Selected Reactions of Jewish Thinkers to the Shoah/Holocaust

• God’s punishment for sin (unspecified, rise of Reform & other new forms of Judaism, Zionism [Jews should have waited for the messiah])
• Jews were innocent victims, sacrificed to test their faith (e.g., Binding of Isaac)
• Jews suffer to bear the sins of other people (Suffering Servant)
• God hides himself from world
• test of belief in God’s existence (Job)
• God didn’t cause Holocaust, people did, because of free will
• Holocaust proves that God doesn’t exist
• Holocaust has destroyed the covenant between God and Israel, so Jews now take on a new, voluntary relationship to God
• Jews need to rethink their ideas of God, because perhaps God is not all-powerful or all-knowing, and thus neither responsible for Holocaust nor able to prevent it from happening
• some Jews have chosen to keep silent, as the only thinkable response to the unthinkable