Belief After the Holocaust
 |
26 Comments Posted
About Holocaust : Bitter in the world, sweetness in the afterlife.
God gave them ticket to heaven and i am still struggling for it.
|
The Holocaust happened in countries where people knew not a true God.Yes, there was neither God nor consciousness in the hearts and minds of the evil doers. They are in denial of the universal God whose Laws the Jews represent .This representation all nations seek to annihilate.The Holocaust was a warning to humanity to alter her way or face destruction.Only aftermath of war and public humiliation could make such people face the horrors of their actions, repent and give recognition to the true God. Repent has come;recognition of Jewish holiness can only come when truth is revealed by the Jews. Alas ,Jews ignore this message and endanger themselves once again.
|
God didnt do this as a punishment. The Germans did it out of HATE. Dont blame God. Because without him YOU are NOTHING. NOBODY is IMPORTANT without GOD.
|
if G-d did something great we would rely on him too much, then we would become lazy and expect him to do everything for us, why are we living then, becasue G-d can not test us
|
i think that GOD allows everything to happen for a reason...
|
Yes, the Germans did it out of hate, as did other nations and peoples throughout history. But I think G-d works through them, and in the end it makes us stronger. Thank you for the beautiful explanation on what will happen to the Holocaust martyrs. It puts my soul at ease to know they gainesd eternal merit for their pain experienced here.
|
when one door closes another door opens
|
Why is there evidence of G_D's intervention in the lives of Jew's and the Jewish nation in the Torah but the silence of G-d during the holocaust?
|
In general, through time G-d has become "quieter and quieter".
In Torah a number of people have the gift of clear prophecy (The prophet sees and hears a specific command, while awake.) That is G-d being about as loud as he will ever be. Better put: That is G-d being as concrete as he will ever be.
Later, in times of the commentaries, only a few prophets existed. Perhaps in sleep, they would see something, and it was not clear.
So G-d was talking more softly, or better put, The evidence of G-d, and his message was less concrete.
And then, (Book of Esther) G-d is even more hidden. There are no direct messages. There are not any prophets in the old sense. G-d is hidden, and his messages are like clouds and mist compared to concrete. That has been the case for many hundreds of years.
Without regard of earthy conditions we are to stand on the shoulders of our ancestors, hopefully higher (closer to G-d) than they, without the direct communication of prophecy.
|
G_d was both silent and evident during the holocaust.
Silent, because He allowed evil of such ugliness that it flies in the face of everything we believe.
Evident, because we miraculously survived. Miraculously, the Germans failed to create an atomic bomb, despite the fact that they were the ones with all the scientists and laboratories to do so.
Miraculously, because the Germans failed to overrun Palestine, due to a freak victory of the greatly outnumbered British tanks in El Alamein.
Miraculously, because there is no natural way to explain why Judaism and the Jewish People continue to flourish, returning with ever greater dedication to their G_d and His Torah.
|
Thank you for supplying answers to a question that has dogged me for years. I plan to share this article with others.
|
Many of the greatest Torah scholars were lost, and with it their wisdom. If G-d had a plan for the Holocaust, why did he take mostly the observant Jews of Eastern Europe? The percentage of survivors is greater in Western Europe, and of course the American Jews, most of whom were not observant, were entirely spared. Yet because of the Holocaust, these non-observant Jews became the leaders of world Jewry, simply because hardly anyone else (except a few like the Lubavitcher Rebbe, of good name) was left.
A greater question is one asked by the great Rabbi Yitzchak: G-d has a covenant with us. He promised to protect us and to multiply us. But every time our numbers grow, a calamity comes to reduce us to only ten percent of our numbers, thus negating our growth. Why is G-d not keeping His Covenant with us?
|
Why did all the jews have to die. Its so sad that so many innocent people had to die. The Holocaust shouldn't of happened. Bubt it did and our job is to prevent it from happening again
|
Thank you this line. Its the best I have heard lately:
The question becomes rhetorical – not, “where was G–d during the Holocaust?” but rather, “where was man during the Holocaust?”
|
Honestly, such humility was employed to write this chapter. If only all the world knew and observed the 10 Commandments!
|
Thankyou for writing this. It has greatly helped. Jews, Catholics, Homosexuals,Gypies, everyone who died. All 11 million of them should not die for nothing. They died so that we shall learn and that it should not happen again. If everyone was like you then there would be no terror, war, suffering. We need to learn from this horror. Thankyou for spreading the thoughts.
|
Could it be that G_d simply wanted to give a message to ALL of humanity, Jews included? What if the truth is hidden from those who think to themselves that they are wise, or more than the rest of humanity?
I received a thought not too long ago while contemplating that tragic event, I like many others wondered "How could G_d allow something like this to happen?" All of a sudden it dawned on me that there was a message for EVERYONE. That message was, no matter who you think you are, it is not for ANYONE to control other people, His love is for his creation, and NO ONE is above any other except G_d. Where was G_d while this was happening? He was the message in it!
If asked where I got this, my answer is simple, G_d told me.
Bottom line, your paper degrees mean nothing, your fancy clothing means nothing, your earthly riches and wealth are nothing. Love thy neighbor as thyself you are nothing more or less than the homeless on the street! That is the truth in a nutshell.
|
G-d didn't "allow" it to happen. Man allowed it to happen. Man will always allow it to happen--that's whay we are men. G-d could not have prevented it any more than He could have come down in a flaming chariot and smote Hitler's head from his neck (it would have been pretty neat, though). Even G-d has rules to follow, is how I see it. That makes sense to me.
I think as a person of faith you are able--obligated, even-- to find the good in anything, no matter how ugly the thing in question. The SHoah provided just as many opportunities for mercy and bravery and faithfulness and kindness and redemption as it did for cruelty, cowardice, faithlessness and damnation. Personally, if I can't at least find the good in something, I'll always see the bad in everything.
|
No, it is not true that one must be a believer in order to ask this question. I just play "let’s pretend" and put myself in your framework and ask the logical question:
It is YOU who believe in an all-good, all-merciful and all-knowing god.
It is YOU who need to do the mental gymnastics in order to live with this cognitive dissocense of knowing that genocide occurred right under the nose of your god and presumingly with his consent.
The answer is easy for me. I don't believe in any gods and therefore have no need to make excuses for his absence.
|
I believe that God knew what he was doing when allowing that tragic event to occur. The real shame comes in the fact that most people merely stood by and allowed Hitler to continue with his regime. A powerful nation like the U.S. should have stepped in to put an end right at the beggining. Appeasing Hitler was a very wrong move on the League of Nations' part. I simply believe that if us people would have stood up for the innocent Jewish nation, then God would have possibly intervened in the situation; and millions of Jewish people would not have died. "I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you"~Bible (God reffering to the Jewish people)
|
I'm not satisfied with the idea that God "allowed" the Holocaust to happen. Men did it, not Him. If He could "allow" that to happen, after all, there would be no limit to the lousy things that befall man and for which He could be concievably blamed, many of which are due to plain old living-in-the-real-world rotten luck or failure to act. That's a slippery slope that I don't think is fair to Him.
I'm also not satisified with the idea that G-d stood by twiddling his divine thumbs while it happened. G-d did intervene, by destroying the third Reich (and a hell of a job He did, too) for what they did. I forgot the legal principle, but destroying the Third Reich before they had implemented the Holocaust wouldn't have made any moral or logical sense. There would have been no lesson learned, nor moral to the story. You can't justifiably kill a thief before he breaks into your house. You have to time it. If you wait for the right time, you act justly. If not, you committ murder.
|
Daniel,
If you want to bestow upon your god all the praise and glory then YES, your god is equally responsible for allowing the Holocaust to occur and any other human perceived evil.
You give your god the power of creating the earth and rendering ultimate justice but he doesn't have the power to stop an attempted extermination of his "Chosen People?" Of course he does. (given your teachings)
So, all you have left is that he allowed it to happen. Was it to teach the Jews a lesson? That's pretty drastic to kill 6 million for a lesson which no one is clear about.
Or maybe you just worship a deity who is not GOOD. That is a possibility given his record in the Torah.
It is much more plausible that your god doesn't exist which is why he remained silent while human beings were being starved then gassed in ovens.
|
Elisha,
I'm not sure you understood my point--that God did not perpetrate the Holocaust. Hey, forget the Holocaust and talk about the next best horrible thing--cancer! The vegan eats right and exercises and does everything correct--as most Jews thought they were doing given their unique history. End result? the same--undeserved catastrophe on both counts.
And if He indeed allowed it to happen, then why? Sadism? To teach a lesson? I can't accept those reasons, because G-d is good, and Good wants the best from people despite whatever the circumstances. Personally, I wouldn't want to live in a universe in which G-d is a pedant or a sadist, otherwise I'd be wearing the brownshirt.
Or is it because His own rules (free will) prevented Him from pointing a divine finger and stopping it all in a flash of heavenly terror? This seems to be the most logical choice. Even if G-d allowed it, again, where was man? Blaming G-d lets mankind --YOU--off the hook. That's my point.
|
Daniel,
I do not think that your god exists. This would be the ONLY rational explanation for his absense. I do not have to do all the mental gymnastics, as you mdo in your previous paragraph, to make excuses for god's absense during the Holocaust.
A being cannot be considered good or holy, in my opinion, if it had the power to stop evil and chose not to.
So, even if there ever becomes even the slightest bit of evidence of your god, as he is portrayed in the Torah, he is not worthy of worship to me anyhow because he does not fit MY criteria for being "good" .
|
Elisha,
Take another perspective. If G-d has to stop one evil, He has to stop all evils (but not all evils are of the same degree). Evil acts are committed one at a time, one individual choice, at a time. If there was even one German camp guard or one Baltic auxiliary militiaman among hundreds of thousands who said to himself, "Enough, this is sick, I refuse to do this," then perhaps--and this is a loaded choice of words, I know--the Holocaust may have servied His purpose.
Your central argument has always been that God a) has the power to stop evil and b) deliberately chose not to. For my reasons above, I don't think that is accurate. After all, G-d, from your perspective, didn't stop the Holocaust from happening, but He did, from my perspective, destroy those responsible for it. Or maybe it was man that stopped the Third Reich--which is exactly what God wants of His creations. Again, it comes down to, "where was man"?
|
Daniel,
I agree that the appropriate question posed should be "Where was man?" or the rest of the world when human beings were being slaughtered? (Because there is no god that exists)
Your god, or ANY god, for that matter, DID NOT prevent the Holocaust nor did your god destroy the THIRD REICH. Humans eventually destroyed them. Again, your god is absent. You can say ANYTHING was "gods will" in retrospect.
Just leave things in god’s hands and see NOTHING happen. (Hands that help are better than lips that pray)
Humans act and human beings need to take credit for their failures and their victories and not allow any god to absolve us from responsibility or credit.
|
|
| |
|
LOGIN
ASK THE RABBI
Read this article
