Why Should Jews Survive?
Looking Past the Holocaust Toward a Jewish Future
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- 12,99 €
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- 12,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
As the current "master story" of Judaism, the Holocaust has been used to depict Jews as being uniquely victimized. In the fifty years since, the Jewish people have had two overriding concerns: survival of the Jewish people and keeping alive the tragedy of the Holocaust.
In Why Should Jews Survive?, Rabbi Michael Goldberg launches a bold attack on what he calls the "Holocaust cult." The generation that founded Israel is dying, and the new generation seems adrift. Goldberg contends that UJA death camp pilgrimages and shrines like the U.S. Holocaust Museum are deeply destructive of Jewish identity. This Holocaust-centered survival-for-survival's-sake Judaism is already showing its emptiness and, Goldberg insists that Jews now need positive reasons for remaining Jewish. They need to return to the Exodus as their master story -- the story that gave the Jews a unique place in God's plan, and one that provides for their survival because they are clearly the linchpin in God's redemption of the world.
This provocative book, powerfully argues a challenge to the dominant theme of modern Jewish thought, and Rabbi Michael Goldberg simultaneously offers practical and serious hope to sustain the next generation.
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Today, both liberal and conservative Jews, warns L.A. rabbi Goldberg, follow a flawed ``master story,'' in which post-Holocaust Jewish identity is based on mere survival, not on any rich sense of history and worship. Instead, the author urges attention to the story of Exodus, in which Jews were given a chance to serve God and the world. In his thoughtful and challenging essay, Goldberg ranges through art, theology and Jewish communal politics, from Schindler's List to Harold Kushner (When Bad Things Happen to Good People), arguing that the ``most distinctive evidence'' of God's presence is that, despite their crimes, the Nazis ``ultimately failed to murder the Jewish People.'' He also warns that the Holocaust tempts Jews, especially those in Israel, to uncritically claim victimhood and exemption from criticism. Thus, he argues, Israel must follow righteous Torah practices rather than situational ethics, and American Jewish communities must rise above dues paying to maintain three practices: study, prayer and ``acts of covenantal faithfulness.'' Ultimately, he relies on the idea of Jews as the chosen people, a tenet from which many Jews shy away: ``Jews should survive because they are the lynchpin in redemption of the world.''
