd pieces of paper. Such fragments would pass from hand to hand in the camp. A fragment from the tractate <i>Berakhot</i>, handwritten in Auschwitz, has been preserved.14<i class="footnote">Eliav, p. 112.</i>
  * * * * *
  The Rebbe
  We used to know the old rabbi of Zydaczow. I was still only a child when he came to our city during the First World War as a refugee from the advancing Russians. I still recall the awe with which we all came out of the <i>mikveh</i> when he appeared. Surrounded and assisted by his <i>gabbaim</i>, he descended into the <i>mikveh</i>, his nakedness protected by the large white linen towels that his aides held up on all sides until he was submerged in the water. Yehoshua Eichenstein, who is referred to as the Rabbi of Zydaczow-Grosswardein, must have been the son, perhaps the grandson, of this “old Zidichover.” Survivors of Auschwitz tell legends of the towering greatness of this man. Notwithstanding the crushing burden of the daily life in that hell, Rabbi Eichenstein never really stopped studying the Torah. Even during the hours of slave labor, he would review intricate talmudic passages from memory. Often one would hear him reciting psalms by heart. From the starvation diet of the camp he saved enough to “organize” a <i>tallit</i> and <i>tefillin</i>. Not only did he pray in them daily, but, rising early in the morning, he would go from man to man encouraging them to put them on themselves, be it even for only a few furtive moments of prayer. He was a source of strength to all those with whom he came into contact. It was said of him that he “kindled in the hearts of many sparks of joy, faith, and trust.”15<i class="footnote"><i>Eleh Ezkerah</i>, 7 vols., ed. I. Lewin, New York, 1956–72; vol. VI, p. 242.</i>
  The Rabbi
  What in the United States is referred to as Reform Judaism was known in Germany as “Liberal.” The outstanding personality of German liberal Judaism was Dr. Leo Baeck, rabbi of the Berlin Jewish community and, under the Nazi regime, head of the <i>Reichsvertretung Deutscher Juden.</i> He was a German Jew at home in both worlds, that of Judaism and of the German cultural tradition, prior to its defilement by Nazi Germany. He would follow the reading of the Torah in the Shabbat service with the Greek translation of the Septuagint and his scholarly works were original contributions to modern Jewish scholarship in Germany.
  What was life like in Theresienstadt as seen from the vantage point of this highly sophisticated Western Jew? Rabbi Baeck tells that the Jews in the camp were well aware of the fact that any day, any hour, they might face death. No one could know when the murderers would pick them up for “selection.” Yet Jews did not sit and weep. They revealed super-human steadfastness by secretly assembling in the darkness of night in order to study Torah, to participate in courses on Jewish subjects, and to listen to lectures on eternal questions, the mysteries of existence beyond the reach of human understanding. Not only did the participants endanger their lives in case of possible discovery by the Germans, but there was also the added health risk. All day the prisoners were subjected to grinding slave labor, after which they needed rest above all in order to recover. However, the truth was that these “spiritual injections,” as Dr. Baeck calls them, the courses and the homilies, far from weakening these Jews, actually strengthened them, revived them, and gave them new energies to endure the cruelties of the camp.
  “I shall never forget these meetings,” wrote Dr. Baeck. “We would assemble in pitch darkness. To light a candle or even a match would have brought immediate disaster upon all of us. Nevertheless, in the midst of all that darkness I sensed light. The faces of these Jews were illuminated by an unearthly radiance, as one was talking to them about matters of the spirit and the eternal questions, about God, about Jews and the world, about the eternity of Israel. I sensed a light in that darkness, the light of the Torah.” His listeners would assure the rabbi that the study and the lectures not only strengthened them spiritually, but even their physical stamina was improved by them. “I often contemplated my people,” concludes Dr. Baeck, “their faces I could not distinguish, but I saw great light.” 16<i class="footnote">Eliav, p. 135; cf. <i>Morgen Journal</i>, Sept. 9, 1945.</i>
  They Found Home
  Two brothers were hiding in the ghetto of Cracow after it had been emptied of all its population. After months of a foxlike existence they were finally caught by the Germans. By one of those inexplicable quirks of fate, instead of being shot on sight they were sent to the special SS prison. To their great surprise, they found there a group of young <i>ḥasidim</i> who had been hiding in a bunker and, having been discovered, had also been brought there. Though they had been forced to change the bunker for the prison, their lifestyle had not changed in the least. As it was <i>Rosh Ḥodesh Iyar</i> (the first day of the month of Iyar), the young men were celebrating with a festive meal. Despite the fact that they only had a few small pieces of moldy bread, the joy of the customary <i>Rosh Ḥodesh</i> celebration was not lacking. They had no holy books with them, so they studied Torah by heart. These young <i>ḥasidim</i> sanctified the name of God right there in the SS prison by their exemplary conduct. That wretched hole in the SS kingdom was probably the purest spot in all of Cracow that day. Impressed by their sincerity and saintliness, the other prisoners and even the guards treated them with respect.
  In that place, the brothers also came across an old <i>meshumad</i> (apostate) of seventy. Thirty years earlier he had converted to Christianity and no one remembered his Jewish origin. Suddenly his Jewish consciousness burst forth within him. Together with his entire family he surrendered to the Gestapo as Jews. This old <i>meshumad</i>, who came freely to share in the fate of all Jews, attached himself, with all his soul, to the young <i>ḥasidim</i> who spread such a spirit of holiness all around them.17<i class="footnote">Prager, I, p. 108.</i>
  Another one who found his spiritual home in the concentration camp tells how it happened to him. One day some Hungarian Jews were brought into his “block.” From then on that “block” became a Galician-Hungarian “Klaus” (a rather intimate place of worship, also known as a “shtiebel”) where Jews openly prayed, studied Torah, sang and danced. This “hubbub” of prayer and song influenced him deeply. For many years he had lived far removed from all religiosity. But as these Jews revived before him the image of Judaism of old, he gradually, imperceptibly even to himself, became like one of them. Slowly he was drawn into their inspiring ḥasidic singing and ecstatic dancing. He entered their world to such an extent that none of them would guess that this was a former heretic. Telling his story, this survivor confessed: “I felt like one who was freed from an oppressive load. There awakened within me the feeling that the believers call: Trust.”
  Another survivor tells of the most noble human being whom he ever knew, a young man of thirty by the name of Levin. He came to the camp from Riga. He had a higher education in law and in biology, his German was excellent and he also spoke several other European languages. Prior to the entry of the German hordes into Latvia he had been a freethinker, far removed from Judaism. However, already in the early days of the ghetto in Riga, as he came in contact with religious Jews he began to immerse himself in the study of Judaism and the problems of Jewish nationhood. Finally, he found his way back to the God of his fathers, he found faith, and a commitment to Judaism. When Levin arrived in the Paprovalna camp in Latvia, he was already a deeply religious Jew. He would engage in long discussions with fellow inmates about the foundations of Judaism, the importance of the divine commandments, and problems of Jewish-national existence. According to an eyewitness he often succeeded in convincing others that, indeed, there was divine providence over man and all God’s creation. He would pray conscientiously three times each day according to the rule. In the evening, when the day’s slavery was over, he would assemble the required quorum of a <i>minyan</i> for the evening service. Mondays and Thursdays he was wont to fast and to give his meagre portion of the allocated food ration to the weak and sick. Often he would lecture to people crowded around him in a darkened room with a seriousness and careful and dignified presentation worthy of a lecture hall under normal conditions and in normal times. His words penetrated the darkness within and around his fellow prisoners, for the truth of the <i>Baal Teshuvah</i> Levin had its root in another dimension; another reality was breaking through the grim borders of the camp.18<i class="footnote">Eliav, pp. 100–101.</i>
  The Ministerialrat
  A unique personality that could have arisen only in German Jewry was Hans Goslar. The child of a completely assimilated family, he discovered in a deep personal and existential sense both his people and the faith of his people. As a member of the Social Democratic party he was intensely involved in the political activities and struggles of his party. By profession he was a journalist and for thirteen years he held the office of Press Chief to the Prime Minister of Prussia. During all those years he was also an enthusiastic religious Zionist, in complete identification with the Jewish people and with Judaism. Those who knew Ministerialrat Goslar saw him as one of the most noble of human beings, one of the most sensitive of Jewish souls.19<i class="footnote">See the chapter on him in Yeshayahu Aviad (Wolfsberg), <i>Dyukna’ot</i>, Jerusalem, 1962.</i> When the Nazis came to power, he fled to Holland, where he was overtaken by the German armies that conquered that country. Together with his family he was taken to Bergen-Belsen. What was his life like in that man-made hell?
  Goslar was physically broken and sick in the camp, yet his faith was a source of spiritual energy that sustained the life of many with the light of Judaism. Those who knew him intimately say that he was in no way a great Jewish scholar, but he was a great believer. Nevertheless, in the camp Goslar became a teacher and a guide, gathering around him children from the age of six to sixteen. He taught them Torah, introduced them to the life view of Judaism, and discussed with them all kinds of subjects with a bearing on Jewish existence. On Sabbaths and Holy Days he succeeded in helping other Jews to elevate themselves above the frightening reality of the camp to the height of the spirit that purified the burdened souls of the inmates and transplanted them into another reality.
  “I remember,” tells a witness, “how on Friday nights we would assemble in a barracks that was filled with “beds” three tiers high. In the beds lay people with typhus and other diseases; all were hungry, suffering, and fearing for their lives daily. In conditions that defy all description, Goslar would sit on one of the upper bunks and speak to us about Sabbath rest, about the joy of Sabbath, about the holiness of Sabbath. True, we were far removed from any Sabbath rest; we were all forced to toil on the Sabbath as on any other day of the week. But as we were listening to the words of Goslar who spoke to us with a face shining with the light from another world, his voice ringing with the trust of a steadfast faith, entirely transfigured by a great joy, we forgot our gruesome state and on the wings of his inspiring words we were transposed to the tables in our fathers’ houses on the Sabbaths and Holy Days of times gone by…Goslar raised us from the depths of filth and defilement to the heights of faith, of joy, holiness and rest…Often we would burst out into the traditional Sabbath <i>Zemirot</i> (table songs). Though our voices were subdued because of the guards, yet we sang with trembling, and how happy we were!”20<i class="footnote">A reference to Psalms 2:11, “Serve ye God in fear, and rejoice with trembling.”</i>
  And so it was on all Holy Days. In the darkness of camp life, Hans Goslar recreated for his fellow Jews the very essence of the reality of each festival. “On <i>Simḥat Torah</i> Goslar was able to communicate to us his joy over the Torah with his enthusiasm for our holy Torah and for the people of the Torah. In spite of the terrible conditions in the camp, we felt then <i>Simḥat Torah</i>.” The same eyewitness recalls <i>Ḥanukkah</i> in Bergen-Belsen. Goslar searched and somehow succeeded in acquiring some margarine, a veritable treasure in the camp. Yet he denied himself the benefit of its food value and burned it instead to serve as <i>Ḥanukkah</i> candles. For those present, the burning of the lights in that camp was no less a miracle than the finding of the cruse of oil in the Temple by the Maccabees which became the foundation of the festival. “And how these candles lit up the darkness. With our own eyes we saw that they were holy. They were kindled with self-sacrificial devotion!”21<i class="footnote">Eliav, p. 36.</i>
  Pinche Steier
  Let the name stand for many others like him. Pinche was a young Jew in the ghetto of Bedzin. In 1942 he was among the lucky ones who were sent <i>only</i> to a work camp. His physical survival itself was a miracle as he lived chiefly on water and bread, refusing to eat non-kosher food. Somehow he got back to the Bedzin ghetto and lived with his wife and children in hiding. However, as he sneaked out from his hiding place in search of some water, he was caught by the Germans. The tortures to which he was subjected could not prevail upon him to betray the location of his family. Back in the work camp, Pinche was the only one who paid no attention to the commands of the camp overseer at the morning “Appell.” When everyone had to be in his place, Pinche could not be found. He was saying his morning prayers in some secret hole. Once, one afternoon, when all the slave laborers were standing in their columns ready to return to work, Pinche was again absent. After a great deal of searching, they found him in the attic of a house, sitting in a <i>sukkah</i>, celebrating the Festival of Tabernacles. He had built it secretly by removing a section of the roof. There he was chanting the traditional <i>ushpizin</i>, the mystical invitation to the exalted guests — Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, and David — asking them to share with him the festive meal in the <i>sukkah</i>. His punishment was seven days in solitary confinement in a dark cellar with only bread and water for food. This, however, had no detrimental effect on Pinche. He spent the entire seven days reciting Psalms in a loud voice. 22<i class="footnote">Unger, pp. 222–223.</i>
  A Boy
  Zalman Kleinman, one of the witnesses at the Eichmann trial, told how one day, as he was lying in his bunk in the children’s barracks at Auschwitz, he noticed the second-in-command in the barracks walking towards someone in order to punish him with a rubber truncheon. Since the truncheon was a more recent replacement for the traditional stick, which often broke in the middle of the beating, he got up from his bunk to see how this new instrument worked, so that he could know what to expect should he himself one day have to encounter it. The boy who was to be punished was ordered to come down from his bunk and to bend over. Surrounded by a group of children, he was beaten. The boy neither cried, nor even so much as moaned or sighed. The customary twenty-five lashes was increased to thirty, forty. But the boy was still completely silent. When the number fifty had been reached, the German fell into a fit of madness and started beating the boy all over his body. Yet not a sound was heard from the lad — he was fourteen years old and did not cry. When the officer left, the victim was lifted from the floor by the other boys. Having recovered somewhat from the beating, he responded to their inquiry as to the reason for the punishment by saying, “It was well worthwhile. I brought several prayerbooks to my friends.”23<i class="footnote">Eliav, pp. 97–98.</i>
  A Girl from Hungary
  An Auschwitz survivor tells about a girl who was brought to Auschwitz with a transport from Hungary. She succeeded in smuggling in a prayerbook which her father had given her when she was forced to leave home. A Jewish calendar was stuck inside the hard covers of this <i>siddur</i>, written in small letters, with the dates of the Jewish holy days clearly underlined. This prayerbook was the treasure, the well-kept secret of her barracks and was protected by all the girls against any danger of discovery. At night, when all was quiet, when the Kapos and the SS women had gone or were asleep, the girl from Hungary would take her <i>siddur</i> from its hiding place and read chapters from the Book of Psalms to the other girls. Reading the verses in the Hebrew original and translating them into Yiddish, she chose mainly chapters and verses of comfort and consolation: “…The wicked will return to the nether world…like the chaff that the wind disperses…” They knew that Heaven’s vengeance on the Nazi murderers and SS women would not fail, but not whether they themselves would live to see it. The readings from the little prayerbook brought a few hours of sanctity to the inmates of that barracks as they lay in their bunks.
  On the night before <i>Pesaḥ</i> (Passover), the girls woke each other at a given signal, in order to listen to the plan of the girl from Hungary how to carry out the <i>Seder</i> without <i>matzot</i> and without all the other material ingredients needed for the celebration. She told them:
  “Tomorrow, after midnight, we shall arrange our <i>Seder</i>, not altogether differently from the way it was done by the Marranos in Spain. True, there are neither <i>matzot</i>, nor the Four Cups, nor anything else that would be normally required, but we shall use our imagination. Each one of us will recall the <i>Seder</i> as it was celebrated at home. As I read the <i>Haggadah</i> from my <i>siddur</i>, we shall all remember the holy observance as it used to be. Each one of you will individually light and bless the holy day candles in her heart. When I read the blessings over the wine, as prescribed in the <i>Haggadah</i>, you will lick your lips and say, Amen.”
  And so they did that <i>Pesaḥ</i> night. One of the surviving participants of that <i>Seder</i> affirmed that it was the only <i>Seder</i> night whose memory will forever remain fresh in her mind.24<i class="footnote">Unger, p. 78.</i>
  The Old Woman
  She appears in the testimony of the German engineer H.F. Gerbah. Her hair was white like snow. In her arms she held a one-year-old child. She stood at the edge of the communal pit into which she and the others were to be pushed, murdered, and buried. The child was crying. Where was his mother; where did he belong? The old woman held him and sang a song for the child; she tickled him playfully until he laughed with joy. Then the Germans proceeded to do their job with Teutonic mightiness.25<i class="footnote"><i>HaAmidah haYehudit biTekufat haSho’ah, Diyunim beKinus Ḥokrei haSho’ah; Nisan 9–13, 5728 A.M.</i>, Jerusalem, 1970.</i>
  Shlomo Zlichovsky
  Was he a simple Jew? Only in the sense that, prior to the drama of his death that made his name a legend in the world of the ghettos and camps, he was a Jew like so many others, imbued with the pious faith of a young <i>ḥasid</i>. On <i>Erev Shavu’ot</i>, the day before the festival of <i>Mattan Torah</i>, the revelation of the Torah at Sinai, in the year 5703 A.M. (1943), in Zdunska-Wola, near Lodz, the Germans ordered all the ghetto inhabitants to assemble in the market place. Nothing was said about the purpose of that assembly, but the Jews knew well what to expect. The Jewish holy days were favorite occasions of the Germans, specially chosen for practicing their murderous inhumanity. On the previous day, ten Jews, mainly from among the <i>ḥasidim</i>, had been arrested under the spurious accusation of “sabotage.” Since a similar event had occurred the previous <i>Purim</i>, when the same number of Jews were arrested under the same circumstances and then publicly hanged, the Jews feared a repetition of the tragedy. The number ten, on both occasions, was intentional. On <i>Purim</i>, the Germans meant to “avenge” the hanging of the ten sons of Haman; this time the number ten was the symbolical revenge for the Ten Commandments, with which Judaism had burdened the conscience of man.
  Among the ten arrested was Shlomo Zlichovsky. Little is known about his background, although according to one survivor who knew him personally prior to his incarceration in the ghetto, he was the son of a well-known <i>ḥasid</i> in Pabyanitse. Every year, at the conclusion of the <i>Pesaḥ</i> and <i>Sukkot</i> festivals, Shlomo’s father, Reb Moshe Gedaliah, used to invite all the children who studied in the local <i>ḥadarim</i>26<i class="footnote">The <i>ḥeder</i>, pl. <i>ḥadarim</i> (lit. “room”), was a kind of all-day elementary school where, from an early age, boys studied the foundations of Judaism, viz. reading Hebrew, Bible, Mishnah and elementary Talmud.</i> to a party in ḥasidic style. He would teach them ḥasidic tunes and songs, and, in the words of our witness and participant, on those occasions Reb Moshe Gedaliah would turn the <i>shtetl</i> “upside down,” by walking through the streets with the children singing, keeping the whole town awake till midnight. Shlomo, who was a <i>melamed</i>, a teacher of young children, apoparently followed in the footsteps of his father. On the High Holidays he would be a <i>Shali’aḥ Ẓibbur</i>,27<i class="footnote">The <i>Shali’aḥ Ẓibbur</i> is the representative of the praying community, leading it in public worship. To render the phrase as “cantor” would be misleading. Often the office would be one of honor, granted to a pious and respected member of the community, who would render his service without any remuneration.</i> with a choir of boys from the local community to assist him.
  The Germans prepared for the hanging of the ten innocent human beings as if it were a popular carnival, bringing their wives and mistresses and other interested parties to the “entertainment.” In their prison, the ten Jews made themselves ready for the ultimate test. At the suggestion of Shlomo Zlichovsky they observed the day as a private and personal <i>Yom Kippur</i>, fasting all day and reciting the entire <i>Yom Kippur</i> order of prayers. Shlomo served as the <i>Shah’aḥ Ẓibbur.</i> However, he did not complete the <i>Ne’ilah</i>, the concluding service of <i>Yom Kippur.</i> As they were taken from the prison to the market place, Shlomo Zlichovsky, at the head of the group marching to the gallows, intoned the unfinished part of the <i>Ne’ilah</i> service, with a voice and a joyous devotion that, for the assembled Jews of the ghetto, transformed what the Germans intended to be a degradation and crushing of the spirit into a triumph of the Jewish soul.
  An eyewitness speaks: “Then, as the last preparations were being made for the hanging, I, too, looked into the face of Shlomo Zlichovsky. It was smiling with joy. I stood in the crowded place, in the midst of many humiliated Jews. But suddenly a spirit of encouragement passed over all of us. The gallows were standing in a row, under each of them a chair in readiness. The Germans were in no hurry. A pity to waste a single moment of the ‘entertainment.’ But Shlomo Zlichovsky, still singing, urged them on: ‘Nu!’ (come on already), and jumped on the chair in order to put his head into the hanging loop. Some moments passed. We all held our breath. Deathly silence came over the market place…a silence that found its redemption as Shlomo Zlichovsky’s mighty voice was shattering it in his triumphant ‘<i>Shema Yisra’el</i>.’ We were all elevated; we were exalted. We shouted…without a voice; cried…without tears; straightened up…without a movement; and called, called altogether in the innermost recesses of our souls: ‘<i>Shema Yisra’el</i>.’ ”28<i class="footnote">Eliav, pp. 128–138.</i>
  Two Partners
  In Buchenwald, of all places, there was one spot that was a kind of spiritual center in the midst of all that filth and misery. In one of the blocks a group of ḥasidim had established themselves on the fourth tier of the boards that served as beds. They had sought out the highest row of boards intentionally, as it removed them, to some extent, from what was going on in the rest of the room. Thus they could pray, study and talk of ḥasidism relatively undisturbed. Nevertheless, their influence was felt by all the others in the same barracks and so their tier became known as the <i>Tahara Bretter</i>, “the boards of purity.” This group of Jews had come to Buchenwald from Auschwitz during the last phases of the war when many Jews were moved to those concentration camps which were nearer to Germany. As the result of the search to which they had been subjected in the shadow of the ovens, they arrived bereft of everything they had been able to “organize” and hide in Auschwitz. It was impossible to smuggle anything into their new camp and so they were now without a pair of <i>tefillin</i>, which had been their most precious possession. They could not fathom the possibility of an existence without <i>tefillin.</i> But God helps! Unexpectedly, there appeared before them a saving angel in the person of a Ukrainian Kapo, dressed in his black uniform. He was willing to “organize” a pair of <i>tefillin</i> from the SS stores, but demanded in return the exorbitant price of four rations of bread. Although the entire group was originally involved in the negotiations, most of them hesitated paying the required price. Their reasoning was based on halakhic considerations. Four rations of bread meant life for a while, possible survival. Was it not suicidal to forgo it? According to the Torah, was it permissible to go ahead with the transaction? Finally the deal was concluded by only two members of the group, Ya’akov Frenkel and Avraham Eliyahu Weiss, who, pushing aside all halakhic reservations, bought the <i>tefillin</i> in partnership. “We prayed with them with a fervor the like of which is impossible to experience ever again in life.”29<i class="footnote">Prager, II, p. 132.</i>
  These two partners in the <i>tefillin</i> deal at Buchenwald were also engaged in another unique transaction. This time it was not with a Ukrainian guard, but with each other. One day Avraham Eliyahu approached his partner Ya’akov with a “business” proposition. He was going to sell him one bread ration. He suggested that his partner, in view of his extremely weak physical condition, had better accept the deal. Ya’akov wondered what he would have to pay for the bread. The price that his friend desired was a page of <i>Gemara</i> or some <i>mishnayot</i> that Ya’akov knew by heart and would undertake to teach him in return. Ya’akov agreed to the deal only after a group of friends, assembled by both for the purpose of adjudging the case, agreed that Ya’akov was indeed in much greater need of that piece of bread than his partner.30<i class="footnote"><i>Ibid.</i></i>
  <i>Shavuot</i> in Liberated Buchenwald
  A survivor of Buchenwald was walking back to the camp, soon after its liberation, having helped bury the mounds of bodies that had been dumped all over the camp. He was pondering the words of the <i>Kaddish</i> that he would recite over the mass graves: “Magnified and exalted be His great name.” What would now become of the Jewish people, what of Judaism, after this incomprehensible disaster? To him, the face of every Jewish inmate in the camp mirrored a vivid picture of the Jewish people. A crippled and shrunken people, a race which had suffered the most tremendous spiritual, as well as physical, onslaught in the history of mankind; a race of orphans, widows and widowers; a race of mourning fathers, of saddened mothers whose babies had been snatched away from their breasts; of sons who have seen their fathers, brothers, and sisters burnt to ashes while still half-alive. He was wondering if anyone would care to hear again of God, Judaism or religion. Yes, of course, the liberators would now all come and provide the survivors with food, drugs and medical aid. The Americans would flood them with cigarettes, chocolate and vitamins. But who would provide the religious serum which was so necessary to instill some spirit of Godliness into a hopeless, crushed, people? His father, who could have guided him in that hour of mental anguish, was no longer. Where was he to turn? Where to go? How to start anew? To his great surprise, it was right there, in the midst of the pyres of the camp, in the hell of Buchenwald, that he found himself, and experienced what he called his religious revival. A few days before his scheduled departure from Buchenwald, an announcement came over the camp loudspeaker that the Jewish chaplain to the American forces would be conducting religious services that evening, which was the beginning of <i>Shavu’ot</i>, the festival of the Torah revelation at Sinai.
  He wondered: was this not too early? Were not the survivors being put to the test too soon? Who among those thousands of physical and mental cripples would want to attend services and prayers so soon after their tragic experience? The festival of receiving the Torah! Indeed! Our survivor felt that the loudspeaker announcement was a challenge to all of them and to their loyalties. But this is how he summed up the camp’s response to the challenge:
  “…just as you cannot measure the physical strength of an oppressed people, so you cannot gauge its spiritual wealth and power. On that evening, Buchenwald staged a unique demonstration of faith and loyalty to God. Thousands of liberated Jews crowded into the specifically vacated block for the first post-war Jewish religious service to be held on the soil of defeated Germany. The <i>Muselmänner</i>, the cripples, the injured, and the weak came to demonstrate to the world that the last ounce of their strength, the last drop of their blood, and the last breaths of their lives belonged to God, to Torah, and to the Jewish religion.
  “As Chaplain Schechter intoned the evening prayers, all the inmates in and outside the block stood in silence, reaccepting the Torah whose people, message, and purpose Hitler’s Germany attempted to destroy. Jewish history repeated itself. Just as our forefathers who were liberated from Egypt accepted the law in the desert, so did we, the liberated Jews of Buchenwald, reaccept the same Law in a concentration camp in Germany.”31<i class="footnote">J. Glatstein, I. Knox, S. Margolis (eds.), <i>Anthology of Holocaust Literature</i>, Philadelphia, 1969, pp. 262–263.</i>
  * * * * *
  Such are only a few examples, chosen at random from among many thousands which demonstrate such a mightiness of faith, such unsurpassed integrity of character and conscience. The ghettos and concentration camps that saw so much demoralization and human degradation were also the holy of holies on this earth. In those long and dark years, when mankind was silently standing by as the most barbarous crime in all human history was willfully perpetrated by one of the technologically most advanced nations of the world, it was in the ghettos and the concentration camps that the dignity of man was safeguarded, where the faith of man reached its highest manifestation, commensurate in its greatness to the abysmal depths of the moral bankruptcy of Western civilization.
  Yizhak Katzenelson, the great Jewish poet of the Holocaust, immortalized the walk of Shlomo Zlichovsky from the prison to the gallows. Katzenelson calls upon heaven and earth to sing that name, the name of the man who redeemed human dignity on earth. The poet comforts this poor, degraded globe of ours:
  Sing!
  Comfort ye,
  Comfort ye, my earth,
  Speak to the heart of the fallen one:
  Hail unto thee, earth!
  …graced and blessed…
  Who are all your heroes
  compared to the one
  hanged there in the market place
  of Zdunska-Wola?
  God Himself,
  smiles sadly,
  wrapt in brilliance.
  For Shlomo Zlichovsky has found favor in His eyes,
  the man and the song.
  He loves His son,
  Shlomo, the weak, the pale one.
  Who in all the earth is mighty like he!
  It is for this one that God prayed when He created man.
  “Oh, the realization of My dream,
  of My longings.
  My chosen one,
  whom my soul desires.”
  Everyone of the examples presented here stands for the conduct of thousands of others and Katzenelson’s praise of Shlomo Zlichovsky is shared by many. The few of whom we have heard are a reflection of the continuity of Judaism in the most extreme conditions. Each one, in his own most personal life, reflects the eternity of Israel.
  
  2 Guarding the Divine Image
  
  It has been shown that concentration camp behavior was mainly determined by instinct. This was probably nowhere more true than in the area of the prisoner’s attitude to food. Hunger was the most terrible and most degrading scourge of the camps. Victor Frankl describes the continuous preoccupation of camp inmates, even the strongest of them, with food. Even the noblest of them, among whom we may certainly count Frankl himself, were obsessed by a longing for the time when they would again have good food, “not for the sake of good food itself, but for the sake of knowing that the sub-human existence, which had made us unable to think of anything other than food, would at last cease.”1<i class="footnote"><i>From Deathcamp to Existentialism</i>, Boston, 1959, p. 30.</i>
  Elie A. Cohen, in his volume on concentration camp behavior, maintains that “hunger recognized no restraints of any kind” and quotes the remark of another author that hunger “incites every kind of baseness.” He offers a striking example of the demoralizing force of hunger from a study by H.A. Bloch, <i>The Personality of Inmates of Concentration Camps</i>,2<i class="footnote"><i>American Journal of Sociology</i>, vol. LII, 1946/7.</i> citing the case of a cultured and aristocratic British woman, French by marriage. She was noted in her former life for her “generosity, benevolence, and humanitarian interest.” But she herself told how she would look for sick inmates in the camp and would help them with their food. When, as often happened, they would refuse to eat, instead of encouraging them further, she would be only too glad to take from them whatever they would leave. With remarkable honesty, Cohen continues to say that he had chosen this example because he himself did the same thing in the sick bay of the concentration camp of Amersfoort. “I ‘helped’ the sick to eat, and, while begrudging them every bite, I would wait until they refused further food and offered me the remainder in gratitude for my ‘help.’ Nor did I take any pains to press more food on the sick prisoners.”3<i class="footnote"><i>Human Behavior in the Concentration Camp</i>, New York, 1953, p. 138.</i>
  Cohen gives us a poignant description of actual behavior in matters of food. When food was brought in, a wave of excitement would engulf the inmates such as one might otherwise observe only among animals. Giving an example from his own experience, he tells that when there were not enough soup bowls to go around, he could hardly contain his impatience as he waited for another man to gulp down his soup and pass on the bowl to him. Then, without being able to delay any longer until he cleaned the bowl, he would take his ration with “trembling hands.” He also describes the suspense that would come over him “when the soup was being ladled out from a ‘good kettle.’ ” Would it still be a “good kettle” when his turn came?4<i class="footnote"><i>Ibid.</i>, p. 132.</i> In discussing this aspect of concentration camp behavior, it is, of course, not our intention to judge or criticize. Who, in all honesty, would dare do that! The dehumanizing force of such continued hunger is not only understandable, but also natural. And yet, as we shall see, there were those who rose above such deprivations and degradations, by responding to them as religious Jews, placing the requirements of Jewish religious law above the demands of their bodies and their minds.
  The dietary laws of Judaism gave rise to numerous questions concerning proper conduct with regard to food in the ghettos and the concentration camps. These questions were usually decided on the basis of the overriding force of the biblical commandment to preserve one’s life. The Torah was given for people to live by. Religious Jews who stood in line to receive their share of soup from the camp kitchen did so with the understanding that by that act they were fulfilling the divine commandment “and you shall greatly guard your life.”5<i class="footnote">This is the midrashic rendering of the first words of Deuteronomy 4:9, often used to emphasize the precedence given to the commandment of preserving and protecting life.</i> What they were doing was demanded of them by the Torah, the same Torah for which, if need be, they were willing to give their very lives.
  When there is a possible danger to life because of inadequate food supplies, a Jew is permitted to eat whatever food is available. However, in the ghettos, people whose survival was not immediately threatened by hunger asked whether they were permitted to partake of the soup from the communal kitchen, which was not <i>kasher</i>, in order to preserve their strength for the future, or whether they were obligated to deny themselves that soup until they were so weakened that possible immediate danger to their health would exist. In other words, does the consideration for survival override the dietary laws only when the threat is immediate, or should those laws be disregarded in the present even though the exigency might arise only at some future date? One should bear in mind that the question is <i>not</i> whether a law of the Torah may be broken in an emergency for one is never permitted to transgress the law. The question is: what is the law in such an emergency? The law will prescribe that in a given situation one specific law supersedes another specific law. Thus the Torah determines that in case of possible danger to life, the law of preserving one’s life takes precedence over the dietary laws. In the case under discussion, it was ruled on the basis of available halakhic source material, that the duty to preserve one’s life would obligate the questioner to make use of the opportunity to sustain his strength and health with the available food in order to be better able to meet the challenge of survival in the ghetto as it may arise in the future.6<i class="footnote">Ephraim Oshry, <i>She’elot uTeshuvot MiMa’amakim</i>, 4 vols., New York, 1959–75; vol. I, chapter 2.</i>
  One Buchenwald survivor tells how he once witnessed a careful halakhic explanation by one Reb Motel Zneimirovsky of Pietrokov of how one should eat food which was normally forbidden. Since according to biblical law one commits a sin only by consuming a certain measure of forbidden food, there are opinions that when one partakes of a <i>ḥaẓi she’ur</i>, of less than that measure, one has transgressed only a rabbinic command. Even according to the contrary opinions, a <i>ḥaẓi she’ur</i> is a less serious transgression.7<i class="footnote">Cf. T.B. <i>Yoma</i> 73b.</i> He therefore advised that all non-kosher food should be taken in very small portions and thus the degree of transgression would be minimized.8<i class="footnote">Prager, II, p. 130.</i>
  Jews in the camps were confronted with a unique problem on <i>Purim</i> when part of the celebration consists of giving gifts of food to each other. How could they fulfill this <i>mitzvah</i> of <i>mishlo’aḥ manot ish lere’ehu?</i> After all, the most precious possession in the camps was the daily bread ration. Giving it away was not exactly the problem: one would receive in return a similar gift from a friend. But at the Eichenwald camp, for instance, several days’ bread ration was handed out in advance. Because of the conditions of continuous starvation, people could hardly ever control their hunger so as to be able to save a part of the ration from one day to another. To save enough bread in order to be able to give it to a fellow inmate at the right moment on <i>Purim</i> required heroic self-control. The Jews at Eichenwald, however, had been well trained in the art of self-control. Every Friday night they were engaged in a similar exercise. As a rule, on Friday nights the food was given out in the following order: first the soup and afterwards the bread. But before eating on a Friday night one has to sanctify the Sabbath by reciting the <i>Kiddush</i>. According to religious law, one could say <i>Kiddush</i> over the bread, but not over the soup. So some bread had to be saved during the week to be available on the Sabbath eve at the time when the soup was given out. Only one who has some idea of the demoralizing power of hunger in the camps may be able to realize the magnitude of the effort that such self-control demanded. Because of their weekly Sabbath discipline, the slave laborers at Eichenwald were able to fulfill the commandment of <i>mishlo’aḥ manot</i> to each other with joy on <i>Purim</i>.9<i class="footnote"><i>Ibid.</i>, p. 164.</i>
  The problem of halakhically permitted food arose with special sharpness in the camps at the time of the <i>Pesaḥ</i> festival. In normal circumstances, in memory of the Exodus, all <i>ḥameẓ</i> (leavened bread) is forbidden. But what was one to do according to the <i>halakhah</i> in a concentration camp on Passover? Of course, it could have been ruled quite simply that if one did not eat the meagre bread ration for the eight days of the festival, the threat to life was immediate. Yet numerous Jews were hesitant to eat <i>ḥameẓ</i> on <i>Pesaḥ</i>. The decision of one Yoshua Alterman on the last <i>Pesaḥ</i> of the war in the camp at Waldenburg has been preserved. Very likely he was not a rabbi, but a plain Jew who — like so many in Eastern Europe — was learned in the Torah. He told his fellow prisoners: “Though it is <i>Pesaḥ</i>, you are all obligated to eat <i>ḥameẓ</i>, the leavened bread of the camp. I, however, am strong enough. I must not, for I can do without it.” His friends, who only reluctantly accepted his decision, were now confronted with another problem. Ushering in the festival in the evening, the traditional <i>Seder</i> night, they would have to recite <i>Kiddush</i>, the prayer of sanctification for the day. Wine, over which <i>Kiddush</i> is normally said, was of course not available at Buchenwald for the <i>Seder</i>. As we have seen, in the absence of wine, one may recite the <i>Kiddush</i> over bread on a Friday night, but was it conceivable that one should start “the festival of unleavened bread” with <i>Kiddush</i> over <i>ḥameẓ?!</i>10<i class="footnote"><i>Ibid.</i>, p. 155.</i> An entirely different light was thrown on this problem in another part of the Holocaust empire. A young man had decided that under no circumstances would he eat bread on the <i>Seder</i> night but would keep the evening bread ration for the next day. He was, however, advised by a <i>Talmid Ḥakham</i>, a talmudic scholar in the camp, to eat his bread ration immediately upon receiving it. Since there is a biblical prohibition even against having <i>ḥameẓ</i> in one’s possession at all during Passover, it was better for him to get rid of the bread as soon as possible.11<i class="footnote">Unger, p. 319.</i>
  Even in the death camps many Jews performed the elementary, essential act of eating with disciplined behavior in obedience to the guidance of the Torah. Nowhere was this willingness to submit to the discipline of the <i>halakhah</i> more movingly expressed than in a special prayer, composed in the concentration camps, which was said prior to eating <i>ḥameẓ</i> on <i>Pesaḥ</i>. In many communities, especially in Eastern Europe, it used to be customary to say a short devotional formula prior to the fulfillment of a divine commandment. It began: “I am prepared and ready to fulfill this commandment…as it is written in Thy Torah…” These words were also used at various points in the <i>Seder</i> service itself. But in the camps, where there was no possibility of fulfilling any of the requirements, they prayed prior to eating the bread:
  “Our Father in Heaven! It is open and known before You that it is our will to do Your will to celebrate the festival of <i>Pesaḥ</i> by eating <i>matzah</i> and refraining from leavened bread. With aching heart we must realize that our slavery prevents us from such celebration. Since we find ourselves in a situation of <i>Sakkanat Nefashot</i>, of danger to our lives (should we not eat this bread), we are prepared and ready to fulfill Your commandment, ‘And thou shalt live by them (by the commandments of the Torah), but not die by them;’ and we are warned by Your warning. ‘Be very careful and guard your life.’ Therefore we pray to you that You maintain us in life and hasten to redeem us that we may observe Your statutes and do Your will and serve You with a perfect heart. Amen!”12<i class="footnote">Eliav, p. 186.</i>
  From the Kaldiz labor camp, which was a branch of Buchenwald, comes a typical story about the camp atmosphere at the approach of the <i>Pesaḥ</i> festival. It was in the spring of 1945. The German armies were being beaten on all fronts and there was hope in the hearts of the prisoners. Hope and fear: would they be able to hold out to the end that seemed so near? But the immediate challenge that loomed especially large before a group of ḥasidim was how to get through eight days of <i>Pesaḥ</i> without eating any bread. Since <i>matzah</i> was, of course, not to be had, their idea was to exchange their daily bread ration for soup. There were always prisoners who were willing to enter into such a transaction. However, when <i>Pesaḥ</i> came, the law of supply and demand became operative and the price of the soup rose out of all proportion to its actual value. Those Jews who were resolved to observe the <i>Pesaḥ</i> festival — even beyond the requirements of the <i>halakhah</i> — paid the exorbitant price for some thin soup. For the eight days of the festival they gave up their bread ration. Their already weakened physical condition declined further, but at the same time their spiritual alertness and energy reached unexpected heights. They prayed; they sang the traditional festival melodies; they rejoiced with the <i>mitzvah</i> of celebration. Without paying any attention to the guards, they arranged daily communal services in the camp. They recited the <i>Hallel</i>, the hymns of praise, and sang ḥasidic melodies together. One of the survivors makes the comment: “It may well be that their determination not to partake of bread, notwithstanding the starvation, equipped them with strength beyond that of other camp inmates.”13<i class="footnote">Prager, II, p. 154.</i>
  There existed a clear realization among many Jews of the terrible impact of the trial by hunger. As one of them put it: “In the camps people lose the divine image. All the thoughts, all the desires, all talk and all the quarrels, all the dreams and all the visions — everything centered around the single subject: bread, soup, margarine.”14<i class="footnote"><i>Ibid.</i>, I, pp. 68, 150.</i> It was understood that when one reached that stage one had lost one’s human status. It should, however, be borne in mind that in Judaism human dignity is inseparable from the sanctity of the divine, for man was created in the image of God. This is the secret of his humanity. To guard that image, to live in a manner which is worthy of it, is his responsibility on earth. Nothing could threaten the <i>Ẓelem Elohim</i>, the Divine Image, more than hunger. Seeing himself as the bearer of God’s image gave many a Jew the strength to retain his humanity in the midst of starvation. And every time his wretched meal was handed to him, he performed what in the conditions of the camps was an act of supreme self-discipline by pausing before eating it in order to say the <i>berakhah:</i>
  “Blessed art Thou Eternal, our God, king of the Universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.
  Blessed art Thou Eternal, our God, king of the Universe, by whose word everything comes into being.”
  
  3 Matters of Life and Death
  
  The principle “and thou shalt live by them” had its ramification in a halakhic question far removed from the dietary laws. The duty to preserve one’s life implies that it is forbidden for a Jew to commit suicide. In fact, according to all records, the number of suicides among Eastern European Jews in the inhuman conditions of the ghettos was surprisingly low. Yet, one day, in the ghetto of Kovno, a pious Jew presented a rabbi with the following question. He intended to commit suicide; was he permitted to do so? He knew well that under normal conditions suicide was a sin. However, during the massacres in the ghetto he saw that it was the game of the Germans to murder children in the presence of their parents. He could not endure the thought that this might happen to him. Secondly, people who were deported from the ghettos by the Germans would not be buried traditionally among other Jews. If, however, he died in the ghetto, he would be sure that he would be brought to <i>Kever Yisrael</i>, be buried in a Jewish cemetery. The rabbi, basing himself on the precedent of King Saul, who committed suicide in order to save himself from humiliation by the enemy,1<i class="footnote">I Samuel 31:4.</i> accepted the reasoning of the man and ruled that in his case, he was permitted according to <i>halakhah</i> to kill himself. However, he insisted that his ruling not be made public; one was obligated not to despair but to show trust in God.2<i class="footnote">Oshry, I, chapter 6.</i>
  Even though, on the one hand, one was never to despair, the requirements of the <i>halakhah</i> did not allow Jews to forget the true nature of their situation. To trust in God does not mean fooling oneself regarding the prospects of tomorrow. According to talmudic teaching, those who escape from any dangerous situation or crisis should offer thanks to God by saying the blessing <i>Birkhat haGomel:</i> “Blessed art Thou Eternal, our God, king of the universe, who renderest goodness to the guilty, and hast rendered all good to me.”3<i class="footnote">T.B. <i>Berakhot</i> 54b; based on Psalm 107.</i> After one of the worst “selections,” when thousands of Jews had been forcibly removed from a certain ghetto, the remaining community asked the following question. In view of the fact that they had escaped being selected and transported to the only too-well-known “unknown destination,” were they obligated to recite the <i>Birkhat haGomel?</i> The answer they received was in the negative for two reasons. Firstly, having escaped one “selection” was no real escape. In essence the danger had not passed and might reoccur at any time. Secondly, reciting a thanksgiving blessing for having been saved would lull the people into a false sense of security. Thus, it was ruled that the situation did not warrant the recitation of the blessing.4<i class="footnote">Oshry, I, chapter 7.</i>
  A similar awareness of reality was manifest in another decision. The question arose in the ghetto whether it was required for the doorposts there to have the <i>mezuzah</i> fixed to them as prescribed in the Torah. It appears that there were difficulties in acquiring the necessary materials for the preparation of <i>mezuzot</i> in accordance with halakhic specifications. This time, too, the answer was in the negative. The law is that a <i>mezuzah</i> does not have to be affixed to a temporary abode and one could certainly not look upon the ghetto dwellings as anything permanent. This was tragically true especially in the light of the ever-increasing “selections” which made the stay of everyone in the ghetto of only limited and uncertain duration. In addition, a <i>mezuzah</i> has to be affixed only to the doors of living quarters, but not, for instance, to the entrance of a bathroom. The ghetto homes could not be considered to have the dignity of living quarters. Furthermore, one has to attach the <i>mezuzah</i> to a place where one lives in freedom, but not, for instance, to the door of a prison cell. No one would dispute that the ghetto was nothing else but a prison.5<i class="footnote"><i>Ibid.</i>, chapter 13.</i>
  Implied in the halakhic awareness of the desperate nature of their situation was also an evaluation of the enemy and their relation to him that was occasionally formulated halakhically. Following a biblical injunction,6<i class="footnote">Numbers 15:37-41.</i> the Jew wears a four-cornered garment, usually under his shirt, to the corners of which “fringes,” <i>ẓiẓiyot</i>, are attached. The “fringes” are to be made out of wool, but where could suitable wool be obtained for this purpose in the ghetto? There was one place where the necessary materials could be found. The warehouses of the Germans were bursting with plunder and there was no treasure that they did not contain. Notwithstanding the danger involved, the workers there could always “organize” something and so the possibility existed of taking the wool from the warehouses. The question was asked whether it was permissible to steal wool from the German plunder and use it for the making of the “fringes.” Now it is doubtful that this question was ever asked in a general sense, i.e., was it permissible to steal from the SS stores. “Organizing” was one of the means of survival both in the ghettos and in the camps. The question was asked in the specific context of the wool being used for the fulfillment of a divine commandment. A halakhic principle rejects a <i>mitzvah haBa’ah beAvera</i>, that is, it is forbidden to commit a sin in order to be able to perform a <i>mitzvah</i>. The end does not justify the means. In the entire dark history of the ghettos and concentration camps only a Jewish conscience could have asked such a question. The answer went something like this: We know that the contents of the German stores are, on the whole, stolen goods. Of course, one must not steal from a thief or a robber. But undoubtedly, in this case the original owners have given up all hope of recovery of their property. In accordance, therefore, with normal halakhic principles, the ruling results that wool “organized” from the German plunder may be used for the making of the “fringes.” The Germans had the halakhic determination of a <i>rodef</i>, one who pursues another person in order to kill him. The law is that one may kill the <i>rodef</i> in order to save the pursued.7<i class="footnote">T.B. <i>Sanhedrin</i> 72b.</i> But not only may the life of the <i>rodef</i> be taken; his property, too, is forfeit.8<i class="footnote">Oshry, I, chapter 12.</i>
  In the life-and-death struggle of the ghettos and the camps, most halakhic questions were decided in context of the commandment to preserve life, which takes precedence in almost all cases. For example, in view of the fact that all women who become pregnant were automatically condemned to death, birth control was permitted in the ghetto. There are, of course, precedents for this in certain cases in the Talmud.9<i class="footnote">T.B. <i>Yevamot</i> 12b.</i> Similarly, abortion was permitted on the basis of the established halakhic principle of “the mother’s life comes before that of the embryo.”10<i class="footnote">See, for example, Mishnah <i>Ohalot</i>, 7.</i> However, while the principle “and thou shalt live by them” is normally paramount, there were numerous situations where its adequate application was extremely problematic and was often even overruled by still higher considerations. For instance, is one permitted to offer oneself to be killed in order to save another person? There is, indeed, the principle that one shall <i>live</i> by the commandments of the Torah, but is not this, too, living by them, giving life to another person?
  This question was presented to Rabbi Z.H. Meisels in Auschwitz where a group of young boys had been “selected” and separated in one of the barracks to be taken to the crematoria. Among them were some <i>baḥurim</i> (students) from Rabbi Meisels’ former yeshivah. All kinds of deals could usually be made with the <i>Kapos</i> who guarded such “selected” groups and it was even possible to have a person released from the group, if someone else was willing to take his place. The Germans were only interested that the numbers of those destined for the crematoria be exact. In this case, another former student of Rabbi Meisels came to him, offering himself to be exchanged for one of those “selected.” His argument was that the other <i>baḥur</i> was an outstanding student. If allowed to live, he would become a great <i>Talmid Ḥakham</i>, a great scholar and spiritual leader, and thus of enormous value for the future of Judaism. He considered himself, on the other hand, to be a rather mediocre person, without any distinguishing gifts or abilities. Nothing that he might yet achieve in life could surpass the deed of saving the other student from death. But he was forbidden by the rabbi to do it. In cases of this nature the principle, “your life comes first” must apply.11<i class="footnote">Meisels, introduction.</i>
  There were, however, also situations of a much vaster dimension and of a different quality, where “your life comes first” was unequivocally condemned. These situations often involved the very questionable, though memorable, part that the <i>Judenrat</i>, the Jewish councils established by the Germans in the ghettos, played in the tragedy.
  On the 15th of September, 1941, in the ghetto of Kovno, the <i>Aeltestenrat</i> was given 5000 “white cards” to be distributed among tradesmen who were to be employed in the various German workshops. Only they and their families were to remain within the ghetto. At that time there were about thirty thousand people in the ghetto, among them ten thousand workingmen and their families. There was panic among the people. Some even stormed the offices of the <i>Aeltestenrat</i> to grab the white cards. In this situation a two-fold question was put to the local rabbi: 1) Was it permissible for the <i>Aeltestenrat</i> to accept the cards and to distribute them? 2) Was it right for people to take cards by force and thus save themselves? There was a precedent of a similar nature which had been dealt with in the Talmud and accepted as binding <i>halakhah</i>. A group of people of whom gentiles demand the surrender of one of them “ ‘that we may kill him, and if not we shall kill you all,’ let them all die rather than that they should surrender a single Jew.”12<i class="footnote">See Tosefta <i>Terumot</i> 7:23; T.J. <i>Terumot</i> 8:1; Maimonides, <i>Mishneh Torah, Hilkot Yesodei haTorah</i>, 5:5; <i>Shulḥan Arukh, Yoreh De’ah</i>, 157:1. The only exception is in the case where the gentiles actually name the individual to be surrendered. Even then, basing himself on a similar opinion in the Talmud, Maimonides rules that person might only be handed over if he were guilty of a crime for which he had incurred the death penalty.</i> Therefore, whether the <i>Aeltestenrat</i> accepted the white cards or whether individuals took them by force, the result — the surrendering of the rest of the ghetto population into the hands of the murderers — seemed to be clearly prohibited. But the rabbi argued that the case at hand was not to be compared to the case presented in the Talmud. He maintained that since the plan of the Germans was to execute them all sooner or later, they were — as it were — in any case already as if dead. By accepting the cards one did not really cause the death of anyone else, one only saved the cardholders.13<i class="footnote"><i>Kuntres meEmek haBakha</i>.</i> Obviously, the rabbi’s intention was to find a halakhic basis, even in that situation of extreme challenge to the Jewish conscience, for saving as many Jews as possible.
  In a similar situation, however, another rabbi ruled differently. The head of the <i>Judenrat</i> in the ghetto of Lodz, Chaim Mordechai Rumkowski, conveyed a demand of the Germans in great secrecy to the local rabbinical council. If the <i>Judenrat</i> would transfer forty thousand Jews into their hands, the Germans would transform the remainder of the ghetto into a “labor camp”; if not, they would transport the entire ghetto population to places of extermination. The question: what was one to do, to submit or not to submit? Rabbi Nehemiah Alter, the brother of the “Gerer Rebbe,” gave his halakhic decision that it was forbidden to accede to the German demand. Quoting from the Talmud, he declared: “What makes you think that your blood is redder than that of your fellowmen!”14<i class="footnote">T.B. <i>Pesaḥim</i> 25b; Prager, II, p. 74.</i> His meaning was clear. By selecting forty thousand people to be delivered to the Germans, one was declaring them less worthy to be saved than others. Halakhically that is not admissible. Pragmatically this might indeed be possible. One could imagine the setting up of certain standards for selection, according to which the most “valuable” people were to be spared. But apart from the rather complicated problem of who is to establish those standards and on what basis, the pragmatic approach itself is rejected by the <i>halakhah</i> because it is ethically not acceptable. First of all, facing the ultimate threat to life all are equal. The qualitative consideration, too, is morally untenable. Not even one single life is to be surrendered, even in order to save an entire community. If one person volunteers and offers himself in order to save the community — and there were such cases during the Holocaust — that is a different matter. But to select even one person from among many and to say to him: “You! You are the one to go!” is a morally unbearable proposition.
  The case in Lodz was, of course, not quite like the one in Kovno where they were not asked to hand over Jews to the Germans, but to accept cards, which meant a lease on life for some. In the ghetto of Lodz, the <i>Judenrat</i> was ordered to round up forty thousand Jews and to surrender them. It is, however, rather significant that Rabbi Alter did not refer to the same talmudic precedent quoted by the rabbi in Kovno. It would seem to be the exact parallel to the situation in Lodz. “If gentiles demand of a group of people that they surrender one among them to be killed…let them all die rather than surrender a single Jew.” How much more if forty thousand are demanded! Indeed, the case in Talmud which Rabbi Alter actually quoted would seem to be rather different from the problem in his ghetto. There the story is told of a person who came to Rabba and told him that the lord of his city had ordered him to kill someone, and if he did not obey, he himself would be put to death. The man wanted to know what the law of the Torah was in his case. Rabba’s answer was: “Let him kill you, but you must not kill the other man. What makes you think that your blood is redder than his?” In other words, no one has the right to assume that his life is more precious than that of another person, and therefore, that he may sacrifice another human being in order to save himself. The first obvious difference is that in the story of Rabba the man was actually ordered to kill someone with his own hands, whereas in the ghetto of Lodz they were only ordered to hand them over. But this can easily be dismissed by saying that in those circumstances, to surrender Jews to the Germans was not really any different from actually murdering them with one’s own hands. The second difference, however, seems to be more striking. In the case of Rabba’s decision, it was one life against another, whereas in the ghetto the entire remaining population, probably a much higher number than the forty thousand to be surrendered, was to survive (always assuming that one could trust the word of the Germans). True, this kind of quantitative consideration was already rejected by the other talmudic precedent: not even one, even at the risk of losing all. But the more pragmatically-oriented <i>Judenrat</i> might have been inclined to argue — as indeed they did — that the case of a threat to one single group of Jews was not to be compared to the situation in the ghetto, which was only part of the German plot to exterminate the entire Jewish people. In such a situation should one not attempt to save as many as possible? Should not this be the right Jewish ruling? It is exactly to this problem that Rabbi Alter addressed himself, as if to say: “Correct! Our situation is, indeed, different from the one in the Talmud. But how are you going to make the selection of the condemned? You! You! But why? Is not his blood ‘as red’ as that of his neighbor?” It was the ethical impossibility of making the selection that Rabbi Alter asserted. It was a radical rejection of the possibility of all pragmatic decisions in such a situation.
  One can hardly imagine a trial more severe, or testing more tragically the love of a father for his only son, than the one concerning which Rabbi Z.H. Meisels was asked to give a halakhic ruling in Auschwitz. On the eve of <i>Rosh haShanah</i> in 1944 some fourteen hundred children were taken into an isolated and heavily guarded barracks. The next day, rumors spread in the camp that towards evening the children would be taken to the gas chambers. All day long, parents crazed with anxiety were running around the closed block, looking for some unexpected opportunity to save their children. In the midst of that upheaval a <i>yehudi pashut</i>, a plain Jew, came up to Rabbi Meisels and said: “Rabbi, my only son is there among the boys…and I am able to get him released. However, since I know that if they release my son, they will take another boy in his place, I have come to ask you for a decision in accordance with the <i>halakhah</i>, so that I may act upon it. I desire a ruling according to the law of the Torah. Am I allowed to redeem my son? As you will rule, so will I do.” Trembling and fear overcame the rabbi at the thought of having to give a decision in such a matter of life and death. He did not want to shoulder the responsibility, recalling the fact that at the time of the Temple in Jerusalem, every matter concerning life and death had to be brought before the “Great Sanhedrin of seventy-one.” How could he by himself give a ruling in Auschwitz, where there were neither source books for researching the problem, nor colleagues with whom to take counsel? Nor did the deprivations and suffering of the camp allow him a sufficiently alert mind to deal adequately with such weighty problems. But the man would not let him off, pleading for a ruling. When he saw that the rabbi was adamant in his refusal, he said: “Rabbi, I have done my duty as the Torah obligates me to do. I have asked a rabbi, and there is no other rabbi here. Since you are not able to state to me that I may get my son released, that proves to me that in your own mind it is not clear that such an act may be done in keeping with the <i>halakhah</i>. For if you knew beyond any doubt that it was permissible, you would — of course — have said so. For me that means that I am not permitted to redeem my son. I accept this with love and joy. I refrain.”15<i class="footnote">Meisels, introduction.</i> The Torah was speaking to this father from the mysterious depths of his own Jewish conscience.
  Only a little less heartbreaking were the attempts of some other parents to save their children. They were thinking (and some were actually doing it) of entrusting their children into the hands of Christian friends who would hide them until the end of the war, which — of course — meant the fall of Germany. Again the question was asked: was this permissible according to the <i>halakhah?</i> The problem arose from the likelihood that the parents would not survive, in which case the children would remain in the Christian homes and would most probably grow up as Christians.16<i class="footnote"><i>Kuntres meEmek haBakha</i>.</i> While Judaism does not teach that Christianity is idolatry for a gentile, for a Jew to believe in divine mediators between himself and God or to associate any other person with God, is tantamount to idolatry. Of course, it was not <i>certain</i> that a child entrusted to Christians would be lost to Judaism. There was always the possibility that the parents might survive and reclaim the child. It was also conceivable that even if none of the parents survived, the Christian family might return the child to some of his relatives or hand him over into the care of some Jewish institution. In other words, it was not a certainty that the entrusting of a Jewish child into the care of some friendly Christian was leading him to idolatry. On the other hand, if the child remained with his parents he would certainly perish. This was then a case of possible idolatry as against certainty of death. The <i>halakhah</i> determines that the saving of life overrules any objections on grounds of possible idolatry.17<i class="footnote">T.B. <i>Ketubot</i> 15a, <i>Tosafot s.v. veSafek Nefashot leHakel;</i> also T.B. <i>Shabbat</i> 128.</i> Therefore it was ruled that it was permissible to save one’s child in this manner.
  Yet, there were many who would follow an entirely different road. Rabbi Ephraim Oshry, a survivor of the Kovno ghetto from whose works many of the examples of halakhic decisions quoted in this book have been selected, tells the following story. In May 1942, the Germans, infinitely more cruel than Pharaoh of old, forbade the Jews to beget any more children. However, in spite of the danger and the many problems involved in defying the edict, the Jews of Kovno paid little attention to it. Needless to say, when boys were born circumcisions had to take place in great secrecy. Rabbi Oshry was present at such a <i>Brit Milah</i>, the renewed forging of the covenant between God and Israel by the fulfillment of the commandment of circumcision, as had been practiced ever since the day Abraham circumcised his two sons. The baby’s parents had been married for five years, but had been childless. Now, just after the German decree against further Jewish births they were — as they saw it — blessed by God with the birth of a son. They had reason to believe that the place where they lived offered adequate protection against being discovered by the Germans during the ceremony. However, just as the <i>mohel</i> was about to begin to circumcise the child, the grinding of auto wheels coming to a halt was heard, and men of the Gestapo were getting out in front of the house. Terror struck all those present. The hands of the <i>mohel</i> were shaking. What was there to be done? How could the mother and child be saved? They were helpless and trembling with fear. However, it was the mother who showed the most courage among them. She turned to the <i>mohel</i> and ordered him: “Hurry up! Circumcise the child. Don’t you see? They have come to kill us. At least let my child die as a Jew.”18<i class="footnote">Eliav, p. 87.</i> The story is reminiscent of a <i>Midrash</i> which relates that in spite of the edict of Pharaoh that all male children be drowned in the Nile, the children of Israel continued to circumcise them. When the Egyptians learned of this, they asked: “Why do you do this? What is the purpose of this circumcision? Soon they will be thrown into the river!” The answer of the Israelites was: “We do what is up to us. We circumcise our children. What do we have to do with you…!”19<i class="footnote"><i>Tanna deVei Eliyahu</i>, 23.</i> It is unlikely that the mother at the secret circumcision in the Kovno ghetto ever saw or heard this little-known <i>Midrash;</i> yet, instinctively, she acted with the Jewish faithfulness of all the ages.
  Another trying problem brought before the rabbis was the question of whether or not it was halakhically permissible to save oneself by acquiring identity papers that showed that the bearer was not a Jew.20<i class="footnote">Oshry, I, chapter 15; see also <i>Kuntres meEmek haBakha</i>.</i> Some Jews did, in fact, succeed by these means to leave the ghetto and to survive. While, in general, halakhic decisions in the ghettos and concentration camps were motivated by the paramount biblical <i>mitzvah</i> of protecting and preserving life, it was understood beyond any doubt that the case of denying one’s Jewish identity belonged to the category of the three exceptional commandments which require martyrdom. Not to have the courage to affirm one’s Jewishness and actively and explicitly to cause gentiles to believe that one was also a gentile was judged to be identical with idolatry, the first among the three commandments concerning which the law says that a Jew should accept even death rather than transgress.21<i class="footnote">T.B. <i>Sanhedrin</i> 74a.</i> This idea is usually quoted in the formulation of Maimonides: “The entire house of Israel is commanded to sanctify His great name, as it is written: ‘And I shall be sanctified in the midst of the Children of Israel,’ ” which is interpreted to include even the denial of one’s Jewishness in one’s contacts with gentiles.22<i class="footnote"><i>Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Yesodei haTorah</i>, 5:1; <i>Sefer haMitzvot, Asei</i> 9; see also <i>Shulḥan Arukh, Yoreh De’ah</i>, 157:2.</i>
  Maimonides’ phrase, “the entire House of Israel,” was understood to apply even to children. As we saw earlier, in the case of handing over children to Christian friends it was ruled that it was permissible on the grounds that there was no certainty that by such arrangements they would be lost to Judaism. The problem was rather different, however, when parents questioned whether they were permitted to acquire “Aryan” birth certificates for their child who would then be placed at the door of a Christian orphanage and be saved since the authorities would believe that it was a Christian child. Under normal circumstances, of course, children are exempted from fulfilling the <i>mitzvot</i>. But what about in this exceptional case of <i>Kiddush haShem</i>, the “Sanctification of the Name”? There was now no doubt that children thus abandoned would be brought up as Christians. Was it permissible to deliver one’s child into the hands of Christians in order to save its life? Here, Maimonides’ wording of the <i>mitzvah</i> was decisive: “The <i>entire</i> House of Israel is commanded…;” the entire house without any exceptions.23<i class="footnote"><i>Kuntres meEmek haBakha</i>.</i> Once again we know of at least one Jewish mother, Devorah Tuchnuntz-Halberstadt, who knew the <i>halakhah</i> in this case “instinctively” and had to ask no rabbi for a decision. Shortly before the war, she had come with her husband and child to visit her parents in Siedlce. Overtaken by events, they went into the ghetto and when that had been “liquidated” they went into hiding. Soon afterwards her time came to give birth, an unforgivable crime in those proud days of German domination. It became impossible for her to remain in her hiding place and endanger the life of others. She left and took refuge in the fields among some trees and bushes. When some gentiles heard her moanings in labor, they assumed from her still quite healthy physical condition that she was one of them, a homeless Christian woman and they took her to the city hospital in Mariansk. Several days after she gave birth, a priest arrived to perform the baptismal ceremony over the child. As he was about to begin his prayers, the mother jumped up and said to him: “Please, don’t do it. I am a Jewish woman and my child is a Jewish child. Let us be what we are!” The priest departed without a word. Soon afterwards police arrived and took away both mother and child to be “liquidated.”24<i class="footnote">Unger, pp. 88-89.</i>
  Even in the face of death itself, there was one halakhic question which had to be answered. What kind of a <i>berakhah</i>…what sort of blessing was to be said…? After all, before a Jew performs any <i>mitzvah</i> he says a blessing, praising and thanking God. “Blessed art Thou, Eternal, our God, who hast sanctified us through His commandments and commanded us…” But how should this blessing be concluded? In most cases the exact working of the various <i>berakhot</i> is known to all pious Jews from frequency of practice. To surrender one’s life for the “sanctification of the Name” is the highest <i>mitzvah</i> of all, but the Jews in the ghettos and concentration camps had no previous experience in fulfilling this particular commandment. Thus the question arose: what was the correct formula for the blessing prior to the fulfillment of the <i>mitzvah</i> of <i>Kiddush haShem?</i> Of course, the question was not altogether a matter of ignorance. On the contrary, it was prompted by a discussion in the Talmud, dealing not specifically with <i>Kiddush haShem</i> but generally with all categories of divine commandments.25<i class="footnote">T.B. <i>Pesaḥim</i> 7b; Oshry, II, chapter 2.</i>
  <i>How is one to bless and to thank God before one dies in fulfillment of the commandment of sanctifying His great Name?</i> Uncomprehendingly we stand before our people, the Jews. Overwhelmed by awe, we stand before these human beings, flesh like our own flesh, bones like our bones, who in the midst of the miseries of the ghetto and the sufferings of the death camps, were preoccupied with the question of what was the correct formula for blessing and thanking God when their ultimate hour would arrive! Even in Auschwitz, Maidanek, Birkenau, and Buchenwald…“Blessed art Thou, Eternal, our God, who hast sanctified us through His commandments and commanded us to sanctify His name in public.”
  
  4 The Inward Center of Gravity
  
  The widespread religious life of the Jews under German domination which we are describing in these pages has been the most neglected subject of the entire Holocaust literature. Eugen Kogan, in his <i>The Theory and Practice of Hell</i>, laments the absence of religious observance in the camps and comments that the blessings of the “merest rudiments of spiritual care” were limited to an “infinitesimally small circle of men who were unusually courageous and already endowed with strength of character.” He found such religious consciousness only among the Dutch and the French at Buchenwald, and only during the final period of the war when “an underground ministry” became possible. He also knows of some Catholic priests and Protestant pastors who were engaged in pastoral activity at Dachau. Of Jews, and of authentic Jewish behavior, he knows nothing. He never heard, for instance, of the <i>Tahara Bretter</i>, “the Boards of Purity” of the fourth tier of the bunks at Buchenwald. Nor did he hear the voice of Torah as Jews there studied the talmudic tractate of <i>Megillah</i> in preparation of the festival of <i>Purim</i>, which they celebrated with the reading of a Scroll of Esther written on scraps of paper. And so Kogan concludes: “By and large religious work in the camps was without practical significance.”1<i class="footnote"><i>Op. cit.</i>, p. 243.</i>
  Of course, Jews did not engage in any kind of “pastoral activity,” nor did they do any kind of “religious work.” They were simply endeavoring to <i>live</i> as Jews. For a gentile it may be difficult to understand this since Judaism is not really a religion in the generally understood meaning of the term, but rather a communal way of life lived in the presence of God. Still Kogan should have been more careful with his generalization. For at least in one passage of his work he shows an understanding awareness for “a heightened religious faith” that developed in camp conditions. He writes:
  “Provided a man had any trace of moral sense and true religious devotion, these qualities at the very core of personality, were, if anything, promoted by the powerful appeal emanating from the humanity and inhumanity of the concentration camp. In keeping with camp conditions, their presence and their effect could be but rarely manifested in the open, especially since the <i>outwardly</i> predominant groups in the camps acted at best on political, never on religious manifestations and applied the highest standards of ethical conscience only in exceptional circumstances. Thus there are likely to be plenty of old-time concentrationaries who will deny that religion and moral sense played any considerable part.”
  If this was true of Christians, how much more so was it the case for Jews! Camp conditions did not allow that religious practices be publicized. It would appear from Kogan’s statement that Christians had to be circumspect about their religious devotion, <i>especially</i> under the pressure of the dominant secular political groups. It is unlikely that those Jews whose stories we related in the previous chapters paid any attention to any such pressure. They had to practice Judaism under the strictest secrecy, because nothing infuriated the Germans and their Polish or Ukrainian lackeys more than a Jew who dared observe Judaism, defying the laws that proscribed any such observance under the threat of inhuman punishments. Kogan concludes by stating:
  “But just as the ordinary prisoner remained in ignorance of the true situation in camp, so few if any camp functionaries knew anything about the inner life of the thousands under them.”
  It seems that not only the camp functionaries, but Kogan himself knew nothing about the “inner life” of thousands of Jews in the camps.
  How widespread was what we have called the authentic Jewish attitude? The material that we are able to present is but a small part of the available documents and eyewitness accounts, yet it speaks of many thousands of Jews who were involved in “underground” Jewish observances. Undoubtedly, those whose stories we know represent many thousands of others. Most of the Jews in those stories were nothing exceptional. In the <i>shtetlech</i> of Poland, Hungary and Lithuania there were tens of thousands of Pinche Steiers. Not even Shlomo Zlichovsky was an exceptional Jew. Or the “girl from Hungary”; she was not essentially different from numerous others like her. We know of entire communities, Jews in their thousands, who faced the ultimate on earth singing <i>Ani Ma’amin</i>, “I believe.” Beside the tales of unparalleled misery and humiliation, there is also a saga of unequalled mightiness of the spirit. Where man was most depraved and degraded, there he also reached his highest exaltation and dignity.
  Peter Schindler quotes one of those invited to participate in writing the memorial volume on the Jewish community of Lemberg, the <i>Book of Lvov</i>. Among the thirty participants he was the only religious Jew and in the course of the discussion as to the nature and contents of the volume he soon realized that the book would completely falsify the character of one of the great historic Jewish communities, presenting it “as a secular-nationalistic, proletarian and socialist city, void of its most important source — that of authentic traditional Judaism.” Schindler adds the concluding comment of his witness: “I have seen this time and again in the hundreds of memorial volumes … [that they] ignore the truth that the great majority of Jews in the destroyed communities were believing Jews.”2<i class="footnote">Peter Schindler, <i>Responses of Hassidic Leaders and Hassidism during the Holocaust in Europe, 1939-1945, and a Correlation between such Responses and Selected Concepts of Hassidic Thought</i> (Ph. D. Dissertation, School of Education, New York University, 1972), p. 14.</i>
  Something of the spirit of believing Jews is conveyed in a report of the Jewish Historical Committee in Poland from 1947, published on the occasion of the fourth anniversary of the liquidation of the Cracow ghetto. It reads as follows:
  “The religious youth, concentrated in groups of the ‘Gerer Ḥasidim,’ distinguished itself in the ghetto with a unique zeal. Hiding in cellars and attics, in all kinds of secret places in the overcrowded houses, these young people devoted themselves to the study of the Torah with radical disregard of the tragic reality. Giving no thought to persecution and dangers of death, occupying themselves with divine truth, with their faith afire, they stood in the midst of the tearing Nazi beasts that surrounded them. They lived in communes, mutually aiding each other; at the same time ready to any sacrifice in their willingness to help others. Out of deep understanding that their blood-sacrifice was not in vain, they faced death with strength and steadfastness …”3<i class="footnote">Prager, I. p. 85.</i>
  This was in the ghetto of Cracow. But Cracow was like many other great historic Jewish communities in Eastern Europe, in no way unique in Jewish living and Jewish history. Of course, not all of those involved were ḥasidim, but hundreds of thousands were. Not all were young, but the young ones were the children of their fathers in spirit as well as in blood. Again, the ghetto was not the death camp. That is, however, no reason to overlook the fact that even in the ghettos conditions were intolerably inhuman. And while the opportunities for an “underground Judaism” were much more limited in the camps, the attitude of the authentic Jew in the ghetto was continued in the concentration camps as well. Conditions in the camps were much more dangerous; many more perished. If hardly a memory is left of so many Jews of the spirit, it is due, to a large extent, to the fact that the aim of the authentic Jew was not survival at any cost.
  It is doubtful whether anyone has written with more self-assumed authority and with less understanding of and sympathy for the millions of Eastern European Jews than Bruno Bettelheim. According to Bettelheim, “the non-political middle class prisoners” were among the first to disintegrate as “autonomous persons.”4<i class="footnote">Quoted by Terrence Des Pres in <i>The Survivor</i>, p. 122.</i> Nothing illustrates more strikingly than this generalization Bettelheim’s complete ignorance about the behavior of the believing Jews, especially if they came from Eastern Europe. These Jews were all “non-political middle-class prisoners.” It is fair to say that many of them did <i>not</i> disintegrate as autonomous persons and that others were among the <i>last</i> to lose their personal autonomy. Perhaps the significance of the authentic Jewish ghetto and camp behavior may be appreciated only if one compares it with what the psychologists have described as “human behavior” in the concentration camps.
  The first commandment for a prisoner to observe upon entering the camp was adaptation; he had to adjust to the radically new conditions of his existence. But adaptation meant, first of all, lowering one’s spiritual standards, disregarding one’s sense of values. Ella Lingens-Reiner puts it this way: “We camp prisoners had only one yardstick: whatever helped our survival was good, whatever threatened our survival was bad and to be avoided.”5<i class="footnote">Ella Lingens-Reiner, <i>Prisoners of Fear</i>, London 1948.</i> To some of the more conscientious people this was, of course, only a temporary surrender of values. Bettelheim sums up the prisoner’s feelings in these words: “What I am doing here or what is happening to me does not count at all; here everything is permissible as long and insofar as it contributes to my survival.” Ultimately, however, adaptation led to a change of personality to the extent that one even accepted the “Gestapo values.” According to Bettelheim, this was true for practically all old-timers, especially in their attitude to so-called unfit prisoners.6<i class="footnote">“Individual and Mass Behavior in Extreme Situations,” in <i>Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology</i>, 1943, p. 38.</i> Kogan, too, speaks of this change of mental outlook, which in essence was a regression to a more primitive state. It was necessary, he explains, for the mind to develop a “protective crust,” to acquire a certain lack of sensitivity. Torn from “the anchorages of the outside world and thrust into life-and-death turmoil,” the mind needed a long period of adjustment before it could find a “new inward center of gravity.”7<i class="footnote"><i>The Theory and Practice of Hell</i>, p. 276.</i> Kogan does not describe sufficiently well the nature of this “new inward center of gravity.” It might well be possible to maintain that both the <i>Kapo</i> and the formerly respectable businessman, now reduced to scavenging in garbage dumps for food, each in his own way acquired a new inward center of gravity along the lines of the camp philosophy of Lingens-Reiner: anything is right that helps my survival.
  Now while it is true to say that the authentic Jew also tried to adjust himself to the physical conditions of the ghettos and the death camps, the <i>raison d’être</i> of his entire existence became his heroic refusal to adopt the standards and values of the Holocaust world into which he had been thrown. What was right before remained right and what was wrong remained wrong even after the dark age of the ghettos and the camps descended on him. The overall desire for survival did not change his mental outlook nor his personality. He had no need to find a “new inward center of gravity.” The reason for all this has its source in the very nature of the authentic Jew. His inner center of gravity is not anchored in the outside world. His roots are within himself, in a dimension of being that is not subject to the sway of the uncertain destiny of an outside reality.
  This autonomous inward center of gravity spared many authentic Jews some of the serious problems with which others, especially assimilated Jews, had to contend. One of these was a radical loss of self-respect which played havoc with the prisoner in a two-fold sense: in relation to his former social status and to his own sense of personal worth. From the very outset of his existence in the concentration camp, the prisoner was subjected to a cruel process of planned humiliation and degradation. In the words of Kogan, “naked they were driven through the unbridgeable abyss that separated the two worlds, ‘outside’ and ‘inside.’” After this and other similarly crushing humiliations, nothing could be more fatal to a person than to cling to the memories of his former social status and standards. “The whalebone of social stays was irretrievably bent and battered the very first day.”8<i class="footnote"><i>Ibid.</i>, p. 275.</i> Social stays are, of course, not unimportant. But to the authentic Jew they are of minor significance. Ultimately, what really matters is what kind of a Jew one is; that alone is the source of one’s self-respect. Elie A. Cohen tells about a Jewish colleague who could not get over the fact “that he as a physician was forced to burn the contents of garbage cans.”9<i class="footnote"><i>Op. cit.</i>, p. 74.</i> His inability to liberate himself from his past hastened his death. The case illustrates the spiritual tragedy of the assimilated Jew. His self-respect derived from his social position in the “outside” world. When that world expelled him from its midst, he had little left on which to fall back.
  It seems that Bruno Bettelheim was more fortunate in this respect than that physician. Defining what he calls private behavior in the concentration camp, he cites his own case as an example. In order to occupy himself in some meaningful manner, he collected material about camp behavior. He did this, as he says, in order “to protect the individual against the disintegration of his personality.” He then continues to explain that “as time went on the enhancement of my self-respect due to my ability to continue to do meaningful work, despite the contrary efforts of the Gestapo, became even more important than the pastime.”10<i class="footnote"><i>Op. cit.</i></i> Of course, Bettelheim was relatively fortunate in being brought to Buchenwald and Dachau in 1938–39, i.e. before the outbreak of the war and before the beginning of the implementation of the Final Solution. Conditions at Buchenwald and Dachau in those days are not to be compared with what came afterwards, when the camps became slaughter houses, working to an efficient, planned schedule. So having been able to start his scientific work in camp as a pastime, Bettelheim enjoyed the welcome side effect of having it enhance his self-respect vis-à-vis the Gestapo.
  One cannot help wondering how Bettelheim would have found enhancement for his self-respect had he been in the position of that poor physician and, instead of collecting scientific data, had been forced to pass his time, day in and day out, burning the contents of garbage cans to the exhaustion of his strength. The renowned psychiatrist Victor Frankl, a concentration camp survivor who has earned our gratitude for his insights and our admiration for his humanity, tells about the personally shattering experience of the loss of a manuscript which he had succeeded in smuggling into the camp. When another inmate responded to his tale of woe with the word “Shit!”, Frankl realized the nature of the radical change in his situation and, as he says, at that moment “I struck out my whole former life.”11<i class="footnote"><i>Op. cit.</i>, p. 12.</i> For Frankl this was vital, if he wished to survive. There were, of course, others — not too many — who had the strength of character to do the same. Cohen himself reports that he did not feel that his task as “lavatory inspector,” which was added to his responsibility as “room physician,” was disgracing him.12<i class="footnote"><i>Op. cit.</i>, p. 150.</i> He understood that this was the only way for him to survive.
  But could these strong-minded individuals really succeed in striking out their “whole former life” completely? Once again let our witness be Frankl. On one occasion, he got into a furious altercation with a Kapo, who spoke to him disparagingly about his profession. Frankl, in a cooler moment, saw, of course, that the incident was trivial, but he tells the story in order to show what can happen even to a “hardened prisoner” because of an insult. He explains himself by saying that the blood rushed to his head because he had to listen to a judgment on his life by a man who had so little idea of it, a man “who looked so vulgar and brutal that the nurse in the out-patient ward in my hospital would not even have admitted him to the waiting room.”13<i class="footnote"><i>Op. cit.</i>, p. 24.</i> Contending with this brutal attack on his self-respect, Frankl discovered that he had evidently not struck out his past at the beginning of his life in the camps as he thought he had, but was still under its spell. Elie Cohen, on the other hand, was able to accept his function as a “lavatory inspector” with a measure of equanimity, since this was in addition to his position as a “room physician.” The attack on his self-respect was limited; he was still able to serve in his profession as a doctor as he had always done.
  However, much more serious than the destruction of one’s self-respect on the social level was the imposed sense of inferiority as the result of the loss of human status. Terrence Des Pres, in his study <i>The Survivor</i>, makes the point that everything in the camp conspired to reduce the prisoners “to where they were and what they were — living bodies in a place of death…14<i class="footnote">P. 188.</i> Frankl describes the same experience in more penetrating language:
  “Under the influence of a world which no longer recognized the values of human life and human dignity, which had robbed man of his will and had made him an object to be exterminated — under this influence the personal ego finally suffered a loss of values. If the man in the concentration camp did not struggle against this in a last effort to save his self-respect, he lost the feeling of being an individual, a being with a mind, with inner freedom and personal value: he thought of himself as only a part of an enormous mass of people; his existence descended to the level of animal life.”15<i class="footnote"><i>Op. cit.</i>, p. 49.</i>
  Frankl was struggling heroically against this destruction of the dignity of personal worth, not only for himself but also on behalf of many of his fellow prisoners. One gains a heartrending insight into the nature of this struggle against dehumanization when Frankl writes about the mental agony, caused by an insult to his humanity, which hurt him more than physical pain. It appears that on one occasion Frankl was slow at his slave labor; perhaps he was loafing a bit. The guard, quite playfully, picked up a stone and threw it at him as a reminder to work harder. “That, to me,” says Frankl, “seemed the way to attract the attention of a beast, to call a domestic animal back to its job, a creature with which you have so little in common that you do not even punish it.”16<i class="footnote"><i>Ibid.</i>, p. 22.</i>
  One of the striking aspects of the authentic Jewish ghetto and camp behavior is the fact that it is completely free of this struggle for the maintenance of one’s self-respect. Since, as we have seen, the self-respect of the Jew derives not from his social status or from his profession, but exclusively from his being a Jew, no kind of work imposed upon him by the Germans could humiliate him. Bettelheim’s summation of the prisoner’s feelings, which we quoted above, would have to be varied for the authentic Jew somewhat like this: “What I am doing here does count; indeed, it is of supreme importance. That I <i>have</i> to burn the contents of garbage cans, that does not matter. That is not my doing; that is done to me. My doing is being a Jew under all conditions and circumstances. That alone is what <i>I</i> am doing.” When young ḥasidic Jews in the ghettos refused to go to work or did everything in their power to escape from the transports to labor camps, they did so not because the work they would have been forced to do would have been degrading, but as one of their leaders, Yankel Gefen, put it: “I was not created to serve the Germans; I am to serve God. That is my only business.”17<i class="footnote">Prager, I, p. 11.</i> Nothing that the Germans did to the authentic Jew hurt his self-respect. On the contrary, it only increased his own sense of personal value, for it proved to him the ultimate degradation of his enemies. It was all summed up in an exclamation of the immortal poet of the ghetto, Yizhak Katzenelson: “Oh, my God! How could You have created such filth in Your world!”18<i class="footnote"><i>Pinkas Vital</i>, p. 217.</i> That is how these Jews saw the Germans. Far from inducing in them any sense of inferiority, the Holocaust kingdom revealed to them the polluted soul of a Nazified humanity. It filled them with radical contempt.
  The assimilationist Western Jews, however, were in an entirely different psychological situation. They owed their social status to the “outside” world, to Germany, Austria, etc. Their values were derived from the culture of Western civilization; it is there that they had their roots. All their self-respect stemmed from there, from the recognition they had received in the German or Austrian social structure. Suddenly, they were thrust out. The world to which they thought they had belonged went bankrupt, morally and spiritually. Frankl, the distinguished product of Western culture, was upset when the guard, instead of taking him seriously enough to punish him, just threw a stone at him to remind him of his status of a “domestic animal.” Yizhak Katzenelson would not have paid any attention to an incident of this kind. In his eyes the ghetto and concentration camp guards were creatures with which you had so little in common that they could never insult you. According to an old established talmudic principle, the severity of an insult is relative to the human dignity of the one who administers it and to that of the one at whom it is directed.19<i class="footnote">T.B. <i>Bava Kama</i> 83b.</i> A pest does not insult you.
  
  5 Authenticity of Being
  
  The concept of authenticity of being was introduced into modern existentialist philosophy by Martin Heidegger. He meant by this the form of human existence that is not determined by external conditions and whose values do not derive from “them,” from the standard bearers of the established social order in the midst of which a human being may find himself. Jean-Paul Sartre developed the thought further when he spoke of freedom as a condition to which man is “condemned,” meaning that no matter in what situation a person may find himself, he is always free to make his choices and, indeed, he always does choose between different possibilities of behavior. The decision is always his. When the Gestapo tortured a member of the Maquis to get him to betray his comrades, he was still free to choose to die or to reveal. His betrayal might be understandable; it is not a matter of condemning him. But in all circumstances the decision is his.
  Sartre’s position is no mere theory. His understanding of human freedom is based on his actual experiences in the French underground. Similarly Frankl, basing himself on his observations in the concentration camps, affirms the reality of human freedom even in extreme conditions. He writes: “The experiences of camp life show that man does have a choice of action…Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.” There were always choices to make, and it was your decision that “determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom…”1<i class="footnote"><i>Op. cit.</i>, pp. 65–66.</i>
  For the Jew there is no surprise in these discoveries of Sartre and Frankl. He has made his choices all through history and the Jewish people have survived to this day because there were always Jews who knew that no matter what the conditions and circumstances, it was always up to them to make the decision. We are not only thinking of the untold martyrs who made their choice, in the supreme freedom of the spirit, to die rather than to surrender, but also — and perhaps chiefly — of the ordinary daily life of the Jewish masses through the ages. They lived in confrontation with cultures and civilizations whose values they often rejected and whose lifestyles they mostly did not share. The Jew has been the nonconformist of history and has lived in authenticity of selfhood through many centuries.
  Though living through a persecution radically more severe than anything experienced previously, the Jews who suffered under the Nazis in essence continued the historic lifestyle of the Jewish people. To be sure, this lifestyle, as embodied in the <i>halakhah</i>, is a style of living. It does not consider physical existence unworthy of its concern. On the contrary, it is concerned with existence in its entirety. But human life is not limited to physical or biological existence; its physical and biological components are not a bit more “real” than its spiritual, value-oriented and meaning-seeking aspects. In the same sense, external reality, whose determination has been the preoccupation of modern philosophy for generations, is no more real than the internal life of the person. A thought, an idea, a concept, is no less of this world than a cell, a molecule, or a biological drive. The human being, as a potentiality, and the world that he encounters, are the raw material out of which selfhood emerges. The reality of man is never given; he has to shape it for himself out of what is given to him. How he does it, that alone determines the quality of his humanity.
  The significance of what we have called authentic Jewish behavior is that even in the ghettos and the death camps there were numerous Jews who determined their own lifestyles. In the midst of the filth of the SS kingdom they established their own realm of Jewish continuity, giving structure to the wilderness into which they were cast. What did this mean in terms of the actual, daily camp situation?
  In a moving passage, Frankl describes one of his personal experiences that could have occurred on any ordinary day:
  “Almost in tears from pain (I had terrible sores on my feet from wearing torn shoes), I limped a few kilometers with our long column of men from the camp to our work site. Very cold, bitter winds struck. I kept thinking of the endless little problems of our miserable life. What should there be to eat tonight? If a piece of sausage came as extra ration, should I exchange it for a piece of bread? Should I trade my last cigarette, which was left from a bonus I received a fortnight ago, for a bowl of soup? How could I get a piece of wire to replace the fragment which served as one of my shoelaces? Would I get to our work site in time to join my usual working party or would I have to join another, which might have a brutal foreman…?”
  Unlike the mass of prisoners, Frankl, having been able to safeguard a high measure of personal dignity, became disgusted with a situation that compelled him to think “daily and hourly…of only such trivial things.” Fighting off the onslaught of the trivia, he found relief in falling back on his professional interest. Suddenly, as if in a vision, he saw himself standing “on the platform of a well-lit, warm and pleasant lecture room.” In front of him sat “an attentive audience on comfortable upholstered seats,” to whom Frankl lectured on the psychology of the concentration camp. Thus the daily camp experience became objectified as a phenomenon for scientific examination. Frankl then explains: “By this method I succeeded somehow in rising above the situation, above the sufferings of the moment, and I observed them as if they were already of the past.”2<i class="footnote"><i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 73–74.</i> Needless to say, matters which in normal conditions would be considered mere trivia received extraordinary importance in the camps. Hosts of prisoners found themselves in the predicament of having to limp many kilometers from the camp to their work site and back in pain because of their sore feet. What would authentic Jews be thinking of during such a march? Probably of the very same trivial needs that so preoccupied Frankl. But they would not be thinking of these things “daily and hourly,” and their concern was not only with “such trivial things.” They would be no less deeply involved with problems of an entirely different nature: would they be able to find a corner in their barracks where they might be able to pray <i>Ma’ariv</i> (the evening service) with the prescribed quorum of at least ten men? How could they get their hands on a pair of <i>tefillin?</i> How many rations of bread would it cost? Or, if <i>Purim</i> was approaching, where could they get a <i>megillah</i> (the Scroll of Esther)? Would it be another <i>Pesaḥ</i> without <i>matzah?</i> How could they minimize the need for eating the hot soup of the camp, which was <i>terefah?</i> How could they make a <i>menorah</i> for Ḥanukkah and smuggle it into the camp? And once it was there, how could they light it without it being discovered? Innumerable problems of this nature, and the devising of possible solutions for them, were among the foremost of their “daily and hourly” concerns. Victor Frankl had the strength of character to create his scientific vision and thus to escape the degrading misery of the death camps. These Jews, however, were not escaping. They imposed another rhythm on that raw reality to which they were subjected and thus drew out its dehumanizing poison. They lived their lives as Jews.
  Trying to understand, trying to empathize with the suffering of Frankl, his feet covered with sores, limping along with his fellow prisoners from the hell of the camp to the hell of the work site and back, I see in my mind’s eye another long column of men, marching perhaps along the same road, in all kinds of chafing footwear, their torn rags exposing them to the elements, many of them limping along supported by their comrades; and the same long column returning exhausted in the evening, usually dragging along a few lifeless bodies with them. But somewhere there, intentionally lost in that same column, is a group of Jews, keeping close together. In their midst there walks one, a <i>Talmid Ḥakham</i>, who knows large sections of the Talmud by heart. He teaches Talmud, he teaches Torah. The others are listening; they interrupt with questions or to make their own contribution to the discussion. And of course there are other roads, other threadbare marchers, and other intense groups of Jews studying Talmud, or perhaps Mishnah, or reciting chapters from the Psalms by memory.
  The camps had their own geographic pattern, designed to serve the goals of the extermination squads. But for these Jews, some of the roads were not paths of SS-prescribed misery, but were transformed by them into paths of daily renewal. The authentic Jewish lifestyle superimposed a space-structure of meaningfulness on the camp geography of humiliation and degradation. Similarly, the occupants of the <i>Tahara Bretter</i> (the boards of purity) at Buchenwald changed the space structure of the camp in their immediate area, establishing a focal point of direction for the Jews all around them, and not only for those who were still practicing Judaism. In that section, the map of the camp received the impact of a humanizing purpose. Or think of the deathpit turned into the <i>Bet Medreshel</i>, a place of prayer and study; the various spots in the Holocaust kingdom where <i>sukkot</i> were built secretly; the hiding places for <i>tefillin</i>, for a <i>Ḥanukkah menorah</i>, for a <i>shofar</i> to blow on <i>Rosh haShanah</i> — all points of a conspiratorial changing of space structure, a reorientation of directions in the camps.
  Nowhere did this autonomous restructuring of camp reality achieve a more penetrating influence than in the dimension of time. Using the example of Bernard Malamud’s <i>The Fixer</i>, Terrence Des Pres effectively discusses the trying experience of unstructured time that was the lot of the prisoners in the concentration camps. He writes: “…in extremity the forms of time dissolve, the rhythms of change and motion are lost. Days pass, seasons, years pass and the fixer has no idea how long his ordeal will go on.” There is “an emptiness complete in itself, a suspension in the sameness of identical days which could last a year or a lifetime.”3<i class="footnote"><i>Op. cit.</i>, p. 12.</i> What was true for the fixer was even more oppressive and demoralizing for those in the German death camps.4<i class="footnote">Cf. also what Frankl has to say on the crushing burden of unstructured time, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 70.</i> However, for the Jews whose lifestyle we are examining, the “suspension in the sameness of identical days,” the complete emptiness of endless duration, did not exist. Their time was not the SS-imposed structureless sameness; their time was structured by the Jewish calendar. Calendars were handwritten in the ghettos and camps, and even where they were not available, there were always Jews who could calculate and compute the necessary dates on the basis of the scanty information that was available. Thus, for the Jews, time was divided into days, weeks, months, seasons, and years. The division represented an experienced rhythm of sequence, each part of which carried its remembered and observed meaning and significance.
  According to Frankl, the most ghastly moment of the day was “the awakening, when, at a still nocturnal hour, the three shrill blows of a whistle tore us pitilessly from our exhausted sleep and from the longings of our dreams.” He tells the story of how a comrade beside him was having a nightmare. At first, instinctively, he meant to wake him; but then he decided not to disturb him, for no matter how frightening his nightmare might have been, the awakening would have been even worse. To Frankl, it was a wonder that prisoners got up at all. What was awaiting them? An endless day of torture, humiliation, exhaustion, and hunger. “Prisoners were driven awake by fear, by anxiety, and often by the blows of a whip or club.”5<i class="footnote"><i>Op. cit.</i>, p. 75.</i> But what was each new day in the structured time of the Jewish calendar? Needless to say the tortures, the humiliation, the fatigue were all there in it. But for those Jews who rose one or two hours before the general <i>appell</i> in order to put on <i>tefillin</i> for a few moments, and for the thousands who had no access to <i>tefillin</i> but who nevertheless rose before the other prisoners, without the three shrill blows of the whistle, in order to say their morning prayers, it was a day given by God, on which one praised him as the Creator of light. One got up, because one had to, not because of the whip and the club, but because the morning is the time for <i>Shaḥarit</i>, the daily morning service. The day of the camp was indeed endless misery, yet another daily order was superimposed on it. With the sun about to set, one had to find an inconspicuous spot for a quick <i>Minḥa</i> prayer. And at night, one did not drop with senseless exhaustion into one’s bunk. One collected oneself. The order of the day called for its conclusion with <i>Ma’ariv</i>, the evening service. The week: for those who live in unstructured time there is no such thing as a week, but empty duration stretching infinitely. Only he who knows of the Sabbath knows of the week. Of course, the Sabbath could not be observed traditionally. One <i>had</i> to work; yet, one could, and did, celebrate the Sabbath even in the most extreme circumstances. This is how one survivor describes it:
  “Comes Sabbath we feel the <i>Neshama Yeterah</i>, the enrichment of our souls.6<i class="footnote">According to a mystical tradition, the Jew receives an “additional soul” on the Sabbath which leaves him at the Sabbath’s conclusion.</i> She sings in the depth of our being. How we love the Sabbath! We draw from her strength for all the days of the week. In the dim light of the descending evening we sing quietly…God is with us. <i>Imo Anokhi beẒarah</i>. ‘I am with him in his trouble’…<i>Shekhinta beGaluta</i>, yes, the Divine Presence itself is in exile with us.7<i class="footnote">Cf. Psalms 91:15; T.B. <i>Ta’anit</i> 16a; also T.B. <i>Sukkah</i> 45a and <i>Tosafot s.v. Ani veHoo</i>.</i> We are not so lonely. A High Guest is staying with us. He, too, is now homeless, lonely without His people, suffering through our suffering. As the day is passing, in a darkening world we hold on to her, to our Sabbath. It is hard to take leave of her. We shall be alone again for such a long gray frightening week. Beginning with the first day of the week we start counting the days in our hearts till <i>Erev Shabbat</i>, till the sixth day…”8<i class="footnote">Eliav, p. 141; from Leib Rochman, <i>BeDamayikh Ḥayyee</i>, Jerusalem, 1961.</i>
  A long week indeed, full of hardship and suffering. But on Monday it would be only five days till the next Sabbath; on Tuesday, only four; by Thursday they would have almost made it. And what is true of the day and the week in that calendar is also true for the months, the seasons, and the year. All along the road there are stations; one moves toward them, one prepares oneself for them. The time spent in the evenings studying, usually by heart, the talmudic tractate <i>Megillah</i> in anticipation of <i>Purim</i>, or going over the laws of <i>Pesaḥ</i> as that festival approached, or on studying the relevant Talmud passages in mental preparation for <i>Ḥanukkah</i> — all this was not time suspended in empty repetition of the same eternal misery; it was the ordered time of a lifestyle imposed on chaos.
  Frankl makes the point that a human being must have a future to live for. But since in the camps one could not see an end to the incarceration, one could not aim at a future. Therefore, he saw his life as “provisional existence of unknown limit.” This is one of the causes of so many losing their hold on life. Everything became pointless for them.9<i class="footnote"><i>Op. cit.</i>, pp. 69–70.</i> Future for them meant time beyond camp existence. But in the structured time sequence of the authentic Jew the future was also the next moment, with its demands and promises, waiting to be lived through as a Jew. His future was the continuous anticipation of the meaning and purpose of the next date in his calendar — <i>Pesaḥ</i>, the festival of liberation; <i>Shavu’ot</i>, the festival of the revelation at Sinai; <i>Rosh haShanah</i> and <i>Yom Kippur</i> were waiting for him.
  One is deeply stirred by Frankl’s words as he describes what the futureless existence in empty time meant for a sensitive prisoner who told him that as he marched in that long column of new inmates from the station to the camp he felt…
  “as though he were marching at his own funeral. His life seemed to him absolutely without future. He regarded it as over and done, as if he had already died… The outside life, that is, as much as he could see of it, appeared to him almost as if it might have to a dead man who looked at the world from another planet.”10<i class="footnote"><i>Ibid.</i>, p. 71.</i>
  Now the authentic Jew never had his roots in that “outside life.” In fact, at all times he would look at it with a measure of reservation. Living in a different dimension of the spirit, he indeed looked at that world as if from another planet. The concentration camp was hell on earth. But even in such a hell one lives, in the embracing context of historic Judaism, in the presence of God.
  Frankl has a counterpart to the story of the man who felt as if he were walking at his own funeral. It is the story of the human greatness of a sick young woman who knew that she had only a few more days to live. Yet, cheerful in spite of her knowledge, she told Frankl that she was grateful for her fate. “In my former life,” she said, “I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously.” Then, pointing with her finger through the window of the hut, she continued: “This tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness.” All that could be seen through the window was a single branch of a chestnut tree with two blossoms on it. “I often talk to this tree,” she confessed. At first Frankl was startled, imagining that the woman might be delirious or that she suffered from occasional hallucinations. But when he anxiously asked her whether the tree replied, she said: “Yes! It said to me, ‘I am here—I am here—I am life, eternal life.’”11<i class="footnote"><i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 68–69.</i> The woman’s answer is very reminiscent of Martin Buber’s I-Thou relationship. According to Buber, it is possible to establish such a dialogically personal relationship even with a tree. Through the finite Thou of that tree one might gain a glimpse of the Eternal Thou. Quite clearly, this young woman did not feel that she was seeing an outside world of unreality, as if she were dead or on another planet. In fact, never previously had she been so much alive to the reality of the world, never before so intimately close to it. Such are, of course, the unique experiences of unique people. But it is remarkable to what extent the authentic Jews remained in touch with the reality of the world. Even though separated from the world of men, these Jews were not alienated from God’s creation. This resulted, in a way, directly from their continued observance of the seasonal festivals. <i>Pesaḥ</i> does not only commemorate the Exodus, it is also <i>Ḥag haAviv</i>, the Spring festival; <i>Shavu’ot</i>, when the Torah was given, is also remembered as <i>Ḥag haBikurim</i>, the festival of the first fruits of the land that used to be offered in the Temple of Jerusalem; and <i>Sukkot</i>, the “season of our joy,” is also the season of the harvest. They were not only memories of the past; the Jews knew very well that no matter what their personal fate might turn out to be, <i>Pesaḥ, Shavu’ot</i>, and <i>Sukkot</i>, as well as the other significant dates in the Jewish calendar, would outlast Nazi Germany. The structured time of the Jewish calendar preserved their contact with the world that brought to them the message of the eternal life of its source.
  In the ghetto of Lodz a few young men were in hiding in order to be able to do nothing else but study <i>Torah</i>. We know the address. The place was in Radogshaz Street. We know their names: Moishe Podembizer, Leibel Rosenblat, Moishe Liss, and two Bornstein brothers, Naftoli and Falk. When the Gestapo discovered their hiding place they were accused of spying and sabotage and taken to a prison. There they were tortured in order to get them to reveal the “secrets of the underground.” After one of these bloody “examinations,” when the boys met for a short moment in a prison corridor, Moishe Liss called to the others: “Remember to start saying <i>Tal uMatar</i>, tomorrow evening,” referring to a two-word seasonal change which is introduced into the <i>Shemoneh Esrei</i> (Eighteen Benedictions) prayer early in December each year. The exact date of this change varies between December 4 and 5, but since Jewish calendars were no longer printed in the ghetto, Moishe Liss must have known the calendar of that year by heart and thus could remind his friends not to forget to insert the change in their prayers the next evening.12<i class="footnote">Prager, I, p. 82.</i> Who cared about the Nazis! In the midst of the inferno, these young Jews, bruised and bleeding from German barbarism, could focus on such a small nuance of their prayers, reflecting the change in season.
  If the festivals are chiefly seasonal, the Sabbath has its place in the cosmos. For God created the world in six days and He rested on the seventh. “And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it.”13<i class="footnote">Genesis 2:2.</i> The same survivor, whose words about the Sabbath in his bunker we quoted earlier, experiences the holy day in its cosmic context:
  “At the time of sunset on the eve of the Sabbath it would seem as if the fields were being covered with plush carpets in honor of Queen Sabbath. The lights in the far-away little windows flicker as if they were Sabbath candles lit in universal space. Our saintly mothers who kindled those lights hover above in the distant blue. They cover their faces with their hands…they put their hands on our hands and bless us. The stars across the sky twinkle…twinkling Sabbath candles. Soon they will fade and be extinguished. A Sabbath song is in the air, floating in from somewhere behind the woods. Oh, how we wish to sit at the hole of the bunker and let the song filter into us till the rise of the sun.”14<i class="footnote">Prager, I, p. 82.</i>
  * * * * *
  A partisan. The battle has subsided. Quiet. His head fills with confusing thoughts. A maddening desire overcomes him: to smoke, to smoke. To take a piece of paper, to roll a cigarette and to forget. To forget everything.
  “Suddenly, a thought passes over my mind, cutting as if with a knife’s edge. Shabbat! Shabbat?”
  Behind him a red sun ignites flames of fire at the end of the horizon and floods with purple some scattered and lonely greyish clouds. Far, far away, other clouds rise thickeningly above the trees, hastening to extinguish the conflagration. Roll that cigarette! The sun…Shabbat!
  “Raise your head and look at the sky — spoke a voice within me — it is already dark. The Sabbath has descended.”
  His fingers clasped the tobacco in his pocket as if it were some precious and desired treasure that one did not have the courage to bring out into the light of the day. Just to touch it gave him a pleasurable feeling.
  “I looked at the sky. As if there were something there before which I was ashamed…nor did I have the strength to pull my hand out of my pocket.”
  The partisan struggled against that voice on behalf of his consuming desire.
  “Gradually the dark cloud covered the last tongues of fire that were still spreading from the horizon. The sun was emitting some of its last weakening sparks. Then it disappeared as if it had never been. Shabbat! Shabbat!”
  His head sunk onto the soft earth. He closed his eyes and his thoughts took him away from the still unfinished battle and from everything around him.
  “I did not sleep, nor did I see any visions in a dream. Only my eyes were closed. Suddenly, well-known faces of long ago, forgotten under the burden of the time, were flowing towards me. Sabbath evening! The <i>Shtiebel</i> is filled from one end to the other with Jews in black ‘kapotes’ of silk, and velvet hats on their heads…long tables covered with white tablecloths…red-cheeked little children with long descending curly sidelocks squeeze themselves through the crowd. Heart-warming tunes are heard as some study the <i>Zohar</i> and others recite <i>Shir haShirim</i>.15<i class="footnote">The <i>Zohar</i>, the Book of Light, is the classic work of Jewish mysticism. <i>Shir haShirim</i>, the biblical <i>Song of Songs</i>, is often read in the synagogue by individuals prior to the communal Sabbath eve services.</i> The wax candles are dripping from the warm atmosphere of the <i>Shtiebel</i>.
  ‘L’kha Dodi…Come, my beloved to meet the Bride
  Let us welcome the Shabbat.’16<i class="footnote">A refrain from the Sabbath eve liturgy.</i>
  It is the voice of my father who has been honored with <i>Kabbalat Shabbat</i>, to welcome the Shabbat. And I am assisting him…with a tune that inspires and caresses at the same time.”
  The Germans interrupt the silence; they tear apart the web of the dream. Bullets, flying like stars, erred in their paths and were whistling over his head. Quickly he emptied his pocket. Temptation had been conquered. The tobacco was swallowed up in the mud. He felt better; he breathed restfully, as if a heavy burden had been taken from off him.
  “I felt light, refreshed; as if born anew. I sat on the trunk of a rotting tree. I looked up into the star-studded sky; I knew that the night was a Shabbat night. My lips were whispering…I did not know what…I thanked God for the loving kindness that he rendered unto me on that day…”17<i class="footnote">Eliav, pp. 75–76.</i>
  For this survivor the experience brought back the memory of a far-away, wondrous world, a world that had disappeared and no longer existed. And yet, it was speaking to him with the cosmic voice of a Shabbat night in the universe.
  * * * * *
  The authenticity of being reached its deepest validation when the Jew was confronted with the ultimate, when powers beyond his physical strength were about to put an end to his physical existence. The prototype of this autonomous Jew has been Rabbi Akiva, the story of whose death, as told in the Talmud, is well known. When the Romans were leading him to be executed it became time to recite the morning <i>Shema</i>. As he was being tortured, he said the <i>Shema</i>, taking upon himself the “yoke of the Heavens.”18<i class="footnote">T.B. <i>Berakhot</i> 61b.</i>
  Struggling intellectually with the nightmarish bequest of the destruction of European Jewry makes one think with awe of the majestic simplicity of the words in this story “…it was time to recite the morning <i>Shema</i>.” It has been customary for many generations that when a Jew’s life is threatened, or, on his sickbed when he feels that his end is approaching, he would use his last moments on earth to recite the first verse of the <i>Shema</i>. With a last effort and fervor he would call out the words: “Hear, O Israel…” There is a drama in this call that surpasses the mundane and is sounded in a transcendental realm at the border line between two worlds. It was, however, not like this that Rabbi Akiva said the <i>Shema</i>. There was nothing of drama in his words, nothing of the sublime that one might notice in the voice of a man who with his last breath affirms the meaning of his whole life. Rabbi Akiva did not say the <i>Shema</i> because they were taking him to his execution, not because the ultimate test was approaching. On the contrary, there was nothing extraordinary about his <i>Shema</i>. The reason he said it was very simple; “…it was time to recite the morning <i>Shema</i>…” He said it just as on any other day, because that hour of the day had arrived when one was supposed to say it. It was totally irrelevant to what the Romans were about to do to his body. The soldiers of Rome, all the might and glory of the empire — Rabbi Akiva ignored them. They were of no consequence; he was busy with something else. It was time to recite the <i>Shema</i> and according to the law one should not delay saying it.
  To be unconcerned with what others may do to you, even when your life is at stake, because you are committed to the truth of your own life, is the supreme act of personal autonomy. In the spirit of Rabbi Akiva such acts of autonomous being occurred not infrequently in the ghettos and the death camps. We are not thinking here of the tens of thousands who went to the gas chambers with the <i>Shema</i> or some other form of affirmation of faith on their lips, though this, too, was a majestic deed of devotion to the truth of one’s life. We are thinking of those who showed that radical indifference to the external reality that had been imposed on them. Such for instance, was the behavior of a group of fifty <i>baḥurim</i> (young yeshiva students) who stood at the door to the gas chambers in Auschwitz on <i>Simḥat Torah</i> (the festival of the Rejoicing of the Law): “It is <i>Simḥat Torah</i> today. There are no scrolls of the Torah here; but surely God is here. Let us celebrate with Him.” It was the same indifference, the same contempt for all the might of the oppressor that Rabbi Akiva showed so many centuries earlier to the Roman Empire.
  There were many similar situations in which others acted no differently. One Friday, the Germans took Rabbi Ḥayyim Yeḥiel Rubin of Dambrowe to the cemetery, together with twenty other Jews of the city. There they ordered them to dig their graves. As so often on such occasions, the Germans were in no hurry. Standing in their graves, the Jews were able to welcome the Sabbath Queen with the traditional prayers. After the prayers, the Rebbe greeted the little congregation, as well as the regular Jewish grave diggers who were there, with the traditional “Good Shabbes” and started singing, as on every other Friday night, <i>Shalom Aleikhem</i>, “Peace unto you, angels of peace.” He recited <i>Kiddush</i>, sanctified the Sabbath over two <i>ḥallot</i>, two Sabbath loaves which the Jewish grave diggers had smuggled in to them, and taught Torah, interpreting the twenty-two letters with which the contents of the Torah are written. In the midst of his teaching, he was overcome with religious fervor and began to sing. Influenced by Rabbi Rubin, the other Jews joined in with him and, singing and dancing, celebrated the Sabbath, completely ignoring the Germans who, their machine-guns at the ready, were surrounding the grave.19<i class="footnote">Unger, p. 135.</i>
  In Baranowicz, Rabbi Nissan Scheinberg was a <i>Dayyan</i>, a member of the rabbinical court. On <i>Shushan Purim</i>, in 1942, the Germans prepared a blood bath in the town at which thousands of Jews were murdered. Dr. Nehemia Kroschinsky, a surviving eyewitness, tells this story:
  “A group of Slonim ḥasidim, who were caught in the ‘selection,’ stood together, preparing themselves for the moment of <i>Kiddush Hashem</i>, ‘the sanctification of the Divine Name’ in death. In the midst of the group stood the Dayyan, Rabbi Nissan, who called to the others: ‘Jews! Let us not forget that today is Purim. Let us drink <i>L’ḥayyim</i>, to life.’ He poured out a cupful and said again: <i>‘L’ḥayyim!’</i> He got hold of a few other Jews and started dancing. His face was shining as he sang the traditional Purim song, <i>Shoshanat Ya’akov</i>, ‘Rose of Jacob,’ and he shouted with joy until a German bullet silenced him.”20<i class="footnote"><i>Eleh Ezkerah</i>, VII, p. 196.</i>
  This kind of contemptuous indifference to the enemy is the ultimate of human autonomy. Dov Sadan called it <i>haEmunah haAḥaronah</i>, the ultimate faith. He rightly said that it is superior to all the might of the enemy, for while this might is considered by the foe the essential substance of reality, for men of ultimate faith this reality does not exist at all. Only such faith enables the human soul to rise to its highest exaltation, an experience so well-known to the Jew through his wanderings because of the truth that he represents in the history of man.21<i class="footnote">Dov Sadan in <i>Maḥanayim, Ḥanukkah</i> 5720 (1959).</i> Many a survivor of the ghettos and camps speaks of such joyous exaltation. One of the survivors of the Lodz ghetto recalls the past in these words:
  “The truth is that often I am ashamed of myself. How I have fallen from <i>igra rama</i>, from the lofty heights of those days to the life of comforts and smallness of today. Woe is me! How far removed I am today even from the mere perception of the sublime of that time…What are our concepts of the ghetto today? <i>Gehinnom</i>, hell, graveyard! Dark and black abyss! Yet for us, for our group the ghetto was the furnace in which our unlimited commitment (<i>mesirut nefesh</i>) was purified and where one reached a purity of attachment to the divine than which nothing higher is conceivable.”22<i class="footnote">Prager, II, p. 100.</i>
  Another survivor, explaining how the Torah teachings of his father and other pious Jews helped him cope with continually mounting suffering in the ghetto, summed up his memories by observing: “Perhaps now some will believe me when I say in full truth and seriousness that to this day I have not tasted life as I did in those days of trouble.”23<i class="footnote"><i>Ibid.</i>, p. 93.</i>
  In one of the huts in a certain concentration camp some Jews were celebrating the Passover <i>seder</i>. Suddenly the door was opened with force. They all expected the worst. But the “guests” were Noḥumze and a few other young Jews. They all acted as if they were somewhat drunk, although it was clear that not one of them had touched a drop of alcohol. “What is the matter, Reb Itsche?” Noḥumze demanded. “Is this how one conducts a <i>seder!</i> Is this how one serves God with joy? And if there is no wine for the ‘Four Cups’ a Jew cannot get inebriated…that God has helped us to celebrate the <i>seder</i> even in a camp?” After that they started singing with fervor the traditional <i>seder</i> songs.24<i class="footnote">Unger, p. 322.</i>
  Many a Jew understood that the way they met the tribulations had itself to be a form of divine service and one had to serve God with joy. Leib Brikman, a survivor of Dachau, tells of a hard winter in a camp he was in near Landsberg. Cold and hunger was gnawing at the prisoners and wearing down what remained of their strength. These are Brikman’s words:
  “I felt like a candle about to go out. All along the way…the snow was piled high. I skidded often and fell. The little will that was still left in the dying body whispered to me: ‘Lie down on this soft pile of snow and don’t get up again.’ ”
  At this moment his friend, Notte Eibschitz, a young man of eighteen, stepped up to him and said:
  “What is the matter, my friend? True, we are walking to hell. (<i>Gehinnom</i>). But does not a Jew accept even suffering with love! Even to <i>Gehinnom</i> one has to walk in joy.”
  “It was then that I rose and stood on my feet,” concludes Leib Brikman.25<i class="footnote">Prager, II, p. 136.</i>
  
  6 Confrontation; the Ultimate Issue
  
  Psychiatrists who study concentration camp behavior examine it as a response to concentration camp conditions. The lifestyle of the authentic Jew that we have described and analyzed thus far was behavior in concentration camp, but cannot be characterized in the same way as concentration camp behavior, for it was not prompted by concentration camp conditions. The Jews who refrained from eating cooked food, or who rose earlier than the others in order to put on <i>tefillin</i>, or who did not eat bread for the eight days of <i>Pesaḥ</i>, did these things in spite of concentration camp conditions, not because of them. Various writers on the subject of behavior in the camps emphasize the humanizing and comforting aspect of the spiritual life, but strangely enough they usually refer to it as an escape from the tragic reality.1<i class="footnote">Cf. Cohen, <i>Human Behavior in the Concentration Camp</i>, p. 162; see also Frankl, <i>From Deathcamp to Existentialism</i>, p. 38.</i>
  The authentic Jew did not escape into spirituality but simply lived the life of the Jew in the circumstances in which he found himself. Nevertheless, most Jews fully realized that this was a confrontation unto death between the Jewish people and what it represents in world history and Nazified Germany and its spirit. While it is true that the Nazis killed not only Jews, but also Poles, Russians, Norwegians, and Gypsies, they did not plan a “Final Solution” for these peoples except for the poor gypsies, who fell victim to the Teutonic madness for ideological consistency. The diabolical hatred and venom of the Germans were reserved for the Jews, not as individual saboteurs, dissidents, political adversaries, war prisoners, or potential underground fighters, but as a people. The Gypsies were exterminated as an “inferior race”; the Jewish people and Judaism were to disappear from the earth as salvation for mankind.
  There are two kinds of people who cannot acknowledge that the Jewish people was singled out for ultimate destruction: the assimilationist Jew and the dogmatic ideologist of the Left. The assimilationist Jew usually does not recognize the existence of a Jewish people. How, then, could the Jews be singled out as a people? The assimilationist Jew has an uncertain position in the world. If the Jews are a people, he, too, might be rejected. He is unsure of himself. If he <i>does</i> recognize the existence of a Jewish national entity, it is one with which he refuses to identify. In a sense he finds himself in a most uncomfortable psychological proximity to the Nazis themselves. He, too, considers this people unworthy of existence. To maintain his self-respect, he has to assert that Jews were not really treated much differently from other nationalities, nor did they behave differently from other prisoners. On the one hand, there is really nothing special about Jews. On the other hand, in his estimation, they were the only ones who went like sheep to the slaughter. Strange! If they were the only ones who were led like sheep to the slaughter, then they were singled out; and if they were the only ones who walked like sheep to the slaughter, then, somehow, they <i>did</i> behave differently from other prisoners. The assimilationist does not see the contradiction. For him, it is reassuring to know that the people of his ancestors, whom he had forsaken, did not really deserve much better. Those ghetto Jews had no courage to act, did not move, although it was quite clear to any enlightened, visionary assimilationist what was in store for them. Even later, when the “Final Solution” was already being implemented, the inferior ghetto Jews were unable to see the wide-open doors that were still available for them to escape.2<i class="footnote">See, for example, Bruno Bettelheim, “Freedom from Ghetto Thinking,” in <i>Midstream</i>, Spring 1962.</i> The assimilationist Jew needs all this. On the one hand, there is no such thing as a Jewish people, therefore — unlike the Nazis — he does not reject them. On the other hand, there used to be a people of ghetto Jews who deserved nothing better than to be rejected. They got what they had asked for. Thus, the assimilationist Jew saves his self-respect and soothes his conscience.
  Neither can the dogmatic ideologists of the Left recognize that the Jewish people and Judaism were a target of Germany, specifically selected for annihilation. According to them, the struggle was essentially a political one between Fascism and the progressive forces of freedom. This battle was chiefly fought by these forces and had very little to do with Jews <i>qua</i> Jews. Were they to acknowledge that the Jewish people as such were the target, it would mean only one of two things: either that the Jews were in the forefront in the political struggle for freedom, or that the battle was not a political one fought in accordance with the textbook rules on class struggle. The leftist ideology permits neither of these possibilities. Furthermore, the Jewish question itself is a bogey, since it is going to disappear in the classless society of universal brotherhood. There is, therefore, no such thing as a Jewish people. As for Judaism, there could be no point in making an issue of it. It had no influence on the course of human history, which proceeds in accordance with the laws of dialectical materialism. Very few, if any, have had the intellectual honesty of a Beardayev, who foreswore dialectical materialism because he could not deny the reality of the history of the Jewish people.
  The truth, of course, is that there was a direct confrontation between Hitler’s Germany and the people of Judaism because the Nazi ideology was essentially not a political one, but a nihilistic rebellion against all human values and a satanic defacing of the divine image of which man is the bearer on earth. Ernst Junger, whom Camus, in <i>The Rebel</i>, calls “the only man of superior culture who gave Nazism even an appearance of being a philosophy,” formulated the essence of this German nihilism by saying: “The best answer to the betrayal of the body of life by the spirit is the betrayal of the spirit by the spirit, and one of the great and cruel pleasures of our times is to participate in the work of destruction.”3<i class="footnote"><i>The Rebel</i>, Penguin Modern Classics 1971 edition, p. 147.</i> In order to understand what the issue at stake was, it is worth pondering this statement. What is the betrayal of life by the spirit? In this context the very existence of the spirit is adjudged to be a betrayal of life. Spirit, with its affirmation of freedom as an instrument of responsibility, with its demands of discipline, with its value affirmations that originate in a realm of transcendence reaching out toward the Divine, is seen as the enemy of life, a life limited to its purely biological needs, drives, and appetites. This, in itself, is nothing more than the negation of the spirit, not its betrayal. It cannot serve as the dynamic of a nihilistic state organization. The betrayal of the spirit by the spirit is an ideology; it is the conscious elevation of the satisfaction of primitive biological needs and dark demonic drives to the level of a cult. It is the “sanctification” of the satanic in human nature. It is the planned desecration of the spirit that demands the dehumanization of man. Nazism was not a political movement but, in its betrayal of the spirit, a spiritual one, and the battle against it should have been a spiritual one. It is this struggle that the nations refused to join, understandably, since Nazism itself was only a manifestation of a spiritually bankrupt civilization. This explains the world’s indifference toward the plight of the Jewish people.
  The natural adversary of this kind of a rebellion is always the Jew, not on account of what he does, but on account of what he represents in history. It is neither the Ten Commandments, nor the “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” of the Torah, nor the belief in God that is responsible for the singling out of the Jew by the nihilistic rebels against the domain of the spirit. Indeed, other religions may affirm the same principles and believe in the same kind of divinity. But it has been the spiritual misfortune of the other world religions that they have been too successful in the domain of Caesar. In the history of the human race, half a billion believers in a God prove nothing about the presence and power of that God in history. The believers and their affirmations may have their psychological significance for the individual; ultimately the hundreds of millions of human beings, in possession of vast territories, natural resources, and vast military establishments, only prove the power of the material forces that they represent. The nihilistic rebellion has to aim at defeating the material power bases of such adversaries and this was the aim of Germany with regard to the other nations. There was no need for a “Final Solution” against the peoples themselves. But the Jew and Judaism represent in human history the affirmation of values that have survived without the physical power base that has otherwise been the sole guarantee of a permanent place on the world scene. That the Jewish people has withstood all the barbarous attacks upon it, that it has been able to maintain itself in the midst of deadly enemies, bespeaks the presence of another kind of power, invisibly playing its part in the history of men. The survival of the Jew, his capacity for revival after catastrophes such as had eliminated mighty nations and empires, indicate the mysterious intrusion of a spiritual dimension into the history of man. The more radical the rebellion against the world of the spirit, the greater the hatred against the Jew. The Final Solution was not only to eliminate the Jewish people from history, but through the destruction of Israel it was meant to finalize the defeat of that mysterious spiritual force against which the rebellion was directed. The Nazis were quite correct in believing that if they did not succeed in the elimination of the “Jewish influence” upon world history, they would also fail in their plans for world conquest. No matter what they said in their official propaganda, they sensed the mysterious nature of that influence, the presence of a hiding God in history. It was, indeed, a course of nihilistic violence that meant not only to conquer the earth, but also to poison the soul of man by successfully trampling on all human values and on all human feeling.
  Jews understood instinctively the nature of the confrontation. However, nowhere did the meaning of the confrontation call for a more heroic opposition than among the underground groups of young <i>ḥasidim</i>, as expressed in the words of one of them:
  “I shall not go to slave labor; I shall not join any workers’ group! The intention of the Nazi Satan is not only to enslave the body; his main goal is to subjugate the soul. We shall not submit. We give up the food rations. We shall starve, but will not be moved. We shall find somehow some way of getting something to eat…We shall oppose the decrees of the Satan.”4<i class="footnote">Prager, I, p. 48.</i>
  Who were these young Jews? In certain circles of the ghetto and camp survivors, legends are told about a widespread association of young Gerer <i>ḥasidim</i> known as the <i>Mottesovzes</i>. They were members of a group organized by one Motte (Mattityahu) Gelman. He was born in Vienna into a well-to-do, completely assimilated Jewish family. A highly gifted young boy, he distinguished himself in his studies at school. One day in 1933, after the Nazis had come to power in Germany, one of his classmates called him “a dirty Jew.” Motte spat in his face. Since he knew nothing of Judaism — he did not even know how to read Hebrew and had never held a prayerbook in his hand — he decided, instead of going home, to cross over the bridge above the Danube into the <i>Zweiter Bezirk</i>, “the Second District,” which was known for its Jewish population, many of whom were of Eastern European origin. He wanted to find out about Jews. It chanced that he encountered there the distinguished Rabbi Schapiro of Lublin, the founder of the world-renowned Yeshiva of <i>Ḥakhmei Lublin</i>. He approached the venerable rabbi. He wanted to find out why he was called “a dirty Jew.” He had been insulted. The others had laughed; no one had come to his defense. “They are the ones who are crude and vulgar; who use dirty language; who often act immorally. And they call me dirty?” The rabbi told him: “Don’t get excited about it. The prophet already warned about the same thing: ‘Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil; that change darkness into light and light into darkness …’ ”5<i class="footnote">Isaiah 5:20.</i>
  There it was, the classical summation of the betrayal of the spirit by the spirit. In this short encounter, Motte became a changed person and with the help of a religious youth organization he started to learn about Judaism. During his next summer vacation, with funds from a prize he had won for an essay on modern Austrian poetry, he joined a ten-day antiquities study tour of Poland. But his real purpose was to run away to Lublin and to learn in the yeshiva of Rabbi Schapiro. He was only fifteen years of age at the time, but all the efforts of his father to bring him back to Vienna were of no avail. Soon, Motte joined the Gerer <i>ḥasidim</i> and by the time he was seventeen he was already an outstanding Talmud student and a fervent <i>ḥasid</i>, an inspiration to numerous other young Jews. When the German armies shattered Poland and spread havoc, murder, and destruction among Polish Jewry, Motte became a tower of strength in the midst of the chaos. In numerous ghettos he organized secret groups who refused to obey the laws of the Germans and went into hiding to study Torah, to pray, sing, and dance. These groups, which then became known as <i>Mottesovzes</i>, “men of Motte,” existed in Cracow, Warsaw, Szydlowiec, Radom and other cities. Strict voluntary discipline was the rule in their hiding places. Winter and summer, the members of the group had to be present in their bunkers at 6 A.M. In all the ghettos they lived together in communes sharing everything. Although their main purpose was the study of the Torah, <i>biKedushah uveTohorah</i>, in holiness and in purity, they were also deeply engaged in charitable work. They took into their midst lonely children, remnants of families that were expelled from the ghetto, and helped children who had run away from places outside the ghetto, a capital crime in the eyes of the Germans. Motte, the moving spirit of this conspiratorial organization, travelled in his ḥasidic garb on all kinds of secret roads from ghetto to ghetto, from labor camp to labor camp, appearing and disappearing mysteriously, collecting donations, assembling help for his secret Torah communes. Although still in his early twenties, he became a legend in the ghettos.6<i class="footnote">Cf. Unger, p. 102; Prager, I, the opening pages which discuss him, and also pp. 43–44.</i>
  People who remember him would say, this is what Motte was like: he taught us to shatter the conditions around us and not to be shattered by them; to deny them, but not to deny ourselves. And he would sing: “Whatever is beauty in the world out there, see it in its defiling ugliness.”
  One of the survivors who knew Motte in the Szydlowiec ghetto writes about him:
  “The personality of Mattityahu stands before my eyes as if alive. A great deal passed over me during the years of bereavement and destruction. But I was also privileged to witness many manifestations of spiritual exaltation in the midst of the valley of the shadow of death. However, the appearance of Mattityahu was unique in its class. As I considered him, it became clear to me that here was a Jew; and that was his armour…Though I, too, lived in the same ghetto I did not get to see him there too often because most of the time he was travelling. People ceased already to wonder how Mattityahu managed to escape the numerous armed guards that were watching the roads. They simply considered him a man of miracles.”
  One day he went on one of his errands and was never seen again. It was then that Yankel Gefen, another young Gerer <i>ḥasid</i> who had been Motte’s deputy, became the central guiding personality of the <i>Mottesovzes</i> groups. Originally, he had been known as a <i>batlan</i>, a world-strange, impractical young man, but he suddenly revealed himself to be a Jew of great courage and fearlessness. He would hasten to join in every risky venture, and again and again he escaped from the deadly grip of the enemy. He jumped from the death train that was speeding him towards the extermination camp of Belzec. He succeeded in getting out of the prison of the <i>Juden Lager</i> (the Jewish camp) in the slave labor camp at Plaszow. But the height of his heroism was thought to be his stealing himself across the Polish-Czech border to try to make his way on foot to the Gerer Rebbe in Jerusalem.
  Two other incidents reveal something of his understanding of the nature of the confrontation, as well as his personal courage and strength of character in meeting it. Soon after the German conquest of Poland, a group of German soldiers was celebrating the victory by mocking and humiliating Jews in the streets of Warsaw. They happened to come upon a group of <i>ḥasidim</i> and fell upon them with derisive laughter. One of the officers pulled out a knife and turned to the Jews: “Moses! Give me your beard.” The Jews were speechless as the Germans went ahead with their joke of pulling and cutting some of their beards. There was nothing they could do and they were glad to escape with their lives. Then the Nazis got hold of Yankel. “Shoot me; kill me; but I will not let you cut my beard,” he shouted. The heroic Germans started cursing and threatening him. Finally, at the urging of some older <i>ḥasidim</i> who warned him that the Germans might avenge his resistance on all of them, Yankel agreed to let the officer cut off the edges of his beard. After the event, when he was asked how he dared endanger his life by inciting the murders, Yankel answered with complete composure: “I did it intentionally, I did not want these <i>resha’im</i> (wicked, evil men) to think that the world belongs altogether to them.”7<i class="footnote">Prager, I, pp. 74–75.</i>
  The second incident occurred in Cracow, the seat of the German occupation authorities, where clandestine activity was much more difficult than in other places. Motte had moved to the Szydlowiec ghetto and the situation of the <i>Mottesovzes</i> in Cracow became critical. The large group disintegrated and the members were scattered in private homes where they studied in twos and threes. Then Yankel Gefen arrived in the ghetto, immediately filling the place that became vacant when Motte left. He reorganized the <i>ḥavurah</i> (the Gerer fraternity), established a secret <i>shtiebel</i>, and became the organizer, the teacher, and the guide of a group of over thirty young <i>baḥurim</i> who often studied Torah deep into the night. Their <i>shtiebel</i> was high up in an attic. One night their study was interrupted by loud banging at the gate of the building. There were wild shouts outside and the tension within was great. The danger was imminent, the Germans were at the gate.
  “We held our breath. We all sensed what was bound to happen here within a few minutes. However, no one moved from his place. Yankel Gefen was standing…completely composed, completely quiet and at peace, altogether strength and trust.”
  Our witness thought of running away. There were possibilities of escape; it was a large building with many corridors, and secret nooks and niches. But he did not budge; nor did anyone else.
  “Yankel Gefen looked at us with eyes free of fear. His glance removed our fear and sparked audacity in us. Let there be what may. We shall not be alarmed. We shall not run from them.”
  The shouting grew louder and wilder. The gate was shattered. Knocking and banging; curses and screaming. “They are here!” shouted one of the youngest members of the group. With a gesture of his hand, Yankel ordered the boy to be quiet and to remain seated in his place.
  “We were all silent; sitting in our places. The pages of the Talmud were open. Our hearts were beating fast, but the determination was formed: ‘We shall not budge!’ Many long minutes passed. Gradually our minds were once again engaged in the talmudic theme. We did not raise our voices, but quietly started to hum again the tune to which the <i>Gemara</i> is studied.”
  There was some more drunken shouting downstairs, cries and shrieking whistles. Then, silence! The Germans had left. It turned out that they had come for plunder and departed. When the danger was over, Yankel Gefen gave his students a lesson in the “virtue of indifference.” Turning to the boy who had shouted out, he said:
  “You lost yourself. So, what did you discover? Didn’t we all know that they were here? Didn’t we hear them? But what? Whom does it concern at all! That is exactly what they want; that we abolish ourselves before them. It is because of it that they make the noise and cause the terror — in order to break and subdue us. They cling to their own — and we stay with our own. Therefore, we shall not run nor withdraw before them. That is why it is written: ‘Blessed is the man who trusts in God; God is his safety.’”8<i class="footnote">Jeremiah 17:7; Prager, I, pp. 76–79.</i>
  Yankel Gefen had no disrespect for life. But in his philosophy it was more important to ignore the enemy and retain the independence of one’s being than to run in order to escape, to lose one’s self-respect and submit in the spirit to threats and fear. The <i>Mottesovzes</i> were a fairly widespread conspiratorial organization. But they were no saboteurs in the normal usage of the term; nor were they partisans (though many of their survivors joined the ghetto fighters in the end). Yet, when the Germans would discover their hiding places, they would accuse them of sabotage and rightly so. From the point of view of a nihilistic faith, rooted in the betrayal of the spirit by the spirit, the manifestation of the authenticity of the life of the spirit is a much more dangerous threat than the blowing up of railway tracks by ordinary saboteurs. The emergence of a Motte Gelman from the apparently barren womb of a completely de-Judaized home of assimilated Vienese Jews symbolizes the mysterious capability of the Jewish people for eternal recovery and renewal. Motte Gelman, who appeared over the dark skies of the ghettos like a brilliantly shining meteor, demonstrated that the betrayal of the spirit by the spirit was doomed in the history of man, and proved the irrepressible mightiness of the spirit.
  We know of at least one other group of young <i>ḥasidim</i> who saw the confrontation with the Germans very much like the <i>Mottesovzes</i>. Overcoming the tyranny of fear in the ghetto of Lodz, this <i>ḥavrutah</i> trained itself to remember each day three fundamental principles:
  (a) The German is Amalek (the traditional enemy of the Jewish people). Whatever he says, one has to do the opposite.
  (b) Because he is indeed Amalek, one need not be surprised by his behavior and actions and one must not be afraid because of them.
  (c) This is the method of Amalek: to confuse the senses and to prove in every possible way that all is lost; that there is no escape and that the only choice is — to submit.9<i class="footnote">Prager, II, pp. 84–85.</i>
  The meaning of this formulation was not intended as a call to arms, which — in their situation — was beyond them. It was similar to Yankel Gefen’s “We shall not budge”; part of the battle in the realm of the spirit, the retention of the authenticity of one’s own being, defying the force of the dehumanizing conditions, and, in the style of Motte Gelman, to break and not to be broken. In the terminology of these Jews, the battle was with Satan.
  It is doubtful that anyone was able to offer a clearer understanding of the significance of the confrontation than Rabbi Mendele Alter of Pabianice, brother of the Gerer Rebbe. The account of his walk to the gas chambers in Treblinka at the head of a large group of Jews has become a legend. As he was taken to the gas chamber, he pleaded with one of the Kapos for some water. To everyone’s surprise, the man, who was one of the most sadistic among the German lackeys, brought the water. However, Reb Mendele did not drink it, but used it to wash his hands preparing himself for the last prayer on earth, the saying of the <i>Viddui</i> (the customary confession of sins before death). Along the way, a badly wounded child was thrown across Reb Mendele’s path. He picked up the bleeding baby whose little body was quivering in his hands. There was still time; the Germans dragged out the death march for their entertainment. Reb Mendele, holding the child, turned to the others and said:
  “…this is holiness, purer than all purity, a Jewish child. This little Jewish child is sick, weak like a fly…how come that the Satan, in possession of the most advanced weapons of war and destruction, has to wage war and vent his cruelty on little children? These ‘defiled ones,’ when they see a Jewish child in the arms of his mother are immediately filled with the urge to murder…the forces of <i>tumah</i>, demonic defilement, cannot endure the sight of holiness, the spirit of purity that hovers over the face of a Jewish child.”
  Then he told them of a personal experience. When the Nazis first came to his home to beat and torture him, it hurt very much and he was in great pain. But suddenly his eyes were opened with understanding. The Germans discovered a scroll of the Torah in his room. At once they let him go and threw themselves with “cruel anger and mad murderous desire” upon the <i>Sefer Torah</i>. They trod on it with their feet and tore the parchment with fanatical hatred, as if sensing that the letters on them contained the life blood of the Jewish people. (Witnesses tell of similar events in other places. On at least one occasion known to us a German officer, upon discovering a Torah scroll in a secret <i>shtiebel</i>, pulled out his bayonet and stabbed the scroll several times in his fury.10<i class="footnote"><i>Ibid.</i>, p. 140.</i>) Reb Mendele concluded his remarks by saying:
  “When I saw this I regained my composure. I understood the meaning of the words in the Psalms: ‘You make me wise through my enemies.’11<i class="footnote">Psalms 119:28.</i> It is not my body that the enemy means to crush. When he fights against the source of holiness, he slaughters the children of Israel; and when he wants to destroy the strength of the Jew, he treads underfoot the parchment of the Torah.”12<i class="footnote">Prager, I, pp. 160–162.</i>
  It is doubtful if anyone had a deeper understanding of the nature of Nazi Germany than these Jews. The struggle was not a political one. It even transcended the realm of morality and ethics. It had to be fought against the consciously planned defilement of the very sources of man’s humanity. Nazi Germany was the deification of the diabolical; the religious befouling of all purity and innocence. Jews rightly saw in it the rebellion of <i>Koḥot haTumah</i> (a phrase well understood in the context of Judaism, which can only be weakly rendered in English as “the forces of impurity”), the satanic relishers of destruction. It was against all this that the authentic Jew was fighting. In the words of Yankel Gefen, he was holding on to his own, to himself. Even if his body was destroyed, in his own life the rebellion of <i>Koḥot haTumah</i> was defeated. This truth found its dramatic affirmation in the final hour of the Chencziner Rebbe. When a German soldier was trying to cut his beard, he shouted at him: “Don’t touch me with your defiled hands.” He was shot.13<i class="footnote">Schindler, p. 220; also M. Unger, <i>Admorim sheNispu baSho’ah</i>, Jerusalem, 1969, p. 103.</i> The incident recalls a passage from Paul Ricoeur’s <i>The Symbolism of Evil</i>, which defines the “dread of the impure.” It is a reaction to “a threat which, beyond the threat of suffering and death, aims at a diminution of existence, a loss of the personal core of one’s being.”14<i class="footnote">Quoted by Terrence Des Pres in <i>The Survivor</i>, p. 68.</i> It was this that the Chencziner Rebbe dreaded more than death itself, the diminution of his existence, the loss of the personal core of his Jewish being.
  Because of their conscious, and often unconscious, understanding of the nature of the confrontation, no matter what their personal fate might be, Jews did not doubt the ultimate defeat of Germany and the survival of the Jewish people. The two were inseparable from each other as the following story, from the early days of the German conquest of Poland, shows. The Germans came to Lublin to set up a “Jewish area” and ordered the chairman of the <i>Judenrat</i> to assemble the Jewish population in an open field outside the city for a “general parade.” As the Jews presented themselves at the appointed time, the German commander ordered them to sing a gay and happy ḥasidic tune. The crowd was fearful and confused, but one hesitant voice started singing the moving song: <i>Lomir sich iberbeiten, Avinu shebaShamayim</i>, “Let us be friends again, our Father in Heaven.” The crowd remained unresponsive. The German soldiers threw themselves with murderous blows upon the Jews who would not obey their command. Suddenly, a voice broke from among the crowd singing the same tune with might and joy, but with the words now changed to: <i>Mir wellen sei iberleben, Avinu shebaShamayim</i>, “We shall outlive them, our Father in Heaven.” The song gripped the crowd. They sang it with enthusiasm and danced to it ecstatically. It became for them the hymn of Jewish eternity. The Germans, bewildered and at a loss, started shouting: “Stop it! Stop it!”15<i class="footnote">M. Prager, <i>Niẓuẓei haGevurah</i>, Tel-Aviv, 1952, pp. 10–11.</i> Did they sense that it was the song of their doom?
  
  7 To Live or to Survive
  
  One of the striking aspects of the Jewish lifestyle in the ghettos and the camps was that many Jews risked their lives to practice Judaism far beyond the requirements of the <i>halakhah</i>, of Jewish law; indeed, almost against the <i>halakhah</i>. For the question may legitimately be asked whether it was really right for them to defy the Germans by holding communal services, baking <i>matzot</i>, etc., when Jewish law demands “and thou shalt live by them,” by God’s commandments; when in all the six hundred and thirteen commandments there are only three concerning which it is ruled; let a man allow himself to be killed rather than transgress them? 1<i class="footnote">Idolatory, murder, and adultery (with incest included in this category); see T.B. <i>Sanhedrin</i> 74a.</i> Was the Chencziner Rebbe right in getting himself killed rather than allowing the German soldier to touch him? After all, even in a situation where there is only a possible risk to one’s life, the law is to disregard the commandments.
  The answer lies in the uniqueness of the situation. Never before had the Jewish people and Judaism been confronted with a radical onslaught by a mighty state power organized to make war against the spirit. It was not a question of this commandment or that commandment; the very form of life that the Jew represented in human history was to be eliminated. More than anything else, the supreme values of human existence, as maintained by Judaism and affirmed by the existence of the Jew, were to be destroyed. Quite clearly, the goal of these Jews was not survival (although, needless to say, they wanted to survive as much as anyone else). Their longing was expressed in one word, <i>iberleben</i>, “to outlive them.” Especially in the ghettos, Jews “organized” all kinds of activities in order to “outlive them.” Bunkers were built in cellars and attics; there were entire “underground cities,” for hiding during the “selections.” Day and night watches were set up in order to gather information and pass it on when danger was imminent. Food was smuggled in, all kinds of mutual aid organizations were set up to care for children and the elderly, and there were many attempts to cross the borders, to escape to Switzerland, Spain, etc.2<i class="footnote"><i>HaAmidah ha Yehudit biTekufat haSho’ah</i>, p. 129.</i> The authentic Jew wanted to survive like anyone else, but not at any cost; not at the cost of betraying the meaning of his own life. We have seen how devastating were the consequences of attempting to survive at any cost. It meant the betrayal of all human values and ultimately, as Bettelheim maintains, it brought about the adoption of the SS values by the prisoners themselves.
  The survivalists among the students of the Holocaust would condemn the behavior of such authentic Jews as the group of <i>baḥurim</i> who rejected an opportunity to escape from the ghetto to the “Aryan side.” How can we live among Gentiles?” they asked. “How can we pray there, study Torah? And without it how can one live? What value has life without it?”3<i class="footnote">Prager, <i>Eleh</i>…, I, p. 86.</i> Or think of Janusz Korczak, who walked at the head of the children of his orphans’ home as they were taken to the gas chambers. He himself was not on the list. He went voluntarily. Rachel Auerbach tells us that he was not the only one. There were many others, not as well-known, who acted like him. Teachers, men and women, who did not leave the children entrusted into their care, but walked voluntarily to die together with them. She comments:
  “In those days of frightful ruin, there was also present a heroic spirit among the anonymous Jews of the ghetto. On the one side, moral degeneration; on the other, great moral elevation, brotherhood and love of one’s fellow men, love of the people in the midst of the Holocaust.”4<i class="footnote"><i>HaAmidah</i>…, p. 127.</i>
  There was a deep sense of solidarity between teachers and their students, between parents and children, between friends. There were many who would not save themselves because they did not wish to escape without their husbands or wives and their children. One would go along with his brother so that he should not have to face torture and death alone.5<i class="footnote"><i>Ibid.</i></i>
  In the early spring of 1943 there were three rabbis left in the Warsaw ghetto. The situation of the ghetto was hopeless. Everyone of the few remnants of what had been a community of half a million Jews was expecting the end. For some mysterious reason, the Catholic hierarchy of Warsaw experienced a pang of conscience and decided to do something to help the Jews. They would save the last three rabbis of Warsaw. At the request of an emissary from the Church, the three rabbis — the world-famous Ga’on, Rabbi Menahem Zemba, together with Rabbi Shimshon Stokhammer, and Rabbi David Shapiro, an author and lecturer—assembled to discuss the matter. After a long silence, in accordance with the rule in a rabbinical court Rabbi Shapiro was the first to speak:
  “I am the youngest among you. What I have to say does not obligate you in any way. It is clear to us that we cannot help the remaining Jews in the ghetto at all. However, the very fact that we do not leave them, that we stay with them, may give them some encouragement. I cannot leave these people…”
  Not another word was said. After a while the rabbis came out of the room and Rabbi Zemba delivered their reply: “There is nothing to discuss.”6<i class="footnote">Eliav, p. 22.</i> Rabbi Zemba, who called for armed resistance, died in the Warsaw ghetto rebellion. Rabbi Stokhammer perished in Treblinka. Only Rabbi Shapiro miraculously survived.
  According to the survivalists, the young <i>ḥasidim</i> should certainly have saved their lives by crossing over to the “Aryan side” of the city; Janusz Korczak and the other teachers were too shortsighted to realize that they could not save any of the children whatever they did. Why then sacrifice your own life unnecessarily! Husbands and wives, parents and children, brothers, sisters, teachers and pupils should have separated for the sake of the possible survival of some of them. The last rabbis of Warsaw, just because they were the last ones, should have thought of the future. Surviving, they could have rendered important service to other Jewish survivors. All these people were rather foolish; typical ghetto Jews, without the ability to act or even to conceive of other possibilities of living open to them.7<i class="footnote">Cf. Bruno Bettelheim, “Freedom from Ghetto Thinking,” in <i>Midstream</i>, Spring, 1962.</i>
  However, to Rachel Auerbach, a survivor of the Warsaw ghetto rebellion, these Jews and their actions were manifestations of the triumphant spirit of man, an exaltation of the moral and spiritual dimensions of life itself. But any discussion between these opposing views would be pointless. Rachel Auerbach, a typical “ghetto Jewess,” belongs to a different world of values from the survivalists in the West. Whether religious or secularist, her roots are in the historic tradition of Judaism. The survivalists belong to the same Western civilization whose decadence spawned Nazism. This is not to suggest that they would accept the faith of the Nazi philosopher that “the best answer to the betrayal of life by the spirit is the betrayal of the spirit by the spirit,” but their suggestion that in extreme situations all human values are to be sacrificed on the altar of the Moloch, survival, is to agree with the first part of that faith — that the values and the demands of the spirit are a betrayal of life.
  Thousands of Jews who at great risks went beyond the immediate requirements of the <i>halakhah</i> in realizing at least a minimum form of Jewish living, made the statement with their lives that life is not worth living at all costs; that it is not worth living at the cost of deserting the meaning of one’s life and desecrating the very essence of one’s personal being. Was this a betrayal of life by the spirit?
  When the Germans assembled the Jews of Malecz, with their genius for original ideas they ordered them to dance on the bodies of other Jews who had been murdered a short time before. All the Jews, men, women, and children, had been driven from their homes and were to be shot unless the men obeyed the order to dance. Then the daughter of the rabbi walked up to the SS officer and slapped his face. She was shot on the spot.8<i class="footnote">Unger, <i>Der Geistiker Viderstand</i>…, p. 88.</i> Did she foolishly throw away her life? She did not even sacrifice it, she affirmed its dignity. Her deed is not to be seen as an act of sacrifice, but one of living her life with the greatest intensity; as an act of supreme self-realization. The mother who did not let her child go alone to face German barbarism at its vilest was, on her last walk, living her motherhood more deeply than ever before. The Jew who asked to be put on the list of “selection” in order to accompany his brother who was being sent to Auschwitz, was not throwing away his life. He was guarding it, protecting it. To walk together with his brother, that was him, that was his life, and nothing else could take its place at that moment. Similarly, those teachers in the ghettos, on their last walk with the children, lived the preciousness, the sanctity of all human life. They were alive and they were themselves as they had never been before. The young <i>ḥasidim</i> who would not escape to the “Aryan side” because “what could be the value of life without prayer, without Torah,” were thinking of life, of nothing but life, of the very essence of their lives. The essence of one’s being does not wait; it cannot be postponed till tomorrow.
  In various sources one finds a poignantly formulated statement by Rabbi Yizhak Nissenbaum that he often repeated in the years 1940–41 in the Warsaw ghetto. He is quoted as saying:
  “This is an hour of <i>Kiddush haḤayyim</i>, the sanctification of life, and not of <i>Kiddush haShem</i>, the sanctification of the Divine Name by death. In former times, when the enemy demanded the soul of the Jew, the Jews sacrificed their bodies for ‘the sanctification of the Name’ (meaning: they guarded their souls, which the enemy wanted to take); now, however, the oppressor wants the body of the Jew; it is therefore one’s duty to protect it, to guard one’s life.”9<i class="footnote">Saul Esh, <i>Kiddush haḤayyim beTokh haḤurban</i>, in <i>Molad</i>, 5721 (1961).</i>
  Thus, people have been speaking of <i>Kiddush haḤayyim</i>, the sanctification of life, the duty of its preservation in these times, as opposed to <i>Kiddush haShem</i>, the sanctification of God’s name in a martyr’s death. It is doubtful that this was Rabbi Nissenbaum’s intention. What he had in mind was to impress upon the Jews in the ghetto the duty of self-defense. Rabbi Zemba is quoted as having spoken in similar terms when he maintained that in those days <i>Kiddush haShem</i> required armed opposition to the enemy.10<i class="footnote">Cf. Eliav, p. 71; quoted from Seidman, <i>Yoman Ghetto Varsha</i>.</i> Neither Rabbi Nissenbaum nor Rabbi Zemba meant to give a dissertation on the difference between “Sanctification of Life” and “Sanctification of the Name.” That the enemy “wanted the body and not the soul” meant for both rabbis that, whereas in former times one could escape torture and death at the hand of Christians by embracing Christianity, this choice was no longer available. Taken literally, the statement was not, in the historical perspective, a very logical one. For if <i>Kiddush haShem</i> — in the words of Rabbi Zemba — includes, and <i>Kiddush haḤayyim</i> — according to Rabbi Nissenbaum — demands, armed resistance to an enemy, why should it be required only when the body is threatened, and not also when the choice is baptism or death? The fact is that during the crusades and at later times in Christian countries, Jews did defend their ghettos and the cities in which they were located with arms in their hands, fighting heroically till the moment of <i>Kiddush haShem</i>, the moment of martyrdom in the name of God. But the rabbis in the Warsaw ghetto were not discussing either theology or history. They meant to give a popular formulation to the command of the hour, to protect and to defend oneself. Reb Mendele of Pabianice was, of course, right in his moral and religious evaluation of the situation. He, like so many others, saw clearly the nihilistic rebellion that of necessity had to direct itself against those very human values whose potency in history was proved by the mysterious survival power of the Jewish people. It was indeed a time of supreme <i>Kiddush haShem</i>. Yet, to set <i>Kiddush haḤayyim</i>, the sanctification of life, against <i>Kiddush haShem</i>, the sanctification of the Divine Name, is based on a grave misunderstanding of both concepts.
  Terrence Des Pres, in <i>The Survivor</i>, pleads the case of the survivor against that of the hero. Quoting from Spinoza’s <i>Ethics</i> that each thing “insofar as it is in itself, endeavors to persevere in its being,” Des Pres concludes that the survival of the body and its well-being take priority over everything else. Those Jews who in these post-Holocaust days propagate the idea of <i>Kiddush haḤayyim</i> as the supreme Jewish responsibility and, in accordance with their understanding of the concept, see it as the opposite of the <i>mitzvah</i> of <i>Kiddush haShem</i>, seem to adopt a position similar to that of Des Pres. One should, however, not overlook the fact that Des Pres has no familiarity with Judaism and makes his point in the context of Western civilization and its history. Seen from this angle, he is right in saying that the images of the hero in Western religion and culture…
  “draw their sanction and compelling force from death. Those who for centuries have commanded love and imitation — Christ, Socrates, the martyrs; the tragic hero always; the warrior from Achilles to the Unknown Soldier — all are sacrificial victims, all resolve conflict by dying and through death ensure that the spirit they spoke of or fought for shall not perish. The pattern is so honored and familiar that a connection between heroism and death seems natural.”
  The purpose of all this is to give the rest of mankind “an illusion of grace” by means of “symbolic systems” that dulls man’s awareness of what is terrible. It is achieved through the death of the hero who takes upon himself the condition of victimhood. This can only function in normal times, but not when death and terror continually surround man, as was the case in the concentration camps. He correctly maintains that “when men and women must live together against terrible odds, when mere existence becomes miraculous, to die is in no way a triumph.” In such circumstances mere survival is the imperative that surpasses all other considerations. Describing the stance of the hero, he rightly states that
  “the tragic hero finds in death a victory. Thereby he places himself beyond compromise, beyond the erosion of time, and the truth for which he stood is solemnized, pressed deep in the hearts of his audience through the drama of his sacrifice. He is proof of spirit’s contempt for the flesh, and death itself becomes the confirmation of greatness.”11<i class="footnote"><i>The Survivor</i>, pp. 5–6, 9–10.</i>
  Because Des Pres sees the spirit as the antagonist of the flesh, he also interprets civilization as the “symbolic superstructure” and, quoting Nietzsche, he has to say that “the problem with these symbolic superstructures is that they redeem life by negating it.” The split between mind and body characterizes the structure of civilized existence. It follows from such a position that all things “higher” are not concerned with life itself; “not, that is, with life in its physical concreteness.” The enhancement of life is achieved “by denigrating actual life processes.” All this, however, cannot stand the test of the “plague,” of the terror of the concentration camp. Des Pres understands that this image of the hero, the elevation of life to “higher” things that denigrate actual life processes, is at the heart of the “Christian worldview” and it also has its parallels in Plato and in Homer’s <i>Iliad</i>.12<i class="footnote"><i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 164–5.</i>
  Whereas Des Pres’ insights are born out by the nature and history of Western civilization, they have no meaning within the context of Judaism. Some of the key passages of the Torah affirm the ultimate value of life. For instance: “See I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil…I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before thee life and death, the blessing and the curse. Therefore choose life, that thou mayest live, thou and thy seed.”13<i class="footnote">Deuteronomy 30:15–19.</i> Or, in another passage: “Ye, shall therefore keep My statutes, and Mine ordinances, which if a man do, he shall live by them…”14<i class="footnote">Leviticus 18:5.</i> The rabbis in the Talmud interpret the last words to mean that one must live by God’s commandments, and not die because of them.15<i class="footnote">T.B. <i>Sanhedrin</i> 74a.</i>
  At times it would seem that the Torah intentionally debunks the sacrificial hero as the model who “draws his sanction and compelling force from death” (Des Pres’ formulation). We read in Deuteronomy:
  “For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not too hard for thee, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that Thou shouldest say: who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, and make us to hear it, that we may do it? Neither is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldest say: who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto us, and make us to hear it, that we may do it? But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it.”16<i class="footnote">Deuteronomy 30:11–14.</i>
  In other words, do not wait for a superman. The task is yours, and you can do it.
  Even Moses is not a sacrificial hero in Judaism. His death is not wrapt in the mantle of the tragic so that it should inspire and be revered by future generations. There is no death stance of Moses. He went up to the mountain of Nebo from where God showed him the land into which he was not to enter. He died there in the land of Moab as God had spoken. “And he buried him in the land of Moab…and no one knows his burial place to this day.”17<i class="footnote"><i>Ibid.</i>, 34:5–7.</i> According to a midrashic commentary,18<i class="footnote">See Rashi’s commentary <i>ad. loc.</i></i> Moses died by a kiss of God, by which the rabbis meant to say that death was not only the end of Moses’ life, but its conclusion. The legacy he left behind is his life, not his death. Even the <i>Akedah</i>, the near-sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham, which has a place in Judaism similar to the sacrifice of Jesus in Christianity, ends with a celebration of life. Abraham is being tested, but Isaac is to live, an indication that while to obey God’s command should be the ultimate concern of the Jew, the purpose is not death but life.
  That life itself is a fundamental value, that it should be defended even at the risk of losing it, need not be argued. That life is holy and that therefore it must not be destroyed but should be protected, is essential Jewish teaching. However, <i>Kiddush haḤayyim</i> is not just the acknowledgment of the holiness of life, but the deed of its sanctification. Life as such is given to man; its sanctification is the task of man. In what, then, does life’s sanctification consist and how does it relate to <i>Kiddush haShem</i>, the sanctification of “the Name”?
  The sanctification of life is achieved through a certain kind of human conduct. We find an indication of its meaning in the biblical injunction, “thou shalt be holy, for I the Eternal your God am holy.”19<i class="footnote">Leviticus 19:1, see the entire chapter, as well as chapter 20.</i> Holiness derives then from Israel’s relationship to God and from the awareness that God is holy. The laws that follow this introductory injunction describe the behavior that is the sanctification of life, comprising responsibilities toward God and toward one’s fellow men. Other laws of the Torah, all aiming at the sanctification of life, include legislation concerning man’s behavior in nature towards all creation. Sanctification of life means living in the world with the awareness that all life is God’s creation and all life is living in His presence. Seeing the world as God’s creation excludes the possibility of seeing spirit and matter as antagonistic to each other. The stance of the hero who, in the face of death, proves the “spirit’s contempt for the flesh” would be heresy in Judaism. The flesh is no less God’s creation than the spirit, and the spirit, as God’s creation, is no less real than the flesh. Together they are life within man, and not only within man, but in all creation. According to a <i>midrash</i>, at the time of creation God used the Torah as the blueprint for the world.20<i class="footnote"><i>Midrash Rabbah, Bereishit</i> 1:2.</i> This, of course, is not meant to be taken literally. Rather it expresses an important Jewish idea about the nature of reality. Creation, as a work of God, cannot be alien to the Torah as the word of God for man. Both make manifest the will and wisdom of God vis-à-vis man. One might perhaps say that the sanctification of life means living in the presence of God, striving for integrated harmonization of spirit and flesh as the wholeness of human life and giving this striving potent expression in responsible human behavior towards all creation.
  What then is <i>Kiddush haShem</i>, sanctification of God’s name? The concept is charged with deep emotion for the Jew, as it carries within itself both the tragedy and the glory of Jewish martyrdom through the ages. It is with great hesitancy that one dares undertake even only a cursory discussion of this awesome subject. Because of the idea of martyrdom has become so closely attached to it, <i>Kiddush haShem</i> is commonly understood to mean dying a martyr’s death as a Jew. But this does not appear to be its original meaning. For example, the phrase occurs in the talmudic interpretation of the biblical story of Tamar who, disguised as a prostitute, had been made pregnant by her father-in-law, Judah. Accused of harlotry by Judah, but not wanting to put him to shame, instead of naming him she sent him the pledges that he had left in her hands with the words: “I am pregnant by the man to whom these belong…Recognize, I pray thee, whose are these, the signet, and the cords, and the staff.”21<i class="footnote">Genesis 38:25.</i> The teachers in the Talmud considered the Hebrew <i>hakker, na</i>, “recognize, I ask you,” rather too strong a phrase for the identification of such objects as a signet, cords, and a staff. Usually, the root <i>hakker</i> (to recognize) in the Bible implies personal recognition. Therefore, here too, the midrashic interpretation attaches a personal form of acknowledgment to both phrases. Thus Tamar was asking Judah: “Please, acknowledge the presence of your Creator and do not hide your eyes from me.” The Bible then continues: <i>Vayakker Yehudah</i>, “And Judah recognized.” This phrase supports the midrashic interpretation for if the act of recognition referred to the objects before him, the syntax would have required the phrase: <i>Va’yakirem Yehudah</i>, “And Judah recognized <i>them</i>.” As it stands, it is better rendered “And Judah acknowledged,” i.e., acknowledged “the presence of his Creator” and confessed. By his acknowledgment, the Talmud says, Judah “sanctified the Divine Name.” This deed of Judah is then compared to the conduct of Joseph who withstood temptation by the wife of Potiphar and thereby also “sanctified the Divine Name.” Yet Judah’s deed was greater than that of Joseph, for he performed the act of <i>Kiddush haShem</i> in public, whereas Joseph did so in private.22<i class="footnote">T.B. <i>Sotah</i> 10b.</i>
  An action of Abraham is interpreted in the same manner. The Bible relates that after Abraham vanquished the kings who had defeated the confederation around the king of Sodom and saved his nephew Lot, he returned the entire war booty to Sodom and its allies. The rabbis declared that when Abraham returned all of Sodom’s property he sanctified the name of God.23<i class="footnote"><i>Tanna de Vei Eliyahu Rabbah</i>, chapter 25.</i> However, is not <i>Kiddush haShem</i>, understood thus, also <i>Kiddush haḤayyim</i>, the sanctification of life by acknowledging the Creator as the source of one’s responsibility toward all creation, thus making him known in the world by one’s conduct that results from such acknowledgment? The words of Tamar to Judah, “Acknowledge your Creator and do not hide your eyes from me,” may be expressing the identity between <i>Kiddush haShem</i> and <i>Kiddush haḤayyim</i>. Indeed the rabbis interpret the words in Leviticus in which we recognize Judaism’s call to the sanctification of life, “Ye shall be holy for I the Eternal your God am holy,” by saying: “If you sanctify yourselves on earth, I shall account it unto you as if you had sanctified Me on high.”24<i class="footnote"><i>Sifra, Kedoshim</i> 2.</i> Behavior that aims at the sanctification of life also sanctifies the name of the Creator of life. Thus the Jew prays three times daily for the establishment of the world as the kingdom of God. Whereas Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God that was not of this world, arraying the spirit against the flesh, whereas atheistic humanism aims at establishing this earth as the exclusive kingdom of man by setting the flesh against the spirit, Judaism strives for a time when this earth is established as God’s kingdom, through the harmonious integration between the flesh and the spirit, in the act of sanctification in which the name of God and the life of man are hallowed together.
  There still remains, of course, the form of <i>Kiddush haShem</i> that demands the sacrifice of one’s life, the sanctification of the Divine Name through martyrdom. But is this really different from <i>Kiddush haḤayyim?</i> It may very well be that the sacrifice of the martyr has its origin in his love of life, not in its purely material and biological manifestation, but in its material and spiritual interrelatedness as a gift of God. This is how Maimonides formulated the commandment of <i>Kiddush haShem</i> in a desperate situation:
  “The entire house of Israel is commanded to sanctify His ‘Great Name,’ as it is written: ‘and I will be sanctified in the midst of the children of Israel.’25<i class="footnote">Leviticus 22:31.</i> They are also warned not to desecrate it, as it is written: ‘and ye shall not desecrate My holy name.’26<i class="footnote"><i>Ibid.</i></i> How is this to be understood? If some idol-worshipper should arise and force a Jew to transgress any of the commandments of the Torah or else he would kill him, he should transgress and not be killed, for it is said regarding the commandments, ‘which a man should do and live by them’27<i class="footnote"><i>Ibid.</i>, 18:5.</i> — ‘live by them,’ that is to say, ‘but not to die by them’…This is the law regarding all the commandments except idolatry, adultery [and incest], and murder. Regarding these three, if it is said to one: “Transgress or be killed,’ he should be killed rather than transgress…This is the law in ‘normal’ times. However, in times of an ‘official decree,’ when — for instance — a wicked ruler arises, one like Nebuchadnezzar and others like him, and will decree against Israel that its religion, or even a single one of God’s commandments, be destroyed, then one should die rather than transgress any one of the commandments of God.”28<i class="footnote"><i>Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Yesodei haTorah</i>, 5:1–3; cf. Maimonides’ source, T.B. <i>Sanhedrin</i> 74a.</i>
  It is noteworthy that the verses of the Bible upon which the commandment is based make no mention either of the three exceptional commandments nor of an exceptional situation when all of Judaism is threatened with destruction. The teachers of the Oral Tradition singled out three individual commandments as representing values to be guarded at all cost. Of the three exceptions only one refers to the explicit acknowledgment of God, i.e. the rejection of idolatry. The other two are taken from the area of man’s relationship to his fellow men and his obligations toward them. The law against murder recognizes life as an ultimate value. The law against adultery and incest protects the purity of life, or in the talmudic understanding, life itself.29<i class="footnote">See, for example, T.B. <i>Sanhedrin</i> 74a, for the inclusion of <i>Gilu’i Arayot</i> among the three exceptional laws.</i> But if a person chooses to die rather than to violate the life of another human being, is this not an act of life’s sanctification? Yet, it is called <i>Kiddush haShem</i>. Once again, we have encountered the equation between the sanctification of life and the sanctification of the Divine Name. The same might be said about the times of general persecutions that aim at the destruction of Judaism in its entirety. For the Jew, Judaism is not a “symbolical superstructure” imposed upon basic life processes that loses its meaning in the “valley of the shadow of death.” Judaism is the life of the Jew and its sanctification. Not to surrender it is the highest affirmation of life itself. But what of the sacrificial death in the refusal to commit the sin of idolatry? Is this not the stance of the tragic hero, of whom Des Pres spoke? Is this not a denigration of life in favor of an abstract truth; and may not this form of <i>Kiddush haShem</i> rightly be contrasted to <i>Kiddush haḤayyim?</i> The question would be justified if Judaism’s faith in God were an abstract truth, a theological idea, affirming the existence of a First Cause. But the God that the Jew acknowledges is the Creator who has remained in continuous contact with His creation, who is mysteriously present in history; the personal God whose word is directed to man and in whose presence all life takes place. Only because of that is life capable of sanctification and only because of that is man called upon to sanctify himself because He is holy. Deny Him and life loses its meaning, its value, its dignity. Deny Him and all sinks into nihilistic absurdity. The martyr’s sacrifice in his rejection of idolatry is the supreme affirmation of life itself in its created reality.
  The idea that the martyr’s sacrifice might be the actual fulfillment of his life’s ultimate meaning was clearly expressed by Rabbi Akiva in the hour of his death. He explained to his disciples that the commandment: “And thou shalt love the Eternal your God with all your life,” means even if he takes your life. All his days Rabbi Akiva longed for just such an opportunity. To die? Certainly not. The commandment is not to die but to “love the Eternal your God with all your life.” In order to love with all one’s life one must be in possession of all one’s life. In that ultimate moment Rabbi Akiva lived as he had never lived before, because he acted out of his love for the source of all life as he had never been able to do it before.30<i class="footnote">T.B. <i>Berakhot</i> 61b.</i> At such moments people do not think of survival. They are engaged in the fullest realization of living. The question was often asked in the ghettos and the camps whether the fulfillment of the <i>mitzvah</i> of <i>Kiddush haShem</i> was still available to the Jews. During the Middle Ages the Jew had been given a choice. He could save himself by embracing Christianity or he could choose martyrdom for the sake of God. But during the Holocaust there was no such choice so could one still be sanctifying God’s name by one’s unchosen death?31<i class="footnote">The question was reported as having been asked by one Dr. Lenski of Hillel Zeitlin who referring to a statement of Maimonides according to which any Jew who is murdered because he is a Jew is <i>kaddosh</i>, holy; he died for <i>Kiddush haShem</i>. See <i>HaAmidah</i>…, p. 373.</i> It would seem that even during the Holocaust the situation was not essentially different in this respect. <i>Kiddush haShem</i> is not achieved in death, but in living out the meaning of one’s life at its most intense level as a Jew facing death. The number of Jews who actually achieved this kind of human greatness during the Holocaust is untold.
  Jews in their masses, as well as individuals, faced death with dignity, living the moment in the full realization of their Jewish existence. We know of entire congregations who, under the leadership of their rabbis, clothed themselves in their prayer shawls, put on their <i>tefillin</i>, and in quiet dignity walked to meet the barbarous furor of the Germans. Individual Jews would put on their Sabbath clothes when they were forcibly taken from their homes and driven to places of execution in the woods and fields outside the cities. In one of the death camps, Rabbi Ben-Zion of Bobov walked to the gas chambers with thousands of Jews all singing <i>Ani Ma’amin</i>, “I believe with perfect faith,” and calling in a heaven-splitting choir the last words from the Yom Kippur liturgy: “The Eternal, He is God” and the <i>Shema</i>, “Hear, Israel, the Eternal, He is our God, the Eternal is one.”
  Even a sub-human like Rudolf Hess, the notorious commander of Auschwitz, has to tell with respect of an old Jew who, as he was taken to be murdered, called out to him: “Murderer of so many Jews. Germany will yet dearly pay for this.” Then, paying no attention to anyone, he walked on courageously to the gas chambers. It is reported of a Dr. Goldblum of Kolomea that a few minutes before he was shot, he turned to the German guards with these words:
  “Listen you murderers, you scum! If you should now offer me life and happiness on condition that I give up my faith and ‘become an Aryan,’ I should spit you in the face. Because you are murderers, the meanest animals on earth, and we are Jews.”
  Beyond dignity of conduct, there was also the spiritual exaltation emerging from this ultimate validation of the meaning of one’s life. We know of a transport of distinguished Jews that had arrived at a death camp during <i>Pesaḥ</i> in 1944. Among them was Reb Moshe Friedman of Boyan, a highly regarded personality in pre-war Poland, a patriarchal figure, well-known especially in the circles of talmudic learning. As they were about to undress prior to the “bath,” an <i>Oberscharführer</i> entered. Moshe Friedman walked up to him, grasped the lapel of the Nazi’s jacket, and said to him:
  “You, the most despicable murderers of the world, do not imagine that you will succeed in destroying the Jewish people. The Jewish people will live forever. It will not disappear from the stage of history. You will be erased and disappear…The day of vengeance is approaching. Our blood will be demanded of you and it will not find peace until our burning anger will be poured out over you and destroy the animal blood within you.”
  He spoke with a deep and strong voice. Then he covered his head and called with great fervor, <i>Shema Yisra’el</i>, “Hear, O Israel.” All those present joined in with him, echoing also the other traditional words of affirmation. This story, which is told in a diary that was found near Auschwitz in November 1953, concludes with the diarist’s comment: “This was a moment of spiritual exaltation, the like of which is not found in all life…”
  Then there was Reb Heshil Rappaport, a Jew like so many others. During the last days of the Warsaw ghetto, when most of the houses in the ghetto were enveloped in flames, about forty people assembled in one apartment on the night of the seventh day of <i>Pesaḥ</i>. The Germans were approaching and the Jews thought that their building would be the next to be set on fire. One of the survivors tells:
  “It was then that Reb Heshil started his gripping speech on <i>Kiddush haShem</i>. Who can remember everything he said?…He wanted to encourage us. Every word he spoke gave us strength. ‘Brothers,’ he said, ‘the time has come. Nothing that was before now is as important as this moment. Especially in this last hour one has to be strong and not allow a false thought to pass through one’s mind, as if the Holy One, blessed be He, had forsaken us. God forbid! It is not for us to control the accountings of our Father in Heaven. That is not our affair. We want very much to live that we may continue serving Him, blessed be He. However, it is His will that we sanctify His Name. We accept it with joy and enthusiasm.’”
  Perhaps the most striking example of <i>Kiddush haShem</i> as the ultimate act of life’s sanctification comes from the mouth of a Jewish <i>Kapo</i> in the Plaszow camp:
  “As the camp commander took a number of young Gerer <i>ḥasidim</i> to be put to death, one, Israel Eisenberg, asked for permission to say a few words of farewell to his friends. I stood opposite them and heard every word. He did not speak many words. He said to his friends that they should rejoice for they were going to die for <i>Kiddush haShem… Kiddush haShem</i>. He got hold of the hands of another <i>baḥur</i> and started singing. They were calling to each other: ‘The most important thing…let us rejoice!’ They all began to sing and to dance as if a fire had been lit within them. Their sidelocks, which till then were hidden under their hats, they now pulled out and let them hang down their faces. They paid no attention to what was going on around them. They were dancing and singing. And I thought I would lose my senses…that young people should go to their death as one goes to a dance! Thus dancing, they jumped into the pit as a rain of bullets was pouring down on them.”
  It may well be that the young <i>ḥasidim</i> were at that moment happier than any group of young people ever were going to a dance. At that moment they lived their lives as Jews with an intensity and meaningfulness never before experienced. Could it not be that even this ultimate form of <i>Kiddush haShem</i> is a <i>mitzvah</i> by which the Jew lives as he does by all the others, as it is written: “Ye shall keep my statutes and my laws that a man will do and live by them.”32<i class="footnote">For the sources of the material gathered in the last section of this chapter see <i>HaAmidah</i>…, p. 128; Bezalel Landau, <i>Kiddush haShem beTorat haḤasidim</i>, in <i>Maḥanayim, Ḥanukkah</i>, 5720 (1959), p. 90; <i>Eleh Ezkerah</i>, II, p. 209; Esh, <i>op. cit.;</i> Unger, p. 25; Prager, I, p. 61, II pp. 102–3; and <i>BeẒa’arot haReẓaḥ</i>, diary found near Auschwitz.</i>
  
  8 Emunah; Trust
  
  The concept of faith, as the term is used in the context of Western Christian civilization, does not exist within classical Judaism. One might define the meaning of faith in the Western sense as the subjective affirmation of the truth of something, or the existence of someone, for which there is no objective proof. Nowhere in the Bible does such a concept occur, nor is such a faith anywhere demanded of the Jew.
  The word that is usually taken to mean faith in the Bible is <i>emunah</i>. It will be useful to consider first the way the adjectival form, <i>ne’eman</i>, is used. It may apply to objects. Occasionally it is said of lifeless things that they are <i>ne’emanim</i>. Isaiah, for instance, says of the person who walks uprightly and speaks the truth: “His bread shall be given, his waters shall be <i>ne’emanim</i> (sure).”1<i class="footnote">Isaiah 33:16.</i> In a country where the water resources are rather meagre, waters that are <i>ne’emanim</i> — sure, enduring, reliable — are of the utmost importance. In another place Isaiah uses the same adjective of a place. The rule of Elyakim will be established firmly, for God says concerning him: “And I will fasten him as a peg <i>beMakom ne’eman</i> (in a sure place).2<i class="footnote"><i>Ibid.</i>, 22:23–25.</i><i>Makom ne’eman</i> is a place that holds the peg so that it cannot be moved. <i>Ne’eman</i> is also used of interpersonal relationships, especially in the sense of “reliable.” “Reliable witnesses” are <i>edim ne’emanin</i>.3<i class="footnote"><i>Ibid.</i>, 8:2.</i> Of a messenger who is <i>ne’eman</i> it is said that he is “as the cold of snow in the time of harvest” for his sender; “he refreshes the life of his master.”4<i class="footnote">Proverbs 25:13.</i> The witness who is <i>ne’eman</i> is objectively trustworthy; the messenger who is <i>ne’eman</i> is subjectively faithful to his sender. The loyal messenger stands in a relationship of trust with the one whom he represents. Of Abraham the prophet Nehemiah says that God found his heart <i>ne’eman</i> before Him.5<i class="footnote">Nehemiah 9:8.</i> Quite clearly, <i>ne’eman</i> describes the quality of the relationship between him and God. He was faithful to God. When God says of Moses that he is <i>ne’eman</i> in all His house,6<i class="footnote">Numbers 12:7.</i> the word bespeaks a relationship of special intimacy between God and Moses. He entrusts His servant with the secrets of His house that he would not entrust to anyone else. When all Samuel’s prophecies were fulfilled, all Israel knew that he was <i>ne’eman</i> to be a prophet of God.7<i class="footnote">I Samuel 3:20.</i> Prophecy is a relationship between the prophet and God. He is God’s <i>ne’eman</i> in a twofold sense: he is faithful to God and he is trusted by God. In very much the same sense the adjective <i>ne’eman</i> is applied even to God. He, too, is <i>ne’eman</i> for he “keepeth covenant and love with them that love Him.”8<i class="footnote">Deuteronomy 7:9.</i> We may then say that in an interpersonal context the word connotes being reliable, trustworthy, faithful.
  What now is the meaning of the verb <i>leha’amin</i> which is usually translated “to believe”? The grammatical form suggests that the verb means to acknowledge someone as reliable, trustworthy, faithful. After the miracle at the Red Sea, it is said in the Bible that the children of Israel <i>va’ya’aminu</i> in God and in his servant Moses.9<i class="footnote">Exodus 14:31.</i> In this context the verb cannot simply mean that they believed in Moses, that he existed, that he was real and not a mere illusion. In keeping with the meaning of the adjective <i>ne’eman</i>, we would have to say that the children of Israel acknowledged him as deserving their trust. Whereas before they had been wavering, they were not sure whether he was indeed sent by God, now they realized that they might trust him completely. Similarly regarding God, their problem was never whether there was actually a God or that He was the almighty creator of the universe. The entire story of the Exodus shows that what the children of Israel doubted was whether God was really concerned about their plight, whether He was indeed leading them. But in view of the miracle of the splitting of the waters in order to save them from the clutches of the pursuing armies of Pharaoh, they trusted in Him, they knew that they could rely on Him. Of course, we know that their trust did not last too long. When the spies returned from reconnoitering Canaan the people accepted the report of those who considered the undertaking of entering the land to be hopeless. God then turned to Moses and said: “How long will this people scorn Me? How long will they <i>lo ya’aminu bee</i> (not, as usually rendered, ‘not believe in Me,’ but), not <i>trust</i> Me despite all the signs which I have shown among them.”10<i class="footnote">Numbers 14:11.</i> The question was one of trust. God had promised to lead them into the land. Through signs and miracles He had shown them that He was faithful to them, yet they still did not trust His promise.
  When God told Abraham, “Look up to the skies and try to count the number of the stars above; such will be the number of your seed,” the Bible confirms regarding Abraham: <i>vehe’emin</i>… “and he…” well, “believed in God” would be non-biblical. What the Bible says is: “and he <i>trusted</i> God.”11<i class="footnote">Genesis 15:6.</i> Although all nature seemed to reject the possibility that an old childless man married to an old barren woman could yet beget children, Abraham trusted God’s promise. This has nothing in common with the leap of faith. There was no question in Abraham’s mind that God existed; in an act of self-revelation He had concluded a covenant with him. Nor did he have any doubt as to the power of God to keep His promise. Having experienced the presence of the Creator, the possibility of the fulfillment of the promise had nothing of the absurd about it. To him, it did not contradict any laws of logical reasoning. What then is the meaning of such trust? It can mean only one thing. Abraham fully realized that in the normal course of nature the promise made to him was unrealizable. Its feasibility was beyond his understanding, yet he trusted. The unquestioning acknowledgement of the divine promise was Abraham’s response of faithfulness. The act of trust was Abraham’s share in the activation of the living relationship of mutuality between him and God.
  We may then say that <i>emunah</i> is not faith in the usually accepted meaning of the term, but reliability, trust, faithfulness. Habakkuk’s words, <i>ẓaddik beEmunato yiḥyeh</i>, do not mean “the righteous lives by his faith,” but “the righteous lives by his faithfulness,”12<i class="footnote">Habakkuk 2:4. For a more thorough discussion of this theme, see my <i>Man and God, Studies in Biblical Theology</i>, Detroit, 1969, chapter 6.</i> by his trust in God.
  As they were leading Rabbi Shalom Eliezer Halberstam, the Ratzfirter Rebbe, to be killed, an SS officer approached him and said: “I see your lips are moving in prayer. Do you still believe that your God will help you? Don’t you realize in what situation the Jews find themselves? They are all being led to die and no one helps them. Do you still believe in divine providence?” To which the Rebbe replied: “With all my heart and all my soul I believe that there is a Creator and that there is a Supreme Providence.”13<i class="footnote">Unger, <i>Admorim</i>…, p. 259.</i> The question of the officer is no less significant than the answer of the rabbi. It contained in a nutshell the historic meaning of the confrontation between the Jew and the Nazi. Questions of this nature — and we know that they were often put to Jews by Nazis — reveal that the Germans, when confronted with such manifestations of Jewish steadfastness, were ill at ease. They sensed somehow the ultimate issue: if — in spite of it all — there was indeed divine providence in history, then they were doomed; if the Jewish people survived, then Nazi Germany was lost. In the moment before his death, the eighty-two-year-old Ratzfirter Rebbe was more sure of himself and of what he represented in the world than the Nazi officer, behind whom stood all the might of world-conquering Nazi Germany. Rabbi Halberstam was not only expressing the thoughts of one ḥasidic rabbi, but was formulating the conviction of untold numbers of Jews from all strata of the Jewish people.
  Many faced the ultimate ordeal with quiet composure in the conviction: “It is God’s will! We accept it with joy!” Were they really that naive? And contemporary western Jews, who never had to face the trials of the deathcamps and yet find it hard to believe in a divine providence because of God’s silence during the Holocaust, do they really have a superior understanding of the processes of history that makes them wiser in the conduct of their personal lives? Whether one accepts the lifestyle of the authentic Jew or not, one would be gravely mistaken if one believed that this Jew was unaware of the same problems of faith that alienate the sophisticated western Jew in this last quarter of the 20th century.
  Questions about faith have been asked throughout Jewish history. They are of two kinds: intellectual and existential. The challenges of reason to faith present us with the intellectual problems: How to prove the existence of God? How is <i>creatio ex nihilo</i>, creation out of nothing, possible? How to accept miracles in view of the orderliness of natural laws? How to reconcile the idea of creation with the theory of evolution? On the other hand, questions of God’s providence, of the justice of His providence, of His active presence in history, we call existential problems. They do not derive from reason but from human experience. Although Judaism has been familiar with both kinds of questions from its inception, one might say that the confrontation with reason, the struggle with the intellectual questions, has been the chief preoccupation of the philosophies of Judaism through the Middle Ages and beyond. Even as recently as the early part of this century, such a philosopher as Hermann Cohen was contending with the same kind of religious problematics in his <i>The Religion of Reason from the Sources of Judaism</i>. The existential questioning of God considerably antedated the intellectual confrontation; it is boldly discussed in the Bible itself and in the Talmud.
  All through history, the greatest Jews have confronted God with the same problems that have been raised, with justifiable passion, by this post-Holocaust generation. Thus, for instance, the prophet Habakkuk:
  “Thou that art of eyes too pure to behold evil,
  And that canst look on mischief,
  Wherefore lookest Thou, when they deal treacherously,
  And holdest Thy peace, when the wicked swalloweth up
  The man that is more righteous than he?“14<i class="footnote">Habakkuk 1:13.</i>
  We may recall the words of Jeremiah, too, questioning the justice of divine providence:
  “Right wouldest Thou be, O Eternal,
  Were I to contend with Thee,
  Yet will I reason with Thee:
  Wherefore does the way of the wicked prosper?
  Wherefore are all they secure that deal very treacherously?”15<i class="footnote">Jeremiah 12:1.</i>
  The classical biblical discussion of this theme is found, of course, in the book of Job. The undeserved suffering of the innocent is the basis of the most severe questioning of God’s ways with men. It is not a little surprising that God Himself approves of Job’s contending with him.
  In the Talmud, too, there is a full realization that the question of divine justice presents the Jew with a very serious problem. It is expressed in the terse formula: “A righteous man and it is ill with him; a wicked one and he does well.”16<i class="footnote">See the discussions in T.B. <i>Ta’anit</i> 11a and <i>Kiddushin</i> 39b.</i> Elisha ben Avuyah became a heretic because of this problem and was known thereafter as <i>aḥer</i>, “the changed one.” He looms large in the pages of the Talmud and forces upon the conscience of Judaism the awareness of the seriousness of this issue. The teachers of the Talmud took painful notice of God’s many silences in history at times when his manifestation in the affairs of men was most anxiously awaited. Thus, for instance, the words of the Psalmist: “Who is a mighty one, like unto Thee, O Eternal” were explained in the following way: “Who is so mighty and strong as Thou, able to listen to the blasphemy and insult of that wicked man (in this particular case, Titus) and yet remain silent.”17<i class="footnote">T.B. <i>Gittin</i> 56b.</i>
  It is worth noting that while it is not too difficult to find solutions for the problems of reason, it is doubtful that they greatly influence the condition of faith. The believer usually proves to himself what he had already accepted prior to the finding of the solutions and the non-believer remains, mostly, “unconvinced.” The existential questions, however, usually raise great passions and lead to strong accusations against God. Nevertheless, the faith of the questioner often remains unaffected despite the Heaven’s silence. Neither Habakkuk nor Jeremiah were ever given an answer. Job was, in a sense, silenced by divine omnipotence, with his questions still unanswered, and yet he was at peace. And so it was in the ghettos and the camps, the questions were asked, even rebelliously, and though there were no answers, in the midst of questioning faith remained alive.
  It would seem then that resolution of the intellectual questions of faith is of little avail and that God’s silence in the face of existential questioning is not critical. This phenomenon is related to the very essence of religion as presented by Judaism. Religion is not based on the belief that there is a God. There are philosophies that affirm the existence of God and yet cannot serve as the basis of religion. Aristotle’s First Cause, for instance, is pure form, so pure that even the knowledge of anything that has matter in its composition would contaminate its purity. But since, according to Aristotle, everything that exists consists of matter and form, his God knows nothing of individual existence. In other words, he does not know of man and, ergo, cannot consider man. But surely, a God who does not know me cannot be my God, cannot be the God of religion. Aristotle’s God was, of course, not the Creator. At a much later time in history, during the Enlightenment, the deists conceived of God as the creator of the universe. Yet even their God idea could not serve as a foundation for religion. Their God created the universe in his infinite wisdom. The result is a perfect world; the laws of nature reflect the infinite wisdom of the deity. This, of course, means that having created the universe, the Creator left it to continue to function in accordance with the infinite divine wisdom incorporated in its structure. Not only is there no room for any miracles within such a perfect structure, but once completed, there is no place left in it for any specific divine function. God himself cannot intervene in his creation for intervention would be interference, disturbing its infinite rationality. It is pointless to pray to such a God. He cannot answer prayers, he cannot respond, he cannot act in his own world. Divine providence is represented by the way the laws of nature function; beyond that nothing is possible. Obviously, one cannot turn to such a God, one cannot look to him. There is no place for religion within such a world view. Sartre was right when he stated that even if there be a God, if he does not know me and is not concerned about me, he is of no consequence; he might as well not be.
  Religion, in the understanding of Judaism, is based on acknowledging the reality of a personal God, a God who after creation did not leave this world, who continues to be involved in the destinies of His creatures, who is concerned about man, a God who cares, to whom we may turn in prayer and who responds to man’s call; a God who stands in relationship to His world and who enters into covenants with man. But how does one know of such a God? Surely not through the power of reason, but through experience. A care, a concern has to be experienced or it does not exist. A covenant must be a form of actual relationship or it is a sham. The source of religion is in experience and not in reason. Is religion irrational then? One might as well ask if the gravitational pull between masses of matter is irrational. It does exist and it can be described in exact mathematical formulae, but it is certainly not rational. Facts do not have to validate themselves in the court of reason. This is even truer in the realm of interpersonal relationships. Friendship, love! Nothing could be more absurd than the idea that they have their origin in reason. Are they therefore irrational? They are neither rational nor irrational. There are ideas, concepts, intellectual preoccupations that have to claim their validity through the categories of reason. And there are facts unto whom it is sufficient that they are, such as the laws of nature. All they need is exact description. Interpersonal relationships are living reality, existing by the strength of mutual acceptance in which two persons are covenanted to each other.
  Judaism, too, is based on mutuality of experience. In the Judaism of the Torah God speaks and man is able to respond; man calls and God answers. There was a revelation, an encounter between God and the Jew, the Jewish people, establishing a covenantal experience, a mutuality of relationship. If this revelation happened, it was not because it was logical. This is the foundation of Judaism. One may take away <i>creatio ex nihilo</i> — as indeed Gersonides did, following in Aristotle’s footsteps and rejecting the idea as a logical impossibility — one may reject all the rational proofs for the existence of God, one may explain all the miracles rationally — an attempt already undertaken by Maimonides — and one has not yet so much as touched the essence of Judaism. But take away the encounter between God and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or deny the Exodus from Egypt, the revelation at Sinai, or the covenant between God and Israel, and you have destroyed Judaism.
  What then is faith? Is it the acknowledgment of the encounter, the experience? Is it the actual awareness of the Divine Presence? When these are present there is no need for faith. Nor is it the belief that God exists. That alone, as we saw, would be of little help. Is it, perhaps, the belief that the Exodus did indeed take place, that there was a revelation at Sinai, that God did conclude a covenant with the Jewish people? These are reported events. If they did take place, they are matters of history. As such they require some form of historical verification (which, needless to say, will be different from logical validation). If, on the other hand, they did not take place, faith that they did happen would be so much foolishness, without any religious significance. So what is faith?
  We shall attempt to define it with the help of an analysis of the <i>Akedah</i>, God’s request to Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, recorded in Genesis chapter 22. To be told to sacrifice the son that was born to him in his old age, after all hope had been given up, was the ultimate test to which Abraham was subjected. At least, this is how we usually see the testing of Abraham. Kierkegaard, who considered Abraham “the Knight of Faith,” made the story of the <i>Akedah</i> the focal illustration of his own understanding of the leap of faith. He noted correctly that apart from the test of having to offer up the precious son of his old age, Abraham was also exposed to another dilemma. God, who now asked him to take his son and to sacrifice him, had also promised Abraham that “in Isaac will thy seed be called.”18<i class="footnote">Genesis 21:12.</i> Was God not contradicting Himself? If Isaac were to be sacrificed, then this promise would not be fulfilled. On the other hand, if God kept His promise, then the command to sacrifice Isaac would be meaningless. What might be going on in the mind of Abraham as he sets out with his son on the journey to Moriah? Which of God’s words is he to believe? If the promise is valid, then the test of the sacrifice is nothing but a cruel joke played on an old man. Abraham climbs up the mountain slope with his son, but all the time he knows that the whole thing is but an exercise in futility, for did not God promise him that in Isaac will his seed be called? But if the sacrifice is to be taken seriously, if it is indeed what God desires of Abraham, then God will not keep His former promise to him. But what kind of God is it that cancels His own words? Kierkegaard saw the greatness of the Knight of Faith in that he knew well that he had to offer Isaac on that mountain altar but he also believed that God would keep His promise. He was ready for the sacrifice as if there were no promise; and he believed in the promise as if there were no <i>Akedah</i>. He was to slaughter Isaac but he also knew that his son would be given back to him. This is, of course, absurd. But it is of the very essence of faith, to take that leap of absurdity, that leap of faith.
  Notwithstanding the brilliance of his analysis, we are unable to accept Kierkegaard’s conclusions as valid. Coming from the Western and Christian tradition, he was probably ill-equipped to understand Abraham. Judaism does not accept Tertullian’s <i>credo quia absurdum</i>. Even Yehudah Halevi, who was not a rationalist, found it necessary to exclaim: “God forbid that there should be anything in the Torah that is contrary to reason!” The Torah is not absurd and the authentic Jew does not engage in religious acrobatics. To believe in the absurd is absurd. There was no escaping the fact that in God’s request for the sacrifice of Isaac there was a contradiction that was irresoluble. Abraham was not “the Knight of Faith” because he was able to reconcile the contradiction with a leap of faith across the abyss of logic, ready to sacrifice Isaac yet believing that the promise would be kept. He knew well that the sacrifice meant losing Isaac and the nullification of God’s own promise. How then did he face this aspect of the test?
  It should be noted that the leap of faith is the forcible ejection of logic from the court of religious affirmation. The absurd is always <i>logically</i> absurd. When one “jumps,” one jumps from rationality. The leap of faith “answers” a logical problem by denying the authority of the law of contradiction. But Abraham’s real problem was not a problem of logic, merely to show how one thing and its denial can both be true. Abraham was not dealing with concepts and ideas; he was dealing with God. To use Martin Buber’s terminology, he was struggling intellectually with a problem presented by an “It”; he was confronted by a “Thou” who was Abraham’s God not just because He is the God of all the universe, but because He revealed himself to Abraham and called him to live in a covenantal relationship with Him. And now Abraham’s God was contradicting Himself and denying His promise. Abraham knew God for He had spoken to him. God’s existence could not be doubted. So the question before Abraham was an existential one: what was the nature of the relationship between him and his God? How should he act in a moment of crisis in a covenanted life? Abraham’s problem was not essentially different from any crisis situation that may arise in an I-Thou relationship. In a relationship of loving mutuality it does happen occasionally that the behavior of one of the partners becomes inexplicable to the other, even appearing to deny the sustaining promise of the relationship. The question here is not how to solve a logical dilemma, but how to resolve an existential crisis. The problem is one of confidence; can you trust your “Thou” in spite of everything? The resolution of the crisis, emerging from the quality, the depth and the vitality of the relationship, can be through trust alone. But trust is not a leap of faith, but a continuation of the life of the covenant. The very essence of trust consists not in “leaping,” but in standing firm. Its moral value derives from its truthfulness in having the courage to face the irreconcilable, in seeing with open eyes that the sacrifice is a denial of the promise and yet continuing to trust. It is as if one said to one’s “Thou”: “In this situation I do not understand you. Your behavior violates our covenant; still, I trust you because it is you, because it is you and me, because it is us.”
  This was how Abraham resolved the crisis that arose between him and God. He was giving up Isaac without any hope of regaining him, as if saying to God: “Almighty God! What You are asking of me is terrible. I do not understand You. You contradict Yourself. But I have known You, my God. You have loved me and I love You. My God, You are breaking Your word to me. What is one to think of You! Yet, I trust You; I trust You.” Such was the trust of Abraham in God and such was the trust of the authentic Jew in the ghettos and the camps. He did not accept the monstrosity as meaningful because God tolerated it. The monstrosity remained monstrous; the inhumanity remained foul injustice tolerated by God. Yet, he rose early in the morning before the “Appell” to put on <i>tefillin;</i> he sought opportunities to pray and to study, to celebrate the festivals in some manner, and to continue to guard the divine image sacred to the Jew. Because, in spite of everything, the authentic Jew lives in the covenant, because Israel and God have been linked to each other through a long, common history. Because he trusts, and trust is the bond of love between two who have found each other, who belong to each other. It is not reason that it rejects; it is the hurt that it overcomes. Trust affirms the reality of the relationship. It is the truth of the covenant in action.
  The authentic Jew lives in such a relationship and receives the very essence of his being from it. Even if, unlike Abraham, he himself has not received the Presence in a personal revelation, he experiences the continuity of the eternal covenant between God and Israel in the continuity of the historic reality of the people of Israel. His trust is not the affirmation of a transcendental truth but the living of the life of the covenant here and now. Therefore he does not say, “I believe,” but “I am,” because he owes his being to the covenant. He stands in the Presence at all times together with all the generations of Israel and he hears the Voice in the midst of God’s exasperating silences.
  Let us listen to one more Jew who heard the Voice.
  In 1943 some few remaining yeshivah students and Talmud scholars assembled in the deserted synagogue in the Vilna Ghetto on <i>Simḥat Torah</i> in order to celebrate the holiday. Together with some children they started to sing and to dance. When a man by the name of Kalmanowitz was honored with the first <i>hakafah</i>, the traditional circuit of the synagogue with a Torah scroll, he addressed the assembled Jews in the following words:
  “Song and dance are also divine service. The song is thanksgiving to the One who rules over life and death. Here in the midst of this small congregation in this poor and ruined synagogue we join ourselves to all Israel. Not only to those who are still around today, but also to those who departed to another world, to that holy and pure community in their thousands and ten thousands, as well as to all the generations that preceded us. With our joy we express our gratitude to the illustrious generations that lived before us and in whose time to live would indeed have been most rewarding. We feel that with our song we sanctify the Name of the Heaven as our forefathers did. Even I, an erring Jewish soul, sense here the roots. I know that the Jewish people will live as long as ‘the days of the heavens over the earth.’ And even if we were the last generation, we could well have praised and thanked and said: Enough that we have found our place among all the generations of Israel. Every day that the Holy One, blessed be He, still grants us is a gift, it is loving kindness. We accept it with joy, thanking His Name, may it be blessed.”19<i class="footnote">Eliav, pp. 172–3; quoted from <i>Yoman Ghetto Vilna, Yivo Bletter</i>, 1951.</i>
  The man of faith is forever with his “It,” i.e., with himself; the man of trust is always with his “Thou.” He who has faith, when he questions, doubts; he who trusts, when he questions, makes demands by virtue of the life of the relationship in which he stands. Occasionally God reveals his approval of those who contend with Him, as He did in the case of Job. He rejects the well-meaning defenders of His “justice” toward Job in the words which He addresses to Eliphaz the Temanite:
  “My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends:
  for ye have not spoken of Me the thing that is right,
  As My servant Job hath…”20<i class="footnote">Job 42:7.</i>
  Job, the questioner, the accuser, is recognized as God’s true servant. In fact, God advises Eliphaz and his friends to ask Job, His servant, to pray and to seek atonement for them. Moreover, it is conceivable that the more intimate the relationship between man and God, the greater the urge to question the ways of the divine partner. Only thus can one understand the boldness of Abraham’s challenge to God, as he exclaims: “The judge of all the earth, shall He not act justly?” Only with the power of the confidence generated by a convenantal relationship dare one turn to God with such “impudence.” In a midrashic interpretation, the rabbis even dare suggest that, following the <i>Akedah</i>, Abraham said to God:
  “It is open and known to You that when You asked me to sacrifice my son, I had what to answer to You. I could have said to You: Yesterday You promised me that my ‘seed will be called in Isaac’ and now You tell me ‘offer him as a burnt offering’! But I remained silent…”21<i class="footnote">T.J. <i>Ta’anit</i> 2:4.</i>
  Just as they maintain that Abraham was aware of the fact that he had ample grounds for contention with God, so the teachers of the Talmud do not hesitate to suggest that Moses, after the people’s sin with the golden calf, returned the accusation to God by saying: “It was the gold and silver that You so generously bestowed upon them that caused their deviation.” In another context it is asserted that he who pleads with God on behalf of the needs of the community may do it <i>bizro’a</i>, literally with an “arm,” but meaning with an inordinate amount of violence. Thus the rabbis pictured Moses holding on to God in prayer and saying: “I shall not let you go until you forgive them.” Similarly, it is said of the prophets that they prayed to God like a woman demanding of her husband the means to meet the needs of her household.22<i class="footnote">T.B. <i>Berakhot</i> 32a; <i>Midrash Rabbah, Bemidbar</i> 21:15.</i>
  Thus, notwithstanding their trust in God, Jews through the ages contended with Him, talking back to him, as it were, because of the unconvincing performance of divine providence in history. They were trusting and they were questioning, but their trust did not weaken their questioning and their questioning did not undermine their trust. On occasion, they even “called” God to a <i>Din Torah</i> (rabbinical court), endeavoring to judge Him according to the laws of the Torah that are supposed to be binding on Him no less than on the Jew. It was no different during the Holocaust. Heshil Rappaport’s last words to his wife were: “Do not cry. We have done what was up to us to do. But I have a great deal to say before the Heavenly Court.”23<i class="footnote">Prager, I, p. 61.</i>
  Even those who were willing to grant that what had befallen them was punishment for their sins argued with God over the fate of young children.24<i class="footnote">Eliav, p. 38.</i> A <i>Din Torah</i> that was held in a <i>shtiebel</i> in the ghetto of Lodz in 1943, after twenty-two thousand Jews had been taken to a concentration camp, called on God to stop the undeserved punishment.25<i class="footnote"><i>Ibid.</i>, p. 206.</i> It is the very reality of the relationship, the intimacy between the partners to the covenant, that not only allows but, at times, requires the Jew to contend with the divine “Thou.”
  Among the ruins of the Warsaw ghetto was found a document hidden in a small bottle and written by one Yossel Rakover shortly before his death as the ghetto was burning. It is dated April 28, 1943. We quote from it:
  “I Yossel, the son of Yossel Rakover from Tarnopol, a Gerer <i>ḥasid</i>, descended from saints and great <i>ẓadikkim</i>…write these lines at a time when the Warsaw ghetto is in flames. The house in which I am now is among the last ones which the fire has not yet reached…It will not be long before this house too…will become the grave of its defenders and tenants. By the rays of an exceptionally red sun, which penetrate through the small and half-covered window from where we have been shooting at the enemy for days and nights, I can see that it is evening now. Twilight of sunset. To be sure, the sun knows not how little sorry I am for never seeing it again…
  My time has come now. Of myself I can say as once Job did, ‘naked did I leave my mother’s womb and naked do I return…’ I am forty years old. As I contemplate my life I can say with assurance — as far as any human being may be sure about himself — that I have led an honest life. I was not unsuccessful but I was never proud about it. My house was open to the needy. I was happy when I could help another human being. I have served God with fervor and my only request to Him was that He let me serve Him ‘with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.’
  I cannot say that after what has passed over me my reaction to God has not changed. What, however, I am able to say with certainty is that my <i>emunah</i> has not changed a bit. Formerly, in the good times, my relationship to Him was like to one who was continually pouring out His loving kindness on me and I remained forever indebted to Him for that. Now, my relationship to Him is like to one who owes me something…
  God has hidden His face from His world. Thus He left His creatures to their wild instincts. To my sorrow I must therefore recognize the fact that when instincts rule the world it is natural that those in whom the divine element is still alive, the pure ones, must become the first sacrifices. There is not much comfort in this. But since the destiny of our people is not decided by earthly considerations but by transcendental, spiritual, and divine ones, it is incumbent on the man of <i>emunah</i> to see in these events aspects of an overriding divine reckoning, compared to which human tragedies are of lesser importance. This does not mean that a pious Jew ought to ‘justify the judgment’ and say: ‘God is just and His judgment is just,’ and that we have deserved the blows that we are receiving. To assert that would be self-desecration as well as desecration of the Divine Name…
  I am proud of being a Jew, not in order to spite the world because of its relationship to us…I would be ashamed to belong to the nations who have produced and nurtured this evil and are responsible for what has been done to us…
  I believe that to be a Jew means to be a fighter, to swim against the befouled and guilty human stream. The Jew is a hero, oppressed, holy. You, our enemies, say that we are bad. We are by far better and nobler than you are. I would have liked to see how you would look if you were in our situation.
  I am happy to belong to the most unfortunate people among the nations, whose Torah is the quintessence of what is exalted and most beautiful in all law and in all ethics; the Torah, which is even more holy and more triumphant now that it has been desecrated, trodden underfoot by the enemies of God.
  I trust in God, the God of Israel, even though He does everything to destroy my trust. I have trust in His statutes, although I cannot justify His deeds…I bow my head before His greatness, but His staff with which He castigates me I shall not kiss…
  I wish to tell You, my God, clearly and openly, that now more than at any other time of our endless martyrology we, the oppressed, the down-trodden, the suffocating, buried alive and burned alive, have the right to know, where are the limits of Your patience?
  Furthermore I have to tell You: do not pull the rope too tight lest it snap. The testing that You have placed upon us is so hard and so bitter that You have to forgive those children of Your people who in their misfortune and their anger turned their back on You…
  Forgive those who despised Your name and went after other gods, who became indifferent towards You. You have castigated them so hard that they lost their faith that You were their father, that indeed they all had one father…but if You are not my God, whose God are You? The God of the murderers?
  If those who hate me, who murder me, are so dark and so wicked, what am I if not someone who in his depth carries something of Your light and Your goodness?
  I cannot praise You for the deeds that You tolerate; but I bless You and praise You for Your very existence, for Your awesome greatness that seems to be so mighty that whatever is happening now in the world is like nothing in Your eyes. However, just because You are so great and I so small, I ask You, I warn You for Your name’s sake: stop emphasizing Your greatness by countenancing the torment of the unfortunate.
  I do not ask You to punish the guilty. It is of the fearful nature of these events that in the end the guilty will suffer of themselves. For in our death dies the conscience of the world. A whole world was murdered when it murdered the Jewish people. This world will consume itself in its own wickedness; it will drown in its own blood.
  Death cannot wait any longer. I have to finish. From the floors above me the shooting becomes weaker and weaker. The last of the defenders of our fortress are falling now. With them falls and perishes the great, beautiful, God-fearing Warsaw; Jewish Warsaw. The sun is setting and I thank God that I shall not see it rise again…Soon I shall be with my wife and children, with millions of others of my people, who perished, in a better world…without doubts, where God alone rules.
  I die peacefully, but not satisfied; beaten, but not despairing; trusting, but not pleading; in love with God, but not a blind Amen-sayer of His.
  I followed Him, though He pushed me back; I fulfilled His commandments, even though He made me suffer for it; I loved Him and remain in love with Him, though He has pressed me into the dust, afflicted me to death, reduced me to mockery and derision…
  And these are my last words to You, my God of anger: nothing will avail You! You have done everything that I deny You, that I shall not trust You. Yet, I die as I lived — with rocklike <i>emunah</i> in You.
  May He be praised forever, the God of the dead, the God of vengeance, the God of truth and justice, who will yet let His countenance shine upon the world and shake its foundations by the power of His voice…
  <i>Shema Yisra’el!</i> Hear, O Israel! The Eternal is our God, the Eternal is One! Into Thy hand I entrust my spirit.”26<i class="footnote">Eliav, pp. 213–8; the original Yiddish was published in <i>Die Goldene Keit</i>.</i>
  
  9 Now We Know
  
  No matter how victorious the German armies were, the Jews did not doubt that ultimately Germany would lose the war. Of course, the survival of the Jewish people depended on Germany’s defeat, and they were <i>sure</i> of the survival of Israel. The best among them saw a reborn people of Israel in the midst of a happy humanity, redeemed from the curse of totalitarianism and the yoke of oppression of all kinds. Thus Yizhak Katzenelson, in one of his poems, looked forward to the vengeance that would be wrought on the perpetrators of the greatest crime in history. He wrote of the earth that in its anger would vomit out the carcasses of the criminals, so that even with their worm-eaten hearts and blinded eyes they might see and feel how
  “…nations rise to new life…
  behold cities are built in all the earth
  flourishing, rejoicing,”
  that they might hear, be it even with ears full of rot,
  “the voices of a heaven clear and pure again
  the voice of the earth, after your end,
  smiling again with joy.
  Listen!
  A song is rising, sounding,
  with love and trust
  bursting over the fullness of the world.
  It has come to life.
  Listen!
  Listen to the voice from on high!
  It is mighty!
  It is free!
  It exalts!
  And in the chorus of the nations
  sings the Jew,
  the one,
  the eternal.”1<i class="footnote">This is a free translation from some passages of Katzenelson’s poem, <i>Ha’azinu;</i> see <i>Ketavim Aḥaronim</i> 5700–5704, Tel-Aviv, 1956.</i>
  A partisan poet did not sing of the immortal Jew, but of “our victory,” the victory of the Jews,
  “It comes with freedom and peace.
  Peace and freedom in our cry.
  So on it will ring,
  and fall it will,
  the mighty, bloody giant.”2<i class="footnote"><i>Min haMeẓar Karati, Shirei Getta’ot, Maḥanot haAvdut</i>…, ed. Moshe Prager, Jerusalem, 1954, p. 196.</i>
  They all dreamt of a new day, of a better world, of a world of justice and freedom, of new cities and happy people. What would they have said of our world in the last quarter of the 20th century? Certainly the eternal Jew is far from being part of the chorus of happy nations. While one “mighty, bloody giant” has fallen, the age of “mighty bloody giants,” universal and provincial ones, is still upon us. Peace is in continuous jeopardy, and freedom is no longer a cry, but the silent whisper of a few still unspoiled spirits. The triumphant march of Soviet communism has established a totalitarian empire with an unlimited appetite for domination, the nature of which has been brilliantly analyzed by Albert Camus in <i>The Rebel</i>. Comparing fascism with Soviet communism, he rightly maintains that their ends are not to be identified one with the other. Neither fascism nor nazism ever dreamt of liberating all men. They intended to liberate a few by subjugating the rest. Soviet communism, by principle, aims at liberating all men. However, this ultimate liberation of mankind is removed far into a mythological future. For the time being, the end sanctifies the means. All moral values are suspended; individual freedom crushed. However grand the final goal, in the meantime “it is legitimate to identify the means employed by both (i.e. fascism and Soviet communism) with political cynicism which they have drawn from the same source, moral nihilism.” The aim is unity to be achieved at the end of history; until then one’s rule is total. In the totalitarian empire freedom cannot play its legitimate role; it has to wait till history comes to a stop and the universal city has been realized. In a totalitarian regime, be it fascist or communist, the individual cannot be free, “even though man in his collective sense is free.” Thus, when “the empire delivers the entire human species freedom will reign over herds of slaves…” To which Camus adds: “If the only hope of nihilism lies in thinking that millions of slaves can one day constitute a humanity which will be freed forever, then history is nothing but a desperate dream.”
  The faith that the totalitarian empire of Soviet communism demands is, according to Camus, identical with faith as defined by the <i>Spiritual Exercises</i> of Saint Ignatius: “We should always be prepared so as never to err to believe that what I see as white is black, if the hierarchic Church defines it thus.” Here, the Church has been replaced by the Party and “man takes refuge in the concept of the permanence of the party in the same way that he formerly prostrated himself before the altar.” Since this is a fitting description of the human condition under totalitarianism, be it fascist or communist, Camus correctly concludes: “That is why the era which dares to claim that it is the most rebellious that has ever existed only offers a choice of various types of conformity.” This is true of all countries with single-party systems, which are flourishing in this age, and Camus sums it all up by saying: “The real passion of the 20th century is servitude.”3<i class="footnote"><i>The Rebel</i>, pp. 212, 209, 200, 201.</i>
  Camus’ generalization about the passion of this century is correct because the West has become passionless. Ever since the Enlightenment and throughout the age of modern science and technology, it has been debunking the transcendental source of all human values. It has reduced all ethics to an uninspiring relativism. Man has been triumphantly enthroned as the measure of all things, only to prove inadequate for the task. Since truth itself is relative and pragmatic, the passionate affirmation of ideals has become pointless. Pleasure has taken the place of passion. To hold what one has is more important than to become what one might be. The general world-wide erosion of values and standards is tragically reflected in the practices of contemporary terrorism or rebellion.
  Camus, discussing Russian terrorism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, is still able to speak of “fastidious assassins.” When they killed, they did so “after the most scrupulous examination of conscience.” For example, an attempt on the Grand Duke Sergei failed because the man entrusted with the task found that some children were riding with the Grand Duke and he refused to kill the children. His refusal met with the approval of his comrades. Similarly, one of the leaders of the rebels against the Czarist regime opposed an attempt on the life of a Russian admiral riding on the Petersburg-Moscow express because: “If there were the least mistake, the explosion could take place in the carriage and kill strangers.” The same terrorist leader, on a later occasion, indignantly denied having made a child of sixteen take part in an attempted assassination. Later, as he was escaping from a Czarist prison, he decided to shoot any officer who would prevent his flight, but he was ready to kill himself rather than turn his revolver on ordinary soldiers. Another terrorist, before undertaking a bomb attack against the same admiral mentioned earlier, declared that he would not throw the bomb “should Dubassov be accompanied by his wife.” There are no more “fastidious assassins” around today.
  It would, however, be a mistake to think that contemporary terrorists, so completely free from such moral compunctions, are a unique species of humanity. They truly reflect the widespread demoralization of human conscience in our days. The relative equanimity with which the most ruthless acts of terrorism against innocent people are countenanced is an indication of the moral eclipse of the age. Far from having recovered from its moral collapse in face of the destruction of European Jewry, mankind has become even more insensitive to demands of universal morality. In the seats of power Machiavellian cynicism holds sway. Even formerly illustrious nations are today ready to sell their national consciences and past glory for an appropriate amount of petrodollars. No wonder that once again the Jewish people find themselves isolated in a world of moral indifference.
  On the basis of the experience of the Jew, all this means that the age of genocide is far from being over and that Camus was correct in describing the 20th century as the century of inhumanity. That mighty power blocs, as well as the lunatic fringe, are once again shamelessly pointing a finger at the Jew is one of the most revealing symptoms of the inhuman character of the times. It is in this kind of a world that the Jewish people have to maintain themselves, a world in a state of moral and spiritual exhaustion, perilously balancing on the brink of a threatening thermonuclear Armageddon.
  The Hebrew poet Abraham Shlonski, in his poem <i>Neder</i> (Vow), warns the Jew against forgetting, lest on the morning after the “night of wrath” he continue as before and learn nothing this time either.4<i class="footnote">Quoted in <i>Sefer Milḥamot haGetta’ot</i>, ed. Isaac Zuckerman, Tel-Aviv, 1954, p. 701.</i> He probably meant that the lesson to learn was to liquidate the <i>Galut</i> (Diaspora), to go to Israel, to build the country, the state, and the people. And, if need be, to fight and die fighting. What happened can happen again. Should it happen and should you be caught in the degrading weakness of the <i>Galut</i> because you had not chosen to live in an independent Jewish state, do not blame the silence of God or the brutality of man. Blame yourself. This, of course, is correct in a limited sense. But since we see today that even a state, if it is a Jewish state, may be as homeless in “the wilderness of the nations” as the Jew used to be in his various exiles, the advice to liquidate the <i>Galut</i> may also lead to the possibility of another Massada stand. This would be a valid and necessary point to bear in mind, but by itself it far from exhausts the responsibility that faces the Jewish people in the world today.
  We have been struggling with the burden of the nightmarish destruction of European Jewry, but it is doubtful that we have, thus far, paid sufficient attention to the question of what is required of us now. Before anything else, since there is little doubt that we were not ready either for the monstrous inhumanity with which Germany overwhelmed us, nor for the cold indifference with which the rest of mankind countenanced that crime, we must come to an understanding of the reasons for our unpreparedness. These reasons are manifold. Firstly, there existed a certain Jewish naivete concerning the depths to which human brutality was capable of sinking. Most Jews simply could not believe that any nation on earth could methodically plan and carry out the murder of an entire people. Certainly, they could not believe that such a crime could be perpetrated in the 20th century. We know from numerous reports that conditions in the concentration camps were so brutal and demonic that, even after being there a few days, many people could not believe that what was happening to them and what was going on around them was real. Bruno Bettelheim, as we have seen, maintains that the Jews could have known what was awaiting them and should have run. But, he claims, they did not want to know because in typical ghetto thinking, they did not want to act.5<i class="footnote">See his article, “Freedom from Ghetto Thinking,” in <i>Midstream</i>, Spring, 1962.</i> Bettelheim, in common with tens of thousands of Jews who were not bound by the “ghetto way of thinking,” did, of course, know, because they had before them “the modern examples of the mass extermination of internal minorities” and escaped in time. But the truth is that those who escaped had the means of escaping. The majority of those assimilated German Jews, who were able to leave Germany in time and who made use of the opportunity, left not because they knew what was awaiting the Jewish people in Europe, but because their whole world, based on emancipation and assimilation to Germany and German <i>Volkstum</i>, had collapsed. In Hitler’s Germany they lost their Germanized identity. But the so-called ghetto Jew never derived his identity and dignity of human status from anything outside Judaism, Jewish history and civilization, and Jewish peoplehood. In fact, the tens of thousands of emancipated German Jews who were trapped in Germany, and the hundreds of thousands of other Westernized Jews who were caught in Western Europe and perished in the gas chambers, certainly preserved no more dignity to the end than did the ghetto Jews. If Bettelheim says that he was able to escape because he knew that the “Final Solution” was being prepared for European Jewry, one has to believe him. As a Jew completely free of ghetto thinking, he had fully assimilated German culture and civilization and was thus in a good position to judge the capabilities of the Teutonic psyche. The overwhelming majority of the Jewish people, however, “suffered,” because of its Jewishness, from naive innocence regarding the limits of human degradation.
  This naivete was only one factor. We must also take into account the long tradition of pacifist teaching which is an essential aspect of Judaism. Notwithstanding the fact that, especially in antiquity, the Jews fought many wars and engaged in many desperate rebellions, this tradition of anti-militarism and anti-violence reaches back into the earliest times of Jewish history. It was originally based on faith in God. A man of faith relies on God, not on physical strength or weapons of war and violence. In fact, a continuous debunking of martial prowess and virtues may be traced in the Bible. For example, one of the oldest Jewish prayers is the thanksgiving prayer of Hannah, in which she exclaimed:
  “The bows of the mighty men are broken,
  And they that stumbled are girded with strength…
  He will keep the feet of His holy ones,
  But the wicked shall be put to silence in darkness,
  For not by strength shall man prevail.”6<i class="footnote">Samuel 2:4–9.</i>
  The wicked seek to prevail by physical might. But there is a divine strategy in history that will not allow them ultimately to triumph. In the end, it will be those who <i>stumbled</i> because they were unable to withstand the violent force which assailed them who will be <i>girded</i> by a strength of a different order and will be saved. Similarly, when David meets Goliath he says to him:
  “Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a javelin; but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of Hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou has taunted…that all this assembly may know that the Lord saveth not with sword and spear…”7<i class="footnote"><i>Ibid.</i>, 17:45–47.</i>
  It is always God on whom one relies, as the Psalmist also puts it:
  “For I trust not in my bow,
  Neither can my sword save me.
  But thou hast saved us from our adversaries,
  And hast put them to shame that hate us.”8<i class="footnote">Psalms 44:7–8.</i>
  When the prophet Hosea announces God’s promise, he is instructed to speak in His name as follows: “But I will have compassion upon the house of Judah, and will save them by the Lord their God, and will not save them by bow nor by sword, nor by battle, nor by horses, nor by horsemen.”9<i class="footnote">Hosea 1:7.</i> Help is promised, but not through conventional instruments of war or violence. This tradition has, of course, found its classical formulation in “the word of God” to Zerubbabel, as conveyed by the prophet Zechariah: “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts.”10<i class="footnote">Zechariah 4:6.</i>
  The rabbis in the Talmud developed these teachings further, in their unique midrashic-homiletical style, through the “interpretation” of appropriate passages in the Bible. As Jacob was addressing his children before his death, he said of two of them: “Simeon and Levi are brethren; weapons of violence their kinship.”11<i class="footnote">Genesis 49:5.</i> This, of course, is plain enough. The old father was referring to his two sons who destroyed the city of Shechem because their sister had been violated there. However, according to the <i>Midrash</i>, what Jacob really said to his children was this: “These weapons (with which you slaughtered the inhabitants of Shechem) are stolen in your hands. Whom do they fit? Your kin Esau, the one who sold the right of the firstborn,” playing on the phonetic similarity of the Hebrew word for “kin” and the word for “to sell.”12<i class="footnote"><i>Bereishit Rabbah</i> 98:5.</i> Referring to other biblical verses, the rabbis demonstrate that “the voice” is the tool of Jacob, while the “hand” is that of Esau.13<i class="footnote"><i>Mekhilta, Beshallaḥ</i> 3.</i> The “voice” — prayer, ideas, persuasion — is the strength of Jacob, his instrument of defense. This thought is finally formulated in the following categorical manner: “There is no efficacious prayer in which there is not something of the seed of Jacob and there is no victorious war in which there is not something present of the seed of Esau.”14<i class="footnote">T.B. <i>Gittin</i> 57b.</i>
  After the exodus, as the children of Israel were approaching the Red Sea and, looking back, beheld Pharaoh and his army marching after them, the Bible says: “And they were sore afraid; and the children of Israel cried out unto the Lord.”15<i class="footnote">Exodus 14:10.</i> “Cried out unto the Lord” means, of course, that they prayed to God. This provides the rabbis with an occasion to comment: “As soon as they saw the Egyptians pursuing them, they engaged in the craft of their fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” They then bring proof texts which demonstrate that, when in danger, the patriarchs, too, turned to God in prayer.16<i class="footnote"><i>Mekhilta, ibid.</i></i> Thus prayer is the handicraft of the children of Israel.
  All this, of course, is idealization. Things do not work that neatly in history. The significance of these “explanations” lies in the expression they give to the Jew’s self-understanding through the ages. Violence is not for him; it is not his <i>umanut</i>, his craft. He is by nature not a warrior, nor a man of violence, but a man of prayer, a man of the Voice.
  Although this tradition of non-violence could easily be supported by numerous other biblical passages, it is not uniform, and there are not a few places in the Bible where the art of war and martial courage are extolled. It is, however, important to note that as the biblical teaching is carried over into the talmudic and midrashic literature, it is essentially its nonviolent trend which is embraced and maintained. The passages which contradict it are “reinterpreted” by the rabbis. We are usually told that the battles were not really fought by soldiers, men of arms, but were, instead, the battles of scholars, who fought with each other in the <i>batei midrash</i>, the study halls, in the mighty discussions of Torah interpretation, and the “martial courage” involved was the prowess with which they defended their positions in the great talmudic debates. For instance, the Psalmist says:
  “Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O mighty one,
  Thy glory and thy majesty.”17<i class="footnote">Psalms 45:4.</i>
  The rabbis declared: the <i>gibbor</i> here, the mighty one, is the hero in the mastery of the knowledge of the Torah.18<i class="footnote">T.B. <i>Shabbat</i> 63a.</i> And the “sword,” we assume, is the sharpness of his intellect, the ingenuity with which he is able to prove the correctness of his teaching against all comers. In this alone they could see the “glory” and the “majesty” of a Jew. Naive? Certainly not. The teachers of the Talmud knew well that “the plain meaning of a biblical verse must never be given up.”19<i class="footnote"><i>Ibid.;</i> see also T.B. <i>Yevamot</i> 11b, 24a.</i> But while they had unparalleled immediate recall of the entire text of the Bible, they were not “Bible scholars” in the sense that we understand the term. They were teachers of Judaism. When they taught a biblical text in which the term <i>gibbor</i>, hero, occurred, their main concern was neither with the etymology of the word nor with its historic meaning, but with the association that the concept ought to call forth in the consciousness of the living Jew. For any person, the meaning of such a word as “hero” will be determined by the culture in the midst of which it is uttered. Within Judaism, based on the Torah, the hero was the great master who dedicated his life to the teaching and transmission of the Torah from generation to generation. And who can say today that it was not ultimately this hero to whom the Jewish people owe their survival! This may not have been the historic meaning of the word, but it was its Jewish meaning in the time of the Talmud. That is what we desire a hero to be, they taught, and in the light of the teaching they “reinterpreted” the plain meaning of the text.
  What is significant here is that though the “reinterpretation” was a new meaning imposed upon a much older text, it was nothing new in the comprehensive context of Judaism. This “reinterpretation” occurs in the following discussion. According to the laws of Sabbath observance, a Jew is not permitted to carry any object in a public thoroughfare or to move it from a private area (<i>reshut haYaḥid</i>) to a public one (<i>reshut haRabim</i>). On the other hand, one may “carry” an object that is worn as a personal ornament. Now, would it be permissible for a man to go out on the Sabbath with a sword, a bow, a lance, or a spear? The majority opinion is that this is forbidden. But Rabbi Eliezer said: “It is permissible, for they are ornaments of a man.” The rabbis then give their reason for disagreeing with Rabbi Eliezer: “These objects are no ornaments of man, but his shame, for has not already Isaiah prophesied that in the days of the Messiah, ‘They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning-hooks.’ ”20<i class="footnote">Isaiah 2:4.</i> Of course, it is true the Messiah has not yet come and that these instruments of war are a bitter necessity. However, the messianic ideal guides one to the appreciation of the fact that this very pre-messianic necessity is itself man’s shame. To this, then, Rabbi Eliezer responds with the words of the Psalmist quoted above, that the sword of the hero is his “glory” and “majesty.” His colleagues are not impressed. The hero? He is the great teacher of the Torah. This is obvious; who else could be meant? The sword? It has, of course, only symbolical meaning. In actual fact, Rabbi Eliezer is, of course, correct with regard to the specific text. The rabbis know that. And, indeed, during the discussion they quote the principle that the plain meaning of a biblical verse is not to be given up. Still, the opinion of the rabbis is accepted as valid, as the halakhically binding interpretation. The specific text must submit to the “reinterpretation” demanded by the comprehensive ideology of Judaism. The plain meaning of the specific text stands; however, our concern here is not with text, but with Judaism, not with “Bible scholarship,” but with the life of the Jew. Because for the Jew who lives Judaism, the “meaning” of the text is revealed ever anew as he reads it in the living spirit of the totality of the Torah. Thus the reinterpretation becomes quite natural and it is indeed the true statement.
  The task of reinterpretation is pursued consistently. When Jacob blesses Joseph’s children, he gives them “…a portion above thy brethren,” which he says that he took out of the hand of the Amorite “with my sword and with my bow.”21<i class="footnote">Genesis 48:22.</i> As the rabbis see it, Jacob could not have meant this literally, for the Psalmist declared, “I trust not in my bow, neither can my sword save me”. The “sword” must mean a prayer and the “bow,” a plea, since there happens to be a rather close similarity in the spelling of the two Hebrew words for “my bow” and “my intercession.”22<i class="footnote">T.B. <i>Bava Batra</i> 123a.</i>
  David’s eulogy for Saul and Jonathan provides another opportunity for reinterpretation. It concludes with the words: “How are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished!”23<i class="footnote">II Samuel I:27.</i> The word for “mighty” is the plural of <i>gibbor</i>, the same word used by the Psalmist in calling upon the hero to put on his sword, his “glory” and “majesty.” Just as the rabbis maintained in that context that the mighty one is one mighty in knowledge and the ways of the Torah, so must the meaning be here. True enough, Saul and Jonathan were warriors. But surely King David, the father of the Messiah, would not praise them merely for their martial qualities? In truth, they were <i>ẓaddikim</i>, righteous, saintly Jews. That David laments their death in terms of loss of the instruments of war only proves that the <i>ẓaddikim</i> are our weapons.24<i class="footnote"><i>Yalkut Shimoni, ibid.</i></i> While the rabbis had great respect for the authority of the biblical text, they were not greatly interested in the historic personalities of a Saul or a Jonathan. Who they were was not very important. What did matter was to teach the Jew what a Jewish ruler is supposed to be like. There was no intellectual dishonesty involved in this “interpretation.” The plain meaning of the words was sustained, but their message had to be read in the light of the totality of the teachings of the Torah, which rejected the idea that martial heroism was anything to be pursued, much less to be admired.
  The totality of the Torah taught the rabbis to interpret the concept of might and of the mighty one in their own way. “Who is mighty? Who is a <i>gibbor?</i>” they asked and answered: “He who controls his impulses, for it is said: ‘He who is slow to anger is better than a strong man; he who rules his spirit is better than one who conquers a city.’”25<i class="footnote">Proverbs 16:32. The rabbinic passage is from <i>Avot</i> 4:1.</i> They went on to expound: “Is this mightiness? He sees his fellowman at the edge of a pit and pushes him into the pit or he sees him at the top of a roof and pushes him down. Is this heroism?! But when is a man a <i>gibbor?</i> When his fellowman is about to fall and he holds on to him that he does not fall or when his fellowman has fallen into the pit and he brings him up.”26<i class="footnote"><i>Midrash Tehillim</i> 52:3.</i> The mighty one is not the conquering hero, but one who helps and saves. Heroism in the eyes of the rabbis of the Talmud is not a martial virtue, but a civic one.
  This systematic debunking of the military hero, which was the accepted Jewish teaching through the centuries, unquestionably had its effect on the attitude of the Jew when facing violence. It must be pointed out that Judaism does not teach an absolute commitment to non-violence; there was a healthy realization that there are situations in life when one must fight back. And so the rabbis taught: “If one comes to kill you, anticipate him by killing him.”27<i class="footnote">T.B. <i>Sanhedrin</i> 72a.</i> To do so is not a matter of military virtue. There is no such thing as military virtue, there is only the sad and bitter necessity of self-defense. If it is a matter of life and death, fight back! In practice, however, such qualifications or limitations on the basic teaching of pacifism were overshadowed by the substance of the teaching itself. More often than not the Jew did not fight back. (This is in no way meant to imply agreement with the crude and vulgar criticism that “they went like sheep to the slaughter.”28<i class="footnote">See my <i>Faith After the Holocaust</i>, New York, 1973, pp. 27–36.</i>) Because of that he was considered a coward. That cowardice is not a national Jewish characteristic has finally been demonstrated by the rise of the state of Israel. Israel was not built with cowardice. By saying this, one does not think, first of all, of Israel’s victorious wars, but of the sweat and blood with which the children of the ghetto built the land from its ruins. The truth is that for the last two millenia just to be a Jew required more courage and dedication then has ever been demanded of any other people on earth to such a degree and for such a length of time. Certain circles in Israel today deny this, claiming that since the destruction of the former Jewish state in 69 C.E. there has been no Jewish history. Whatever happened to the Jews since then was imposed upon them by others. There was Assyrian, Babylonian, Roman, and Spanish history during this period, but no Jewish history. Only now that a fragment of the old people has returned to Israel is history being made again. This history is not really a continuation, but a new beginning, just as the people is a new people.29<i class="footnote">See especially <i>HaDerashah</i> by Ḥayyim Hazaz, in <i>Avanim Roteḥot</i>, Tel-Aviv, 1965, pp. 227–44.</i>
  In a very similar manner did Bettelheim judge the ghetto Jew. Having said that the Jews could have known what was in store for them, he makes the statement that they did not want to know because they did not want to act. To this he adds the following remarkable insight into the nature of the ghetto Jew:
  “One made oneself insensitive to debasement by the oppressor so that one might be allowed to survive. Because, in the ghetto world, the oppressor usually relented in the end, and since the Jew’s self-debasement destroyed him as an autonomous human being, he was permitted to survive, even to thrive materially.”30<i class="footnote">From his article, “Freedom from Ghetto Thinking,” in <i>Midstream</i>, Spring, 1962.</i>
  Judgments depend on values and values on the realm of moral and spiritual discourse in which a person lives. From the point of view of the Israeli who maintains that he is not a Jew, but an Israeli who is completely alienated from Judaism, it is understandable that he cannot see Jewish history in the two millenia of <i>Galut</i>. Similarly, Bettelheim, too, makes good sense in the context of his values. His style and formulation adequately reflect the contempt of the fully assimilated German Jew for the <i>Ostjüde</i> (East European Jew). In fact, what he says and the way he says it is so genuinely Germanic that it could have been written by a Nazi. (Only that the Nazi would not have limited this characterization to the <i>Ostjüde</i>, he would have applied it to all Jews, including the professor.) Judaism is, of course, neither Teutonic nor “Israeli.” It all depends on what one means by “history,” by “action,” by “debasement,” “self-debasement,” and “autonomy.” Let us look at these concepts and see how they appear within the ethico-religious discourse of Judaism.
  If history means power, domination, control over external condition, national independence in the political sense, then the Jews had no history in the <i>Galut</i>. If action means kicking an oppressor, hitting back or rebelling, the Jew often did not act. If the concept of debasement of the oppressed is to be defined by the oppressor, then the ghetto Jew was insensitive to debasement and was eagerly practicing self-debasement. If autonomy means control over one’s external situation, then the ghetto Jew lives without it. If these are our values, then it is true that in the <i>Galut</i> we were hardly a nation, but were rather a physically weak, luckless, and decadent people, without any control over our destiny. But the authentic Jew, on the basis of his own values, sees the matter very differently. He would describe his situation in the <i>Galut</i> somewhat like this:
  “It is not true that I had no control over my destiny. On the contrary, I chose my destiny. There was forever confrontation. Had I wanted it, I could always have escaped the suffering of exile — as indeed many have — by surrendering to the dominant majority, to its culture, its religion. The arms of the churches were stretched out toward me, inviting me into their bosom. But I made a stand. I remained true to myself and refused. I remained captain of my soul. True, I have paid a terrible price for this stand. But no one forced me to do it. I chose it myself again and again. Is this passivity, inaction? Nonsense! It is the most intense form of activity. With a gun in your hand, with a country of your own, with a government behind you, it is comparatively easy. But without all that and defying all that, to choose your own way requires strength and dedication.
  Were we a people in the <i>Galut?</i> In spite of our dispersion, and except for non-essential regional and communal variations, there existed a uniform way of life in all the lands of our exiles; there was a comprehensive world-view that the various communities recognized as their own; there was a general commitment to one faith and there was faith in the future of the Jewish people. We lived by a scale of values accepted as Jewish and there was — on the whole — voluntary submission to it. There were organized Jewish communities with rules and regulations that were able to guide the day-to-day life of the people without police authority, essentially by the strength of a self-imposed internal discipline unique in the history of the nations. During the ‘Dark’ and ‘Middle Ages’ right up to the 19th century we Jews were the only people that possessed a highly developed general educational system for all social strata and for all age groups. All over the world Jewish communities developed institutions for the care of the sick and the poor centuries before other nations had even dreamt of them. Between the Jews scattered in various exiles all over the world there was greater unity than between the members of any other nation on this globe. Jews maintained their identity, their way of life, in the face of all odds — and they were not a ‘nation’?! Different from the others, yes! A unique nation! But <i>one</i> people, and even more so than any other that we encountered in the course of our many wanderings.
  How did we do it? All through our history we were a people that derived its national identity from its commitment to the transcendental dimension of the covenant with God. Saadia Gaon stated it with great simplicity, saying: ‘Our people is a people only by the formative strength of the Torah.’ That alone gave us the ability to remain a people independent of, and in spite of, the material and political conditions of our existence. Recalling Aḥad Ha’am’s familiar formulation regarding the assimilationist Jews of the Emancipation period as living ‘in bondage in the midst of freedom,’ one is inclined to say of the Jewish people of the <i>Galut</i> that they lived in freedom in the midst of their political slavery. In a sense we were a more independent people than the nations among whom we happened to have been dispersed.”
  This, of course, is not like Assyrian or Babylonian or Roman history. But history it is, made by Jews. It is not action like that of the Spanish conquistadors or of the crusaders, but action it is, though on a rather different level of human values and human dignity than theirs. As to autonomy, of course it is not the self-serving autonomy of domination, but the autonomy of the human spirit that in loyalty to its own truth has the power to disregard external conditions and remains unimpressed by all the might of the oppressor.
  As we saw in the previous chapters, the authentic Jew often acted with autonomous independence in the ghettos and the death camps. Every time he put on <i>tefillin</i> in secret, organized communal prayers, or took part in any of the multitude of activities we have described, he actually took his life into his hands. It has rightly been observed that under Nazi rule there was no such thing as passive resistance as distinct from active resistance.31<i class="footnote">Quoted by Schindler, pp. 217–8.</i> Any kind of disobedience to the rules was treated with equal ruthlessness. Jews who were caught in any form of religious observance were dealt with as saboteurs, no differently from those partisans who blew up munition depots. With a measure of fearlessness unequalled in history, these Jews were guarding the divine image in which man was created. Yet, when it came to physical resistance to the oppressor, they were often unequal to the task. Was this out of cowardice? If so, it would be in mysterious contrast to the mightiness of the spirit with which they have made their stand against all comers all through history. Once again we have reached a point in our discussion that cannot be resolved without reference to the realm of values which determines the meaning of concepts like cowardice and bravery.
  The prototype of the hero in Western civilization is Ajax. According to Homer in the <i>Iliad</i>, when the advance of the Greeks was halted by mist and darkness, Ajax prayed alone to Zeus that he send light for the battle to continue, even if light should bring defeat and death. Centuries later, Longimus in his <i>On the Sublime</i> commented: “That is the true attitude of an Ajax. He does not pray for life for such a petition would have ill beseemed a hero.”32<i class="footnote">This reference to Longimus we owe to Des Pres, <i>The Survivor</i>, p. 164.</i> The hero does not pray for life, nor does he fear death, because the battle itself is the cause; it comprehends all the glory of a man. Bravery here is paralleled by degradation of the value of life. Heroism in Western civilization found its expression mainly in war and bloodshed, and has its ultimate hidden roots in contempt for life. Another manifestation of this, perhaps, subconscious contempt for life may be seen in the duel that until recently was the only means by which a “gentleman” was able to retrieve his honor following an insult. The Jew who finds his values in Judaism is not impressed by Ajax, nor by the host of heroes who have followed in his footsteps. He prays to God unashamedly for life. From his point of view, duelling because of an insult is sheer barbarism. Halakhically, the victorious partner in a duel is a murderer, but not even the loser is free from the guilt of having placed his life in jeopardy, not to mention the fact that he, too, was attempting to kill another human being. As we saw earlier, the very purpose of the Torah is that man should live by God’s commandments and not die by them. The Bible commands the Jew “and thou shalt choose life.”33<i class="footnote">Deuteronomy 30:19.</i> Not only is he forbidden to commit suicide or even to mutilate or violate his body, he may not even curse himself.34<i class="footnote">T.B. <i>Bava Kama</i> 90b; <i>Shevu’ot</i> 36a.</i> Life is precious as God’s creation. Though man has been entrusted with it, it is not his private property. Man does not own life; but he is responsible for it, even for the life of an adversary.
  Let some midrashic explanations illustrate the point. In such explanations, a text is used in varied interpretations as a means to convey an idea which is valid independently of the text and which is to be expressed and emphasized because of its validity. The encounter between Jacob and Esau is an ever-recurring theme. The Bible says that when Jacob was told that his brother was coming to meet him “and four hundred men were with him,” that “Jacob was sore afraid and he was distressed.” Since it is a principle of rabbinical exegesis that there is no superfluous word in the Bible, the question arises as to what is the difference between Jacob’s “fear” and his “distress.” The answer is that they are certainly not identical. Jacob was <i>afraid</i> that he might kill and he was <i>distressed</i> by the thought that he might get killed.35<i class="footnote"><i>Bereishit Rabbah, Vayishlaḥ</i> 76:2.</i> The same idea is applied to the analysis of another classical biblical encounter between two enemies, Saul and David. The Psalmist prayed:
  “O Lord my God, in Thee have I taken refuge;
  Save me from all them that pursue me,
  and deliver me.”36<i class="footnote">Psalms 7:2.</i>
  The rabbis related these words to David’s long struggle with Saul and asked whether there is any difference between being “saved” and being “delivered.” Is David not asking for the same favor using two different words, one of which is superfluous? The answer is identical to the one given in the case of the encounter between Jacob and Esau. David prayed to be <i>saved</i> so that he would not fall into Saul’s hands, and <i>delivered</i> so that Saul would not fall into his. The rabbis’ interpretation underlines the tragic quality of such a confrontation. When an act of violence becomes an inescapable necessity, the question of who is right and who is wrong is not the decisive consideration. In such a situation, no matter what the outcome may be, it cannot be good. If one loses, it is bad, but if one wins, it is bad too. From this conclusion, the lesson must be learnt that when an act of violence does become a tragic necessity, it must not be carried out in a spirit of violence. It should not be done either with vengeance or with hatred, but with the realization that even the victory that one must seek as an act of self-defense is a moral defeat.37<i class="footnote">It is to this insight that Golda Meir, as Prime Minister of Israel, gave contemporary expression when, turning to the Arabs, she said: “We can forgive you that you killed our sons; we cannot forgive you that you made us kill your sons.”</i>
  In fact, this respect for life as God’s creation also refers to animals. It is forbidden to impose suffering on an animal and before a Jew sits down to his own meal, he must feed his animals.38<i class="footnote">T.B. <i>Gittin</i> 72a.</i> Hunting as a sport, for pleasure, is forbidden by Jewish law.39<i class="footnote">See, for example, <i>She’elot uTeshuvot Nodah biYehudah</i>, II, 10.</i> Plant life, too, must be respected. When Jews go to war, the Bible forbids them to apply a “scorched earth” strategy:
  “When thou shalt besiege a city a long time, in making war against it to take it, thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof by forcing an axe against them: for thou mayest eat of them, and thou shalt not cut them down.”40<i class="footnote">Deuteronomy 20:19.</i>
  Whatever the implications of such a law might be in modern warfare, the validity of the principle as such stands. According to the Talmud, one may not cut down fruitbearing trees; one may not uproot even one’s own plantings in one’s own property.41<i class="footnote">T.B. <i>Makkot</i> 22a; <i>Bava Kama</i> 20b.</i> The rabbis said that when a man cuts down a fruitbearing tree, “its voice travels from one end of the world to the other, but the voice is not heard,” a statement which they made in similar terms concerning the death of a human being.42<i class="footnote"><i>Pirkei deRabbi Eliezer</i> 34 and T.B. <i>Yoma</i> 20b.</i>
  For centuries, Jews have been conditioned by these teachings about the sanctity of life. No wonder then that the violent reaction to an attack, even in self-defense, does not come easily to the Jew. What would have been more natural for this people, singled out by the Germans for destruction, than to think of vengeance against them and to call for it. Yet even such an obvious concept as vengeance is given its specifically Jewish meaning. When Shlomo Zlichovsky died on the gallows with <i>Shema Yisra’el</i> on his lips, one of the others who was hanged together with him called to the Jews who were forced to witness the murders: “Jews! Avenge our blood!” One young Jew who was present asked himself: “How and with what to take revenge? What is the purpose of vengeance? And what is real and ultimate revenge? Do we Jews have the possibility or the power to do it?” Standing facing the ten gallows on that eve of the festival of <i>Shavu’ot</i>, in spite of his youth, he understood the logical link between the two calls: “Hear, O Israel, the Eternal is our God, the Eternal is One,” and “Jews! Avenge our blood!” And he wrote of that day:
  “This, indeed, is the greatest and surest vengeance. Above all, the Germans intended to kill the Jewish soul, to defile it…This is the reason why they chose the eve of <i>Shavu’ot</i>, the season of the giving of the Torah by God to Israel — on that day to terrorize the Jews and to destroy their <i>emunah</i>. But Shlomo Zlichovsky proved to them in the presence of all these oppressed Jews…that the German hangmen have no power whatever over the Jewish soul and that they are unable to uproot the trust from our hearts. This is the true vengeance; the Jewish vengeance.
  “And I, too, then took revenge on the enemy. The next day, after the hangings, I joined a secret <i>minyan</i> that assembled in our house for the festival service. We received the holy Torah with joy and fervor and sang the <i>Akdamut</i> to the tune of Shlomo Zlichovsky that was vibrating within us. As if nothing had happened.”43<i class="footnote">Prager, I, p. 139.</i>
  Another young boy in hiding in Belgium at about the same time, wrote in his Hebrew diary:
  “My brothers! Do not misunderstand me. As I speak to you about vengeance I want you to pay attention to its positive side. Our revenge for our present suffering and for all our sufferings during these two millenia of <i>Galut</i> will be the restoration of our land; its settlement by its people; the return of our beloved people to its inheritance. This will be the greatest revenge that is in our hand to achieve. For this we ask first of all the help of our God, of the God of Israel, who has protected us from extinction during our entire exile. He is sure to help us and to guide us anew to the land of our inheritance, to our holy land, the land of Israel.”44<i class="footnote"><i>HaNa’ar Moshe: Yomano shel Moshe Flinker</i>, Jerusalem, 1958, p. 110.</i>
  Both of these Jewish boys sensed the secret of Jewish eternity. Unspoiled by the violence and bloodshed that surrounded them, they knew instinctively that the confrontation between Judaism and a world that, generation after generation, was producing its major and minor Hamans, Torquemadas, and Hitlers, whose main preoccupation was to save humanity from the Jews, was not to be resolved by the sword. Their words were a latter-day formulation of the prophetic truth: “Not by might, nor by physical strength, but by My spirit saith the Eternal.”45<i class="footnote">Zechariah 4:6.</i> The boy in the ghetto acted within the limitations of his ghetto existence; the boy in hiding in Belgium was looking to the future with its new demands on the Jew. Their interpretations of the meaning of vengeance would, of course, be taken as cowardice in the Ajax tradition of Western courage. So be it. The Jew does not envy either Ajax or Siegfried for his glory. The Jewish concepts of honor and dignity have their roots in a different dimension of values. The Hamans and their henchmen were never able to humiliate the Jew. By the way they treated him, they degraded themselves and violated the sanctity of all life.
  It is, however, quite obvious that the Jewish people can no longer continue as before. The God of history Himself has acknowledged this fundamental truth of the problematics of Jewish existence by guiding the Jews back to the land of their fathers, in His own mysterious way. In the light of our latest experience of what man is capable of doing to his fellow, and in view of the present international cynicism and general erosion of human conscience, and the supreme modern technological efficiency of mass murder, we must not lose sight of the ever-present possibility of another disaster similar to the one that overtook the Jewish people during the Second World War.
  Never again may we be caught unprepared. Before anything else, this ought to mean the return of Jews from all over the world to the land of Israel in their masses. But beyond that we need a critical review of the past Jewish attitude in the face of persecution. Not that the ideals and values were wrong. The fault lay in the fact that for centuries Jews neglected to pay adequate attention to the advice of those fundamentally nonviolent teachers who said: “If one comes to kill you, anticipate him and kill him first.” This statement is not meant to be a call to arms; nor does it require sinking to the level of the Ajax tradition. It suggests that the inadequate response to aggression is morally wrong. Evil has got to be resisted and it is morally wrong not to resist it. For every time evil succeeds because all possible resistance was not offered, its power increases and resistance at a later moment becomes more and more difficult.
  It is, moreover, morally wrong to tolerate evil not only when it is done to others, but also when it is done to oneself for there is such a thing as the guilt of the victim. In these respects we have failed. Of course, once most Jews were in a concentration camp, physical resistance, in the main, was left only to the desperate struggle of the ghetto fighters. But it is clear that only a long series of failure to resist leads to the concentration camp. And resistance does not only mean to kill, which would be necessary only in the most extreme situations. One wonders what would have happened if, all over Europe, the Jews would simply have refused to move from their homes into the ghettos, if entire armies would have been required to move them by force and, if they were murdered in their homes, with rivers of Jewish blood defiling the streets of Berlin, Hamburg, Vienna, Paris, Warsaw, and Vilna, the Germans, Poles, Lithuanians, and Ukranians themselves would have had to clean their own thoroughfares and parks of the corpses of murdered Jews? Of course, scattered all over Europe without a political organization, and without any sort of unified leadership, the Jews were incapable of such a concerted strategy of resistance. Indeed, in their situation, such a uniform strategy was an impossibility, and it remains so for a people scattered over the globe and divided by their citizenship in numerous countries.
  Yet a strategy is needed; not a political strategy, but a moral one, based on the principle that to tolerate evil against oneself, in however mild a form, makes one an accomplice to the act. It is a man’s moral obligation to refuse to obey the commands of injustice. And where resistance, appropriate to the attack, is not possible, he must resist with radical non-cooperation, however expedient cooperation may appear to be at the moment. No practical advantage may be used as an excuse for an immoral act. Moreover, it is the nature of the struggle in which the Jewish people is involved with the moral and spiritual inadequacy of the ages that makes all practical accommodation with the forces of persecution impractical in the end. To yield in any way is demoralizing, and makes one share in the guilt of the oppressor.
  We were unprepared. Not because of cowardice, but because we did not see clearly the moral implication of self-defense; we never fully understood how wrong it was to tolerate evil when it was directed towards ourselves. We were insufficiently prepared to reconcile the Jewish teachings of anti-militarism and respect for all life with the resistance to evil demanded by the circumstances.
  Now we must have learned this; now we must know. The moral obligation of withstanding evil, even when directed against oneself, must be incorporated into the value system of Judaism. Of course, the teachings of pacifism and the respect for all life as God’s creation may not be given up. On the contrary! It is their effective realization in behavior and action that demand resistance to evil, injustice, and oppression on all levels of the confrontation. It is true. The fate of the ultimate issue that Judaism represents in human history will not be decided by the sword, by physical might and power, but by the Divine Spirit. Till then we must learn to resist. It is our duty in the presence of God.