Search Results

In this chapter, and in Chs. 6–8, and 10, an analysis and examination is made of the writings of the major American Jewish thinkers/theologians. The thinker addressed in this chapter is Arthur Cohen, a prominent Jewish theologian, but not institutionally tied to one of the denominations of American Judaism; he was an editor and a novelist. Citations of each thinker's work earlier in the book are capitalized on in order to explore the theme of history and identity as it occurs in their work, and it is shown that these figures struggled with very deep and pressing problems not only about God and the Jewish people, and about human nature and moral purpose but also about the very nature of Jewish belief and its understanding of the world, history, God, and much else. They realized the dangers that accompanied their sensitivity to the Holocaust and their unconditional commitment to an honest and probing encounter with the death camps, and at the same time, they refused to abandon Judaism. In some ways, they appear like other intellectuals of the current era, who realize that we cannot transcend history nor can we be overwhelmed by it, but in other ways, they appear unlike them, for their sense of value and purpose arises out of the horror of the death camps.

This chapter covers the writings and interchanges of various Jewish theologians who wrote in America in the late 1940s, the 1950s, and the 1960s, who included existentialists, and Reform Jewish theologians. These writers include Emil Fackenheim, Will Herberg, Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Eugene Borowitz, Bernhard Heller, Jakob Petuchowski, Arthur Cohen, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Joseph Soloveitchik, Lou Silberman, Bernard Martin, Eliezer Berkovits, Richard Rubinstein, and many others. The chapter also covers the debates in various journals as well as ideas put forward in more substantial publications (essays, books, etc.).

This brief introduction discusses the importance of understanding what the American Jewish response – and more importantly, the American Jewish theologians’ response – to the Holocaust has been, and what it has taught Jews about their approach to the past and the future. The author has approached this by an examination of the writings of five thinkers (Richard Rubinstein, Eliezer Berkovits, Irving Greenberg, Arthur Cohen, and Emil Fackenheim), each of whom in the 1960s and 1970s began to treat the Holocaust as a central and determining feature in his Jewish thinking. Each conceived of his theological task as understanding Judaism in terms of an act of coming to grips with Auschwitz, yet each has been influential in different ways, and for different constituencies. A brief summary is given of the writings of each of the five, and of some of the thoughts and conclusions raised. The introduction ends with an outline of the book.

This chapter examines the way in which post‐Holocaust Jewish thought began to emerge in the 1960s and its role within Jewish religious thought. These post‐Holocaust Jewish thinkers did not constitute a school, nor did they have common views, except in some fairly general ways, and in the fact that they all confronted the Holocaust. The five main thinkers in particular (Richard Rubinstein, Eliezer Berkovits, Irving Greenberg, Arthur Cohen, and Emil Fackenheim) did not believe that responsible and honest Jewish self‐understanding could proceed, and yet ignore, the horrors of the death camps. The thinkers whose work is discussed in this chapter are Richard Rubinstein (the earliest Jewish theologian to write about the importance of the death camps for the Jewish faith), Emil Fackenheim, Irving Greenberg, Moredecai Kaplan, and Steven Schwarzchild.

This chapter focuses on the Jewish barristers of Victorian and Edwardian England. The Jewish giants of the Victorian Bar, men such as George Jessel, Judah Benjamin, and Arthur Cohen, devoted themselves to the practice of commercial and international law. They were followed by younger barristers, who likewise specialized in various aspects of commercial law or practised in the Chancery courts. Meanwhile, many of the prominent Jewish members of the Edwardian Bar were deeply involved in communal affairs and supplied much of the leadership of Anglo-Jewry. The number of Jews who held judicial office during the late Victorian and Edwardian eras was small, but between the world wars their number shrank still further, paralleling the dearth of consultant positions in teaching hospitals held by Jews with a positive Jewish identity.