The Orthodox Jews among the She'erit ha-Peletah, the remnant that escaped the Jewish catastrophe of World War II, were not silent about the meaning of the hurban, the destruction now known as the Holocaust, for Judaism.1 Both the "elite," the Yeshiva heads and organizational leaders, and the "masses," the individuals without titles or scholarly reputations, attempted to explain what happened and thereby to establish religious stability for themselves. Their response has inherent theological value. It can be credited with creating religious life and providing continuity of the spirit of Judaism. Moreover, the lively and fruitful debates about the hurban among religious thinkers over the last two decades should be seen against the background of Orthodox She'erit ha-Peletah thinkers-indeed against that of religious thought during the catastrophe itself. Precedents may be found for many themes enunciated later on. The phenomenological reality of theology during the She'erit ha-Peletah may even make continued debate unnecessary as to whether or not theology and religious thinking is possible after the hurban.
In this essay I focus on one group of Orthodox thinkers among the She'erit ha-Peletah, the Eastern European survivors of ghettos and concentration camps who gathered in and around Munich in the American zone of Germany from 1945 through 1948. They did not let the hurban become the final statement about Jewish existence. Instead, they drew a delicate line around the murder of 6,000,000 brethren and placed themselves outside the circle. There, they began to renew Jewish life. The renewal was not confined to the shadow of the catastrophe, for then it might have been submerged by its terrible power. The survivors acted aggressively toward the past. They brought their consciousness to bear upon the realm within the line and then endeavored to extend the new life of consciousness into all of Jewish history.
What is the content of their consciousness about the hurban? The Orthodox thinkers first identified characteristics that were common to the hurban and Jewish history before it, with regard to the people of Israel's internal behavior and their relation to the world. But the survivors also considered the hurban unique. The uniqueness required a unique response. The chaos was considered so extreme that only a new creation, one of a divine kingdom, could properly "address" the chaos. The Orthodox thinkers considered here believed that Torah was the way to elevate the people to redemption, for Torah was of history but also at the beginning and end of history. World-history by itself lost all viability. But the survivors believed that the people of Israel could participate in Torah-history, in redemption.
How could the redemptive way of Torah be realized? The Orthodox survivors believed that the people survived the catastrophe because they contained Torah, but that Torah-history required a state. Only a state could resist anti-Torah, namely assimilation and alien surroundings. Only a Jewish state could become a threshold through which the people of Israel could pass from history-become-chaotic to Torahhistory or redemption, from desecrated time to holy eternity.
Once the Orthodox thinkers separated themselves from the hurban, such that they became the subject and the hurban became the object of consciousness, they endeavored to align the hurban with the rest of Jewish history. If such alignment existed, the survivors of the terrible catastrophe could be consoled by their historical belonging.
One form of alignment was the argument that the hurban was part of a repetitive cyclical pattern of Jewish survival. Meir Baram of Pocking, editor of Kol Israel ba-Golah, observed how along with the birth pains before, during, and after the wars that involved Jews, there always was a spark of light. Baram thought that the revival of the League of Nations into the United Nations was also a sparkindeed a sort of athalta de-geulah (onset of messianic redemption) in miniature.2
Shlomo Nutter spoke of a cycle of catastrophe and religious rebirth. Nutter explained that in the Chmielnicki massacres of 1648-1649, according to Nathan of Hannover's Deep Mire (1653), and Shabbethai ben Meir Hacohen's Scroll of Despair (1651?), Jews were murdered and tortured with indescribable brutality. The Torah was assaulted, the scrolls were used for shoes, and the arks were desecrated. But the She'erit ha-Peletah of that time remained united and strictly religious. The same was true after the attacks of Cossack Ivan Gonta in 1768. Indeed, Nutter argued, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries witnessed a revival in Lithuania under the Vilna Gaon and in Poland and Russia under the Baal Shem Tov that spread to the Diaspora and the Land of Israel. Even after the great darkness of Hitler's era, Nutter believed, the people did not lose hope. As always, the Netsah Israel (eternity of Israel) provided a fresh breath of life to revive the dry bones.3
At the She'erit ha-Peletah congress of July 1947 in Bad Reichenhall, Shalom Cholovsky pointed to the historical pattern of positive responses to cataclysm. After the Spanish Inquisition there was the Kabbalah; after Chmielnicki, Sabbataean messianism; after the 1703 Haidamack massacres in the Ukraine, Hassidism; after the Russian pogroms, nationalism. After Maidanek-and Maidanek was not only five kilometers from Berlin but five kilometers from every point of exile-there would be immigration to Palestine by any means possible (ha'palah).4
In May 1948 Israel Frankel of Heidenheim pointed to a pattern where the persecuted people of Israel survived while the powerful persecutors disappeared. Israel, the perennial victim of the evil urge of the world, always came back: "The more they were oppressed the more they increased" (Exodus 1:12). After the hurban of the Second Temple by the Romans, Rome disappeared but Jews revived with the Talmud; after the Crusades there was the Golden Age of Spain; after the "Slovakian Hitler" Chmielnicki there was Hassidism. Frankel argued that the contemporary Ernest Bevin-Bevin tried to prevent the displaced persons from reaching Palestine-mistakenly thought that after the hurban the national organism was powerless, despairing, paralyzed. Instead, Jews were ready to jump into fire for their people and land, to sacrifice themselves in the war of mitsvah (Biblical commandment). Mankind was astonished at what was taking place in the Land of Israel:
Our contemporary Maccabees have cast the disgrace of exile off from Judaism, [that of] sheep being led to slaughter. The Bevins and their henchmen think that the terrible pouring of blood from the Jewish body carried out by Hitler, may his name be erased, has annulled the Jewish struggle for existence and the striving for independence in a Jewish land. But the heroic struggle of the contemporary Hasmoneans-the entire Yishuv [settlement in the Land of Israel] together with consolidated world Jewry aiding the liberation army, spiritually and materially-proves that the nation of Israel lives and that "in your blood, live" (Ezekiel 16:6).5
Moshe Halpern, a leader in the Brith Trumpeldor (Betar) Zionist movement, invoked the thought of Nachman Krochmal's Guide for the Perplexed of Our Time (1785-1840). All nations passed through three periods: (1) Youth, the period of romance and song: the Song of Songs; (2) Adulthood, the period of real strength: the Proverbs; (3) Old age, the period of weakness and loss of purpose: Ecclesiastes. The Jewish nation was exceptional, for old age was succeeded by youth. When other nations declined, they passed from the scene of history. When Israel declined, it subsequently became renewed. Israel was not like other nations, Halpern believed, because the nation of Israel was eternal (Netsah Israel), chosen by God not to be annihilated by persecution. Every "time of Jacob's trouble" Ueremiah 30:7) was followed by the promise "from it will be saved" (Jeremiah 30:7). Every bad epoch was followed by a good one:
Rabbi Nachman Krochmal uses Hegel's term Volksgeist to mean the 11 absolute spirit" which perpetually maintains the Jewish people, for eternity. [Krochmall describes the cycle of three different epochs in Judaism, [which continue] from the day the nation began until today. According to him, Jewish existence does not depend upon changing appearances. It does not depend upon special qualities-as Greeks depend upon beauty and Romans upon power. Rather, Jewish existence is absolute.6
There was one particular transition in the cycle of renewal which the survivors stressed, that from Egyptian slavery to liberation. During Passover 1946, Y. D. Schaimon compared the suffering in Egypt to the suffering in Europe, and the exodus from Egypt to the anticipated return to the Land of Israel: "Apparently, providence wanted there to be an Egyptian exodus again."7 And in Fohrenwald (where both the newspaper and the conference hall were called Ba-Midbar, that is, 'in the desert between slavery and independence'), the Jews read the Haggadah into their own experience during the same Passover:8
| "We were slaves [unto Pharoah in Egypt]." | We have [again] become slaves and have been packed into camps. |
| "And if [God] had not brought [our ancestors out of Egypt]." | If Dr. Zalman Grinberg [Head of the hospital for political ex-prisoners in Germany] did not travel to America, our cousins [there] would still not know how deep we are buried. |
| "Even if we were all wise." | Try to be wise when you are forced to beg for food. |
| "We are old." | From [our] troubles. |
| "If we were all endowed with knowledge of Torah." | We still would not know why we should [get involved] in helping to rebuild Europe. |
| "It happened to Rabbi Eliezer." | At least he did not have to tell about the sort of ugly thing that happened in Stuttgart [?]. |
| "And what does the wise man say?" | What can any wise man say when stupid people [have the power]? |
| "What does the evil one say?" | I will send a committee of inquiry to the Land of Israel. |
| "The simple one." | He waits so long that there is no seat [left] for him [at the discussions]. |
| "The one who does not know enough to ask." | A good candidate for the Revision Commission [at the United Nations]. |
| "Could [the Haggadah be recited] on the first day of the month of Nisan?" | When it comes to the question of the Land of Israel the matter is postponed monthly and will ultimately not even be considered by the United Nations. |
| "In the beginning [our ancestors] worshipped idols." | Less than a year ago all Germans were Nazis. Now they are democrats in concentration camps. |
| "Blessed be He who keeps His promise to Israel." | This blessing [certainly] would not include England. |
| "The [covenant] has sustained our fathers." | [To think] that our fathers were able to get along without UNR-RA. |
| "Go and learn what Laban the Aramite sought to do [to Jacob our father]." | Go and look at what [Ernest] Bevin is doing today. |
| "And the Egyptians dealt ill with us [Deuteronomy 26:6]." | Are our Stuttgart police any better? |
| "And we cried [unto the Lord] [Deuteronomy 26:7]." | Now you can go talk to the wall. |
| "And God brought us forth out of Egypt [Deuteronomy 26:8]." | And placed us in internment camps in Bavaria. |
| "Blood and fire and pillars of smoke." | Germany still has not been punished for setting the world on fire. |
| "Rabbi Yosi the Galilean says [from whence can one deduce that if the Egyptians received the plagues in Egypt they received fifty plagues on the sea?]." | And Rabbi David Glizer [of Fohrenwald] says, "As I have no access to the UNRRA warehouses, from whence can I know what is going on there?" |
| "This matsah which we eat, [of what does it remind us?]." | The matsah amounts to ten percent of what American Jewry has sent us through the Joint [Distribution] Committee. |
| "This bitter herb which we eat [of what does it remind us?]." | We eat this bitter herb every generation throughout [every] year. |
| "In every single generation [it is man's duty to regard himself as if he had come out of Egypt]." | [In the sense that] as soon as there is trouble, the Jews are accused. |
| "korekh (combine matsah with bitter herb)." | After all the troubles the Jews have gone through, they [still fit into society about as much] as Buddhists in Paris. |
| shulhan orekh (the meal)." | The Nuremberg trial, people say, will last another year.... |
| "tsafun (the hidden matsah)." | If the "democratic" police catch you holding the few marks you have saved, they put you in handcuffs. |
| "barekh (grace)." | [It seems that] we will be blessed only when we have left this dusty earth. |
| "And pour out Thy wrath [upon the nation that knows Thee not]." | [Preferably] with the atom bomb. |
| "hallel (praise)." | You can praise an UNRRA director all day long, and still you will get nothing extra from him. |
| "Next year in Jerusalem." | [Hopefully] without the English Mandate. |
Another aspect of historical alignment was alienation. The survivors believed that a principle of alienation prevailed in the relationship between the people of Israel and the rest of the world and that it culminated in the hurban.
Shlomo Diamant cited the Sages' etymological connection between Mt. Sinai and Sin'ah, referring to the hatred of the nations toward the people of Israel and their Torah. Because the revelations of Sinai threatened their world of murder, slavery, and adultery, the nations hated the people of Sinai (Shabbat 89b). 9 Elchonon Ferson of Felclafing explained that God intentionally led the people of Israel into the desert instead of directly into the land of Canaan (Midrash Tanhuma Beshallah 1) because He wanted them to learn that a compassionate world was not waiting to receive them and that they could be poisoned by snakes at any moment. Indeed Amalek did attack them (Exodus 17:8):
This [alienation] has special meaning for us Jews who have been saved, who have not been burned or gassed.We know it well. Our bodies bear the signs of our [relationship] of horror and fear of mankind: the numbers scratched [into our flesh] at Auschwitz. Our situation is like that of our ancestors in Egypt. We live in a desert where animals are poised to act sadistically towards us. Our Sukkot (huts) are the camp barracks. In the summer we burn from the heat and in the winter we freeze. Outside, meanwhile, people go on living their lives, oblivious to the most persecuted of peoples. . . . The outside world would let us sit in the Sukkot forever, and even attack us if we tried to escape the desert. 10
During Hanukkah in 1945, A.Y. spoke of the pervasiveness of assaults on the Jews:
Hasmonean history clearly shows that there is no essential difference between Antiochus Epiphanes and Adolf Hitler. More than once in our nation's history, destroyers have come to proclaim decrees of annihilation, [both] spiritual and physical. The development of antisernitism reaches its climax in the days of the Nazis. Its roots are planted already in the fateful era of the Maccabees.11
Baram believed that even liberal thinkers would have to acknowledge that Germans descended from the evil Esau and had much in common with Amalek.12 Yitzchak Ya'akov Bistritzer of Munich, editor of Yidishe shtime, spoke of the ghetto musulman who lit the Hanukkah candles with trembling hands and risked his life to defy the world of tum'ah (defilement) that was determined to annihilate Israel:
The eternal little lights bear testimony that with [God's] power and might we have been able to win the struggle against our enemies-who arise in every generation to annihilate us. We light the little lights, and they are a source of hope, courage, and trust; of strength, might, and endurance. They light the path for us, on which we walk firmly and surely to eternity!!13
For the Orthodox thinkers, the hatred of other nations toward the people of Israel was rooted in hatred of Torah, that is, the Jewish religion. Bistritzer maintained that the Romans attacked the Temple because they realized it was the miraculous source which enabled the Jewish nation to outlive its enemies. The Romans knew that only after the Temple was destroyed, would it be possible to kill off the Jewish nation. The Assyrians and Greeks also were aware of this. And Hitler first attacked the Jewish schools and synagogues.14 Yuclel Schiff of Heidenheim argued that Hitler hated Judaism and Jews equally and identified the fate of the people of Israel with the fate of Torah. Thus Hitler began his antisemitic attacks by burning schools, desecrating Torah scrolls, and murdering scholars.15
The alignment of the hurban with history by the Orthodox thinkers also involved the belief that God's omnipotence permeated catastrophe. Mordechai Schlaperbersky pointed to the Sages' explanation From Hurban to Redemption that Psalm 79:1 was a psalm to Asaph rather than a lamentation. "The heathen are come unto Thine inheritance, they have defiled Thy holy Temple" was a psalm because Asaph perceived God's holy hand, the Shekhinah (divine presence), through the destruction. The trouble was transformed and expressed in a holy poem. Schlaperbersky believed that God touched the people of Israel through both good and evil events, and therefore both were to be praised (Berachot 7b). Schlaperbersky also referred to Rabbi Akiva and the Roman celebrations:
Long ago, as Rabban Gamaliel, Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah, Rabbi Joshua and Rabbi Akiva were walking on the road, they heard the noise of the crowds at Rome a hundred and twenty miles away. They all fell a-weeping, but Rabbi Akiva seemed merry. Said they to him: Wherefore are you merry? Said he to them: Wherefore are you weeping? Said they: These heathens who bow down to images and burn incense to idols live in safety and ease, whereas our Temple, the "footstool" of our God [Psalm 76], is burnt down by fire, and should we then not weep? He replied: Therefore am I merry. If they that offend Him fare thus, how much better shall fare they that do obey Him! (Makkot 24 a, b)
According to Schlaperbersky, God's hand had to be seen in the hurban as well.16
According to the Orthodox thinkers, God let disasters happen, including the hurban, in order to consolidate Torah and nation. Yudel Schiff argued that Hitler served as God's instrument:
For Hitler, [attacking the Jews] was not a means towards something else, a political instrument. It was an end in itself. This is shown by what happened in the last phases of the war. The German leader knew clearly that he had no options left. The Nazis knew they would be held accountable for their criminal deeds and that everything, including the murder of the Jews, would have to be explained. Still, the anti-Jewish actions did not stop. To the contrary, it was then that the total liquidation of the ghetto and mass annihilation began. These actions made no political sense. But for us believers the matter is clear. Hitler- and this is so with antisemitism throughout history-is "Assyria, rod of My anger" [Isaiah 10:51. The "rod" reminds us that we are [a distinct nation]. Our entire history bears testimony to the theme of the prophets, "Yet even among those nations you shall find no peace" (Deuteronomy 28:65) or place to rest. The phenomenon of antisemitism, which is the pivotal point of our history, goes beyond the limits of natural reasons.17
Bararn thought the assaults on the people of Israel were catalyzed by their failure to keep Torah, and as such were under divine aegis. The "third hurban" 18 was like the Amalekite attack:
The war with Amalek took place in Reficlim, where the people criticized Moses for not being able to provide water and where they tested God [Exodus 17:1-7]. The heretics neither remember nor acknowledge the Refidim [principle]. Amalek [won] because Israel [neglected] mitzvot and thereby became powerless (rafu-hence Reficlim-yedehem).19
Schlaperbersky thought the hurban was a punishment for the people of Israel's religious failure. When they refused to worship God in joy or to adhere to His judgments, God punished them. Punishment was God's call to man, His way to find man and evoke his return: "Take us back, 0 Lord, to Yourself. And let us come back" (Lamentations 5:21).20 Elchonon Ferson explained that by depriving the Jews, God was able to bring them closer to Him:
God said, "If I lead them on a direct path [to Canaan], each one will rush to acquire a field and a vineyard. The Torah will be neglected and annulled. Instead, I will lead them through the desert. There, they will eat the manna [from heaven] and drink from the well [of Torah], so that the Torah resides within them" (Midrash Tanhuma Beshallah 1).21
Accordingly, the rebirth of religious consciousness after the hurban on the part of Orthodox Jewry involves a pervasive belief that the survivors remain tied to their ancestors. The link is at once pessimistic in regard to unrelenting alienation and optimistic in regard to perennial regeneration. In itself, the commonality provides security, a source of healing, and a raison d'etre.
While the Orthodox survivors included hurban in the historical reality of Judaism, they also believed that it was unique. Once secured with historical identity, they could bear to confront the abyss. In this confrontation they saw that the catastrophe involved the regression of the world to the chaos that reigned before the creation. Nathan Zevi Friedmann of Fohrenwald described the gas chambers and crematoria as a reversion to animal behavior, to a prehistorical tehom (abyss), to moral chaos.22 Shlomo Frank identified the chaos with the flood. He recalled the aggadah (rabbinical allegory) that when the Torah was given the heavens and earth shook so violently that people were afraid the world would end. They consulted the wise man Balaam. Balaam thought God was not bringing about another flood and that the world would not be destroyed so long as men lived peacefully. However, if mankind reverted to animal behavior, the world would become a bloody specter (Zevahim 116a). In the twentieth century, Frank explained, Torah was stomped upon and men became animals. Accordingly, there was a bloody flood. The denial of Torah necessarily meant regression to Tohu va-Vohu.23 Abraham G. Schiff, Chairman of Agudat Israel in Germany, told his listeners that the blessing over the Torah, "Blessed are Thou, Lord our God, king of the universe, who hast given us the Torah of truth and hayye olam [that is, life of all the world]," meant that the life of the world depended upon Israel. Thus, the whole earth trembled with fear that the people would not accept Torah. "If Israel accepts the Torah [then the world] shall exist. But if not, I will turn fit] back into Tohu vaVohu" (Shabbat 88a). Everything became tranquil when the people did accept it (Psalm 79:9, Shabbat 88a).24
In the mind of the Orthodox, the chaos involved a uniquely simultaneous destruction of Jewish people and Jewish religion. A.Y. observed that while Hitler's acts had their roots in earlier antisemitism, the Nazis added physical obliteration according to a detailed scientific system to religious and national annihilation.25 Dachau survivors Shmuel Abba Snieg and Shmuel Ya'akov Rose, executives of the Agudat ha-Rabbanim-a central committee of rabbis affiliated with the American Orthodox rabbinate-said that unlike earlier tragedies, the Nazis wanted not only to burn Jews but to destroy their life spirit as well. To do so, they burned the Jewish book, "the Jew wrapped in Torah."26 Meir Gruenewald, President of the Vaad ha-Rabbanim of Germany- a rabbinical committee belonging to the Central Committee of Liberated Jews- saw uniqueness in the fact that the Jewish people and their religion were destroyed together. The hurban of Europe was not the first time Jews suffered on a massive scale; indeed, they had had no peace since the destruction of the Temple. The suffering was part of Israel's tie to God; in King David's words, "It is for Your sake that we are slain all day long, that we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered" (Psalm 114:23). However,
the last hurban is [uniquely] severe. For the centers of Judaism and the Jews were destroyed together. The murderers had a law, that in every place they came they were to kill the scholars first and with the greatest cruelty.27
Accordingly, the Orthodox survivors were "at home" with a paradox. The hurban was at the same time part of history and unique. Having arrived at some sense of its historical scope, they next endeavored to factor in the existential dimension to the God-Jew relationship: specifically, the issue as to why the built-in alienation was released by God in such catastrophic proportion. They were unwilling to "blame" God, and this attitude left them with man. Jews must have sinned. The main sin, they believed, was assimilation. Phenomenologically, assimilation was special to the modern era. Psychologically, the denunciation of assimilation gave life to the raison d'etre of Orthodox Jewish principles.
Abraham G. Schiff referred to the Sages' metaphor of a sick tree and the cure:
If a tree casts off its fruit, it is painted red and loaded with stones. By loading it down with stones, its strength is diminished. By painting it red [that is, performing magic], people will take notice and pray for it (Shabbat 67a).
For Schiff, the metaphor reflected a reality and logic of religious life. Modern Jews fell from the "tree" of Torah-life. Therefore, the world hurled stones at them and painted them red with their own blood.28
Diamant invoked the prophet Jeremiah. His Scroll of Lamentations is filled with questions about how the disasters that befell Israel could take place. Jeremiah could not understand catastrophe: "Who is the wise man that he may understand this ... ? Wherefore is the land perished and laid waste like a wilderness, so that none passeth through?" (Jeremiah 9:11). The Sages, Diamant continued, were equally disturbed. According to them, even the angels had no answers. The tragedies were so great that man could not respond and indeed should not respond. For the Sages, terrible disasters could be explained only by God. His answer was, "Because they have forsaken My Torah" (Nedarim 81a). Diamant observed that even Jeremiah's ekhah ("How doth") for the Ninth of Av was not enough for the hurban. Ekhah would have to be said for an entire year, and then each ekhah would contain another. After the gas chambers, questions bore down relentlessly from all directions. Still, Diamant believed, one had to search one's own actions for answers. As to the actions of others, one was not to inquire. Only they can understand what they did to bring disaster upon them. For Diamant, only God could answer ekhah. But the individual did have to investigate his own actions.29
For the Orthodox thinkers, assimilation constituted a special failure. Schlaperbersky explained that punishment was God's way of shattering the bewilderment and paralysis on the part of the Jew drawn away from Torah. Through it, God could penetrate straight to the heart. In the act of punishment, God asked ayyeka? (variation of ekhah, "Where are you?") until man responded with "I have trouble and sorrow but I called upon the name of the Lord" (Psalm 116:3). Schlaperbersky put it thus:
[Today] the hurban of Judaism itself [conducted by the Jews themselves] is added to the great hurban of the Temple. Only it is worse. Tragically, very many Jews want to cut Judaism off and create "new concepts." Many want to flee Judaism, to join the dissidents, to assimilate and mix with mankind. The rest of mankind's response is appropriate. It be- comes the animal and Israel becomes the prey. If Jews do not want to keep Judaism, the ayyeka will find them. Then they will be Jews, in life and in the spirit of Judaism-of course now against their will. Once their "Adamism" will prove bankrupt, Judaism will [not be hidden in the home but] expressed in the streets. Once again it will be authentic, without all the distortions. Let us already hear the voice of ekhall- ayyeka. Let us all cry out together: "Take us back, 0 Lord, to Yourself, and let us come back. Renew our days of old. [For truly you have rejected us, bitterly raged against us.]" [Lamentations 5:21-22].30
Shmuel Joseph Fendruck of Pocking, a Lubavitcher Hassid, was alarmed at the contemporary sacrifice of Judaism to the "Moloch of assimilation." For him it was tantamount to the disappearance of Israel's Torah-soul. It was aggravated by nationalistic Zionism. The root causes of abandoning Torah, according to Fendruck, were the "fathers of defilement," the maskilim who ridiculed the Sages. For Fendruck, "from the root which is the snake of Enlightenment comes the viper of Socialism. From it come the bats of Communism and Fascism which destroy the kehillot (communities) of Israel in flesh and soul."31
Baram explained that Amalek was let loose when the five Torah principles imbedded in Israel's particular memory (Zekhirot) were neglected, namely: (1) that the Exodus cannot be explained by natural factors; (2) that Torah is revealed at Mt. Sinai; (3) that the golden calf episode is a disgrace; (4) that Miriam's challenge to the prophecy of Moses (Numbers 12) is objectionable; (5) that working on the Sabbath is prohibited. When Jews left their principles of belief and assimilated, Amalek attacked.32
According to these Orthodox thinkers, the Torah was an eternal ontological reality and therefore survived the hurban. While available in history, the Torah was there before history and remained transhistorical. It was not destroyed by chaos.
Diamant expressed the principle that at Mt. Sinai the Torah entered man's consciousness not from within an ongoing historical process but out of its basis, by recalling the Sages' description of the cessation of history:
At the time that God gave the Torah, the birds did not chirp, the fowls did not fly, the cows did not moo, the wheels did not turn. The seraphs did not say, "Holy." The ocean did not move, the creatures did not speak. The world was quiet and silent. Suddenly the voice emerged from one end of the earih to the other: I [am the Lord your God].[Midrash Shemot Rabbah 29:9].33
The Torah, explained Nathan Zevi Friedmann, was prior to world history: "The Lord made me [Torah] as the beginning of His way" (Pesahim 54a), "the writing of black fire upon white fire" Uerusalem Talmud Shekalim, chap. 6, hal. 1). For Friedmann, when Torah entered the historical context at Mt. Sinai, space and time were absent. The Torah was hidden by God for 974 generations before the creation (see Midrash Bereshit Rabbah 1:10); and when it was given at Sinai, the sounds "travelled from one end of the earth to the other" (Zevahim 116a) in 70 different languages (see Midrash Shemot Rabbah 18:2). For the occasion, souls of the dead were returned to life and souls of the yet-to-be-born were brought-from the future into the present (Deuteronomy 29:15, Midrash Shemot Rabbah 28:4, Zohar Lekh Lekha 91b).34
The Orthodox survivors thought of the hurban as time-shattering, for it returned the world to chaos. But for them it was also bordered by time, and part of Jewish history. Torah was different. It entered into time but was never controlled by time. Because of this difference, Torah endured the hurban, which took place in history, and was there for the people of Israel who were otherwise lost in the Tohu va-Vohu. As Yitzchak Ya'akov Bistritzer expressed it, the "trees and stones" were destroyed by God's anger, but not the Temple's inner holiness.35
According to the Orthodox thinkers, Torah's ontological quality protected it from hurban. Josef Schawinsky observed that unlike the Greeks, the people of Israel retained importance even after losing political independence, and their dignity would endure the concentration camps as well. The reason was Sinai. Hitler's knife slaughtered Jews on the Akedah of the death camps, Schawinsky explained, but the Torah of Sinai remained. Hatred (sin'ah) forced Israel off the mountain, but the voices of prophets put her back:
After the yellow badges of the European ghetto of gehinnom (purgatory), after Treblinka and Auschwitz, after the Jerusalem of Lithuania [Vilna] is destroyed and Lodz is bloodied, after the Warsaw ghetto heroes' revolt and the Jewish partisan struggle, and after Hitler's [total] assault, we stand once again at Mt. Sinai.36
Y. Nussbaum recalled Meir Shapiro's address at the opening of Yeshiva Hakhme Lublin on 25 June 1933. Shapiro had hoped the Yeshiva education would be lasting. He had cited Rashi's commentary that as Abraham's men were "trained" (hanikhav) in a permanent way (Genesis 14:14), so also educating (hinukh) a child, dedicating (hanukkat) an altar, and dedicating a house should be forever. The principle, Shapiro had explained, was that "the first holiness is for the time being as well as for the future to come" (for example, Zevahim 107b). "Train a boy in the way he ought to go, and he will not swerve from it even in old age" (Proverbs 22:6). In this way, Shapiro had concluded, when the altar of the Temple was destroyed, each stone retained within itself the holiness of the entire altar. In this spirit, Nussbaum believed, Torah education survived the hurban:
The Temple has been damaged. The altar of Torah [has become an altar] upon which hundreds of Torah scholars [from Yeshiva Hakhme Lublin] have sacrificed themselves al Kiddush ha-Shem (in sanctification of God's name). The light of Meir [Shapiro] endures. The fire which existed in [the students] does not go out. It will shine until the messiah comes. "A perpetual fire shall be kept burning on the altar, not to go out" [Leviticus 6:61.37
Bistritzer shared this theme. When Jews were exiled, Torah went with them:
God's Torah is a flame of faith which cannot be burned out. The Jews have understood this as the secret of their existence. When thrown into the bonfires, they cry out the Shema ("Hear 0 Israel, the Lord our God the Lord is one"). The Shema can never be burned out. It remains [suspended] in the air, the people of Israel along with it. This explains why, when homes and houses of learning are burned, the Jews first rescue the Torah scrolls. When they are rounded up into the gas chambers, first they say the Psalms. For they know the secret of their eternity.
While the Temple below was destroyed, Bistritzer declared, the Temple above endured. Despite Hitler's attacks, the inner holy of holies, the Torah, remained indestructible. In the future redemption, the Temple of fire in heaven, the source of the inner holy of holies on earth, which is Torah, would bring light to the entire world.38
The Orthodox survivors went beyond believing in the a-temporality and ontological primacy of Torah. They lived according to Torah. Belief and practice appear to be related dialectically and supported by one another. The survivors thought of the enactment as implicit to the Torah as God's word, and Torah as implicit to religious practice. They led Torah-directed lives because they believed Torah was forever, while they "supported" the Torah above by enacting it below.
According to Baram, many of those who arrived in the Munich-area displaced persons camps physically and spiritually broken immediately implemented kashrut (dietary laws) and the Sabbath. They even revitalized those wandering about in trauma. Baram anticipated that they would eventually bring everyone to the same level of clear religious consciousness.39 Frank shared the confidence that the Torah would be reinstated in practice,40 and Friedmann believed the Torah would annul the abyss (tehom) left by the war.41 Vaad Hatzalah Director Nathan Baruch and Deputy Director Aviezer Burstein included Meir Shapiro's Daf yomi (daily Talmud reading) schedule in their 1947 edition of Tractate Megillah and spoke of Shapiro's spirit being carried by the She'erit ha-Peletah as survivors went to study Torah in the Holy Land. 42 In their dedication to Tractate Berachot, Snieg and Rose stated that publishing the Talmud in a land where everything Jewish was anathema symbolized the indestructibility of Torah.43
On 24 August 1945 Chaim Shtarim of the Vaad ha-Yahadut ha-Haredit (Ultra-Orthodox Committee) in Landsberg am Lech reported to World Agudat Israel that soon after arriving from Terezin, weddings were conducted according to Jewish law and that kosher kitchens, synagogues, a mikvah (ritual bath), and hevra kaddisha (holy fellowship to conduct proper burial) were all established.44 In April 1948 Bistritzer reported that many survivors, filled with gratitude for being alive, made it their sole aim to carry on the lives of the victims through mitsvah. Sifre Torah (Torah scrolls) were found and restored. All varieties of houses of learning-Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Polish, Lithuanian, Hungarian, Hassidic-were organized. Ninety-nine percent of male children, Bistritzer reported, were circumcised. The food in some displaced persons camps was completely kosher. "When you walk the streets of the dark camp blocks on erev shabbat, they are lit up with Sabbath candles."45
The desire to practice is further evidenced by the pleas for religious articles. On 10 September 1945 the Vaad Poale u-Tse'ire Agudat Israel (Committee of Aguclat Israel Workers and Youth) of Landsberg am Lech made this plea:
We feel a great lack of religious leaders. Regrettably, very few of the religious intelligentsia remain. We also need religious literature, tefillin (phylacteries), tallitot (prayer shawls), books. . . . We are now about to form a religious kibbutz for providing hakhsharah [legitimate authorizations] and to [enhance] religious spirit. But again, the same [call for] help! Brother believers! Help us in our feeble struggle. Do not abandon us. Do not forget those of your fellows who remain. Hopefully, our "call" (kol kore) will not remain in the "desert" [Isaiah 40:31.46
An anonymous cable of I September 1945 from Paris to Vaad Hatzalah Director Eliezer Silver in Cincinnati described the situation in the emek ha- bakha (valley of tears)-Frankfurt, Munich, Landsberg, St. Ottilien, Feldafing, Fulda, Geringshof, and Bad Neuheim-in this way:
Found our brethren in great disappointment with our failure to bring hope and encourage[ment] there now. There are some 3,000 yere'ifn (pious) and shlemim (totally observant Jews) yearning for seforim (religious books), tefillin, and the wherewith[all to continue their religious life. Prospect of a Rosh ha-Shanah without the sounds of a shofar and [of]Sukkot without etrogim (citrons) is most distressing to them.47
Shlomo Baumgarten reported on 30 August 1945 that when he visited the displaced persons camps, presumably in the Munich area, his own tefillin were used from morning until night and that hundreds assembled at his office beginning on Sunday for a piece of candle for the following Sabbath.48
According to the Orthodox survivors, since the Torah survived and the Torah provided existence for the collective people of Israel, the potential for national continuity survived as well. For Gruenewald, the reality of the people was implicit to Torah,49 and for Bararn they became a nation through Torah.50 Abraham G. Schiff maintained that to the extent the people observed Torah they would survive-and this is why they had survived even the loss of their land.51 Similarly, Diamant believed that the reason the "sheep" of Israel were alive despite the "wolf" of the world was Torah. If for Ahad Ha'am, more than Israel kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath kept the Jews, then it was equally true that more than the Jews protected Torah, the Torah protected the Jews.52 Agudat Israel in Germany issued this call:
From out of the horrible fire, the voice (if the holy ones together with the voice of God calls forth: "Return Israel. Turn back to your source, Jewish nation-the pure, original source from which you have and always will draw power and courage, spirit, consolation and hope." [The source is there even in] the most tragic and terrible hours of Israel's history. Only the sole truth of holy Torah can and should guide our collective and individual lives-in the Land of Israel and in the lands of exile.53
The survivors also tied the Torah to individual survival. Abraham G. Schiff explained the resurrectibility of the Torah-Jew by a reference to the Sages:
R. Joshua ben Levi said: At every word which went forth from the mouth of the Holy One, blessed be He, 'the souls of Israel departed [that is, passed away]. As it is said, "My soul went forth when He spake" (Song of Songs 5:6). But since their souls departed at the first word, how could they receive the second word? [By divine action.] He brought down the dew [that is, Torah] with which He will resurrect the dead and revive them (Shabbat 88b).
That is, while God "heweth out flames of fire" (Psalm 29:7), He was also "full of majesty" (Psalm 29:4). The individual passed away because of Torah but was also revived through Torah.54 Some thinkers spoke of the transnatural life provided by Torah. Baram pointed to those who died in trying to rescue Torah scrolls from fires;55 and Gruenewald to the tragedy in Cracow, July 1942, when girls at the Bet Ya'akov school who were about to be raped martyred themselves to protect their purity according to Torah.56
As we have seen, the Torah was an eternal reality that survived the hurban and persisted amidst the chaos. The Torah was the source for collective and individual life, and this source could be brought from potentiality to actuality by recognizing its reality. From the perspective of Torah, the people of Israel endured. From the perspective of the people, they would survive once they opened themselves up to their Torah source.
The Orthodox spokesmen admonished their contemporaries to allow the Torah source to come alive in them, to actualize their potential for Torah- being. By doing so, they served as an instrument for enhancing and clarifying religious consciousness, to the point where the Torah-source-of- life could be realized. Chananiah Lippa Goldmann recalled how once not even the discovery of the tongue of Rabbi Huzpith the Amora in a dung heap weakened religious commitment (Hullin 142a). Goldmarm also remembered how Yosef Tzad dika, his predecessor as Av Bet Din (head of the religious court) of Pesth, said that the Shema meant that the total body and heart must be filled with fear of Heaven so that one's children would follow the same path.57 Israel's survival, Goldmann explained, was not based upon land but upon Torah (see Midrash Ekhah Rabbah 1:5--6), and in times of persecution Jews had always resorted to it for revivai-for example, Mordechai's response to Hamann (Midrash Esther Rabbah 8:6). Goldmann recalled what Meir Shapiro of Lublin had said:
Tractate Niddalz speaks to the theme of being defiled with the tum'ah of niddah (menstruation). How is tum'ah eliminated? By beautifying our children. Whenever and wherever tyrants arise, the rabbis must enhance the education of the children. This brings niddali to a halt.... Our great teachers always did this, and now we must do so ever more intensely. The pouring of the blood of the pious [symbolized by Tractate Niddahl is now taking place in great measure. It is incumbent upon us [to respond by bringing our children deep within the covenant].
The parents who perished al Kiddush ha-Shem at Auschwitz and Maidanek, Goldmann told his readers, pleaded from beneath the earth for the Torah to reach their children.58
Meir Gruenewald explained that during the hurban, holy scholars cried out the Shema with their last breath and entered eternity with a plea for Torah. By responding to this plea, the survivors could carry on the life of the nation.59
Sh. Appelbaum reminded his readers of God's threat at Sinai, when He suspended the mountain over Israel and declared, "If ye accept Torah it will be well with you. But if not, there will ye find your grave" (Shabbat 88a).60 The victims of the hurban, for Appelbaum, bore tragic testimony to the threat. Their tragedy warned the survivors to accept Torah or be buried like them. Appelbaum spoke of a second Bath Kol (divine eccho), not from Mt. Sinai but from the mountain of hurban: "Woe to those who humiliate Torah" (Pirke Avot 6:2).61
The Orthodox thinkers wanted to go to the Land of Israel. In early 1946 the Agudat Israel declared that it would not rest until its followers found homes there:
The entire Hebrew Yishuv awaits you with love and yearning and will welcome you with open arms. We of Agudat Israel will mobilize all our strength to create a life for you there in the true Jewish spirit. Along with Orthodox Jews from throughout the world, you will participate in building Judaism of the future in the Holy Land, the Judaism of the spirit and eternal ideas of Torah and faith. "The redeemer shall come forth from Zion" [Isaiah 59:20] 62
On 15 April 1948 Rabbi Salamon Gottlieb of Brooklyn wrote Yeshiva student Meir Akselrad in Fohrenwald: "According to what I hear, everybody at this time wants to go only to the Land of Israel. . . . Undoubtedly, today it is a land better than all other lands."63 On 2 October 1948 Aviezer Burstein in Munich wrote Vaad Hatzalah Director Eliezer Silver in Cincinnati that while he could immigrate to the United States, he decided for his own sake and that of his son to find 11 rest and security" in the Holy Land, there to "imbibe its atmosphere and enjoy its splendor."64
Why did they want to go? The hurban, for the Orthodox, was a conclusive statement that Jewish life in exile was impossible. Exile meant death, whereas the Holy Land meant life. In April 1946 Y.D. Schaimon described the words "Your descendents shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs and they will be oppressed for four hundred years" (Genesis 15:13) as an iron law. Exile meant slavery, and the spiritual dimension was even worse than the physical. In the course of time, Schaimon explained, exile became a narcotic that made Jews lose the ability to discern how slavery was destroying them.65 If exile was not ended now, Elchonon Ferson observed in March 1948, the Jews would be ruined forever, If they were liberated from exile and they established a Jewish state, they could be revived with dignity. 66 The Agudat Israel wrote the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine in the summer of 1947 that after the terrible tragedy it was clear Israel could develop itself only in the Holy Land.67 Baram stated that the hurban, which paralyzed the nation's vital limbs, settled once and for all the question of living in exile. The painful truth was that it held no life for the people of Israel.68 The only liberation from the "German nail," Ferson said, was an independent life in the Land of Israel 69 D.B. asserted that staying in Europe meant burial in the cemetery of 6,000,000 murdered brethren while aliyyah meant becoming part of living Judaism.70 Cholovsky considered immigration as the life-response to Maidanek, as Shabbethai Zevi was to Chmielnicki, and Hassidism to Haidamack.71 Israel Frankel spoke of the armed Yishuv as the response to Hitler, as the Talmud was to the Roman huban of the Temple, the Golden Age of Spain to the Crusades, and Hassidism to Chmielnicki.72 Meir Gruenewald believed that settling in the Land of Israel was an obligation to the dead, implying that aliyyah kept them somehow alive:
The Sages say that in the future all the synagogues of Babylon will find a place in the Land of Israel [Megillah 29a]. We ask God that we find our places in the Land of Israel as soon as possible. We have a sacred obligation to go to the Land of Israel in memory of the 6,000,000 brethren killed al Kiddush ha-Shem- many of them great rabbis, lights of the exile.73
The hurban made clear the cost of avoiding the choice between life and death. Diamant told of a commitment which many made to themselves in the concentration camps: If God let them survive, they would leave the cemetery of Europe and go to their ancient home. The return, however, would be mournful. The Sages predicted:
R. Isaac opened his discourse with the text, "Because thou didst not serve the Lord thy God with joyfulness and with gladness of heart by reason of the abundance of all things, therefore shalt thou serve thy enemy" [Deuteronomy 28:471. . . . Had you been worthy you would have read in Torah, "Three times a year shall all thy males appear before the Lord" [Deuteronomy 16:161. But now that you are unworthy you read, "The ways of Zion do mourn" [Lamentations 1:41. Had you been worthy you would have read in the Torah, "And ye shall dwell in your land safely" [Leviticus 26:51, but now that you are unworthy you read, "Judah is gone into exile because of affliction" [Lamentations 1:31. [Midrash Ekhah Rabbah proem 1l]
Because they did not heed the call to Zion when they should have, Diamant continued, Jews now would go to the Land as a Sheerit haPeletah instead of as a nation, as lonely individuals rather than as families, and by difficult and circuitous routes rather than directly. Indeed, "the ways of Zion do mourn."74
While the hurban was the decisive lesson against exile and the clarification of the choice between exilic death and life in the Holy Land, some writers believed that the hurban also provided the foundation for the survivors to choose life. The hurban shattered galutt(exilic) consciousness and established the psychological and possibly ontological conditions for Jewish sovereignty. Benzion Firer, Head of Or Harneir Yeshiva in Ulm, who himself would make aliyyah, stated in April 1948 that the Warsaw ghetto revolt shattered the galut mindset of passive suffering and of obedience to orders until death itself. After two millennia of pogroms and inquisitions, national selfconsciousness and freedom were finally asserted in Warsaw. The goal of those who revolted was not to win-they knew this was impossible. It was rather to shatter despair and to reestablish national ambition. In this spirit, Firer believed, the Jewish state would carry on and reaffirm the Warsaw revolt.75 Shlomo Frank stated that a sovereign Israel testified to the success of those who revolted in Warsaw, Vilna, and Bialystok.76
The urge to go to the Land of Israel was engendered by the knowledge that life in exile was absolutely hopeless and destructive, that it turned to death, whereas the Land of Israel held the promise of life. Life, in turn, was inseparable from Torah; Torah was the source of life. The urge for aliyyah was inseparable in the Orthodox mind from going to the only place where Torah could be properly and purely advanced and where the people could be filled with its living source. Only in the Holy Land could that pattern of assimilation which catalyzed God's release of Amalek be decisively ended. For the Orthodox survivors, Torah and state were inseparable.
The relationship of Torah, life, and state as three concentric circles implying one another is expressed in various ways. Diamant declared, "The whole Torah is Torah of Israel in the Land of Israel."77 The Secretary to Yeshiva She'erit ha-Peletah in Pocking, Yitzchak Yosef Cohen, stated that after all the exile it was clear that only "out of Zion shall come forth Torah, and the word of God from Jerusalem" (Isaiah 2:3).78 Yuclel Schiff attacked Reform Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver of Cleveland and Moshe Shertok (later Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett) for ripping nation, land, and Torah apart, and this after Hitler's assault on Torah.79 Others reasoned that as Israel survived in exile because of Torah, so a Jewish state would survive only with Torah. Moshe Bernstein, Chairman of the Brith Yeshurun Revisionist Zionist organization in Germany, stated that Torah gave life to Judaism in exile-it was the reason Judaism retained its essence-and that a Torahbased state was the means to mend the world (letakken et ha-olam) in God's name.80 Aviezer Burstein declared that the same power of Torah which supported Jews in exile must be drawn upon in the new state. Torah had to be taken from the emek ha-bakha to become the foundation of the new Jewish Land.81
Conversely, Jews would not survive in a Torah-less Land. Torah, life, and land had a common center. Jewish history after the hurban was at a crossroads. It would become either Torah-less death in exile or Torah-life in the Land of Israel. Neither exilic Jewish life nor life without Torah irt the Land of Israel was possible. Yitzchak Zemba, President of Aguclat Israel in Germany, referred to the view that the Land awaited only those who would adhere there to Torah:
And he brought forth His people with joy, and His chosen ones with singing. And He gave them the land of the heathen: and they inherited the labor of the people, that they might observe His statutes and keep His laws (Psalm 105:43-45).
As Rabbi Simon commented, Zemba added, "If the Torah is not implemented the Land should be returned" (Jerusalem Talmud Berakhot, chap. 1, hal. 6).82 Abraham G. Schiff cited the words, "If you do not obey Me and observe all these commandments ... I will make the Land desolate, so that your enemies who settle in it shall be appalled by it" [Leviticus 26:14, 32].83 Baram referred to the verse, Let the Land vomit you out when you defile it, as it vomited out the nation which was before you" (Leviticus 18:28). Purity for Baram meant Biblical borders: "As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about His people" (Psalm 125:2)-that is, Jerusalem is to be in the midst of the Land of Israel.84 Gruenewald also cited Leviticus 18:28, saying that the Land would eject those who trespassed religion.85
Still, Torah-life in the Land of Israel had to take place in history. And history permitted Amalek and chaos. The Orthodox could no longer trust history. They needed a Torah-reality beyond the danger of human abandonment. They looked for a way to have history sublimated to Torah. Moreover, a response was needed to the flood of blood, to the Tohu va- Vohu which destroyed history. The Orthodox thinkers found that Torah- reality in redemption, and redemption could "address" the cosmic catastrophe. Accordingly, the Torah-state of history is simultaneously the threshold to redemption. The Orthodox thinkers prayed for the messiah in traditional fashion. 86 Butthe hurban and return to the Land of Israel narrowed the distance between prayer and anticipated fulfillment.
There was some despair about redemption among the Orthodox. Sh. Appelbaum explained that before World War II, the Jews who suffered did not lose their religious character or their hope in redemption. They united with past generations by retelling the stories of Temple destruction, of Hadrian's persecution, the Spanish expulsion, Chmielnicki, Gonta, and Simon Petlyura (1919), on the Ninth of Av and the fast day of 17 Tammuz. The unity in sorrow dissolved their despair and even fostered great hope:
Our Sages said that on the day of the destruction of the Temple the redeemer, the messiah, was born. Thus, the national day of memory of disaster forged the desire to be redeemed. It stimulated the nation to labor for redemption. It sharpened faith in the future and strengthened the will and readiness to bring the end of days closer, and to accelerate the coming of redemption.
But after the hurban, for Appelbaum, the unity disappeared:
The Shoah which befell us, the decrees of Hitler-unprecedented even in our nation's history, which is full of suffering and pain-have bewildered many. Many have become powerless (rafti yedehem), have lost faith in their nation's future, and have despaired of hope in their redemption. Those who have been rescued have seen in the very flesh much more than the Sages ever described. More than the poets wrote poems about. More than the lamenters wrote lamentations about. They are [understandably] easily taken in by all sorts of futile programs of individual rescue and salvation. For they have lost their faith in man. Their world has become a raging sea, in which the cries of the sufferers and the drowning are muffled by massive waves. They see no retribution for committing a national Shoah. They see no reparations for individual tragedies.87
Appelbaum, however, appears to have been an exception. Z. Schechnowitz sensed the prophet's "end of days" (Isaiah 2:2) to be implicit in the disaster:
Precisely at the time that darkness will cover the earth and gloom will cover the nations, we should sound the trumpets in the streets about the hidden light which will ultimately shine upon us and upon the whole earth. The Jews can wait an amount of time, and we have passed that point. "Watchman, what is with the night?" (Isaiah 21:11). But perhaps this year, in these days, the end of days will come. Who knows? Have not the troubles and misery been more than enough? Were we not promised, "For out of trouble He will provide them deliverance and relief" [Piyyut]?88
Bistritzer reminded his readers that the messiah was born when the Temple was destroyed (Sanhedrin 97). Hurban implied redemption: "From slavery into redemption and from darkness to a great light" (Mishnah Pesahim 9:6).89 Baram said that everything ruined by heresy and assimilation needed to pass through fire: "Any article that can withstand fire-these you shall pass through fire and they shall be clean" [Numbers 31:23]. But once Jewry was cleansed of its idolatry and tum'ah (defilement), it would be possible to rebuild souls. Indeed, there would be more than restitution. God had kindled the fire of hurban: "He kindled a fire in Zion which hath devoured the foundations thereof" (Lamentations 12:11). Therefore, it was incumbent upon Him to make equal restitution, to build anew by fire: "For I will be unto her a wall of fire round about and I will be the glory in the midst of her" (Zechariah 2:9).90
For these survivors, the act of return to the Land drew the messiah closer. In December 1947 Bistritzer cited the statement on behalf of the Chief Rabbinate of the Land of Israel that termination of the mandate by the UN General Assembly on 29 November 1947 indicated the athalta de-geulah.91 Bistritzer also brought to the attention of his readers the deliberations of Rav Abraham Isaac Hacohen Kook (d. 1935) about the process of unfolding of redemption which accompanied return to the Land, as interpreted by Kook's disciple Moshe Zevi Neriah 92
The Orthodox She'erit ha-Peletah around Munich might have let Judaism die with the hurban. Instead, the religious thinkers generated new life. The hurban1death became object, and the She'erit ha-Peletahl life became subject, and there were new life-stirrings of religious consciousness. The conscious life expanded; the hurban was located within history. This development provided security, the knowledge that the victims and survivors were not outcasts from the reality of Judaism and Jewishness. Now the thinkers could face the abyss in all its unique horror. They responded to the tehom with the reassertion of belief in Torah and Torah-people despite the Tohu va-Vohu.
The eternity of Torah was reinforced by Jewish observance in the displaced persons camps and communities, by commitment to Torah, and by movement to the Land of Israel. The Holv Land meant resistance to the death of exile and to the Torah-lessness of assimilation. The Land was the sole means of responding to the hurban while remaining Jewish. Once the survivors confronted the hurban, it was inconceivable that Jewish life could be without Torah and Land together.
Because the hurban went beyond history and because the history that allowed for the hurban proved inherently disastrous, Orthodox Jews who would still believe were theologically obliged to look to a reality beyond history to find redemption. They looked toward Torah-history, which would not permit the people of Israel to lapse ever again and thereby catalyze Amalek. The Torah-state would bring redemption, and redemption would secure the whole world against hurban. On the edge of history, the Jewish state would lead mankind into a reality that would prevent forever the possibility of return to Tohu va-Vohu.
The Orthodox thinkers resisted, thus removing the shadows of hurban. They created for themselves the foundation for Jewish life that pierced through the Tohu va-Vohu. By doing so, they themselves became a religious reality through which Judaism has survived.
NOTES
I am grateful to the staffs of the National Library in Jerusalem, the Wiener Library in London, the Yad Vashem Library in Jerusalem, the Yivo Institute in New York, the Library of Congress Hebraica Section in Washington, and the Aguclat Israel Archives in New York for providing access to the rare periodicals and documents necessary for this study. I am indebted to Richard Rubenstein, Irving Greenberg, Eugene Lipman, and Art Green for their personal support of my research in this area. Betty T. Bennett and Roger T. Simonds were instrumental in securing funds to cover some of the costs.
1. 1 have used the term hurban for the Holocaust, for it is the Orthodox term, and the term She'erit ha-Peletah ("the rest ... that were escaped," I Chronicles 5:43) to identify the survivors during the 1945-1948 period. On the life of the Jews in postwar Munich, see Juliane Wetzel, Judisches Leben in Munchen, 1945-1951: Durchgangsstation oder Wiederaufbau? (Munich, 1957). On the organizational aspect, see Yehudah Bauer, "The Initial Organization of the Holocaust Survivors in Bavaria," Yad Vashem Studies 8 (1970): 127-57. 1 have been unable to identify many of the writers cited, and none are listed in She'erit ha-Peletah: An extensive list Of survivors of Nazi tyranny published so that the lost may be found and the dead brought back to life (Munich, 1946). The fact that most are not known would seem to indicate that the revival of Orthodox Jewish thought among the She'erit ha-Peletah was to a significant extent a grass-roots movement.
[Transliterations from Hebrew and Yiddish follow the system of the Library of Congress, with some adjustments based on the Jewish Encyclopedia and the YIVO Institute. This modern transliteration has also been applied to the names of organizations. The Editors.]
2. Meir Baram, "u-Feros Alenu Sukkat Rahamim Hayyim ve-Shalom" [And may there spread over us the tabernacle of mercy, of life and peace], Kol Israel ba- Golah: Bita'on Mercaz Agudat Israel Tachat ha-Rabbanim ha-Geonim Sh!ita (Munich) 15 (30 Sept. 1947): 1 [Hebrew]. Kol Israel baGolah was sponsored by the Aguclat Israel rabbinical organization, apparently as an extension of Kol Israel, published by Aguclat Israel in Jerusalem.
3. Shlomo Nutter, "Di 300-yorike tekufah, 1648-1948," Kol Israel ba-Golah 23 (27 May 1948): 3.
4. Sholom Cholovsky, "Tsvishen entoyshung un ervakhung" [Speech at the Second She'erit ha-Peletah Congress in Bad Reichenhall, 25-27 Feb. 1947], Buletin fun Pah-Het [Partisans, Soldiers, Pioneers] 10-11 (1947?): 36-37. On the congress, see Leo W. Schwarcz, The Redeemers: A Saga of the Years, 1945-1952 (New York, 1953), pp. 212-18. Cholovsky recently received his doctorate at the Institute for Contemporary Jewry of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
5. Israel Frankel, "Be-Damayikh Hayyi" [In your blood, live], Yidishe shtime: Organ fun der "Torah ve-Avodah"bavegung fun der She'erit ha-Peletah (Munich) 2 (14 May 1948): 6 [Hebrew title, Yiddish text].
6. Moshe Halpern, "Der sod fun unzer kiyyum," Yeshurun (Munich), 6 (Aug. 1948): 26-27.
7. Y. D. Schaimon, "Hag ha-Herut 5706" [The holiday of liberation 19461, Nitsots: Bitaon Mercaz ha-Histadrut ha-Tsiyyonit shel She'erit ha-Peletall veha- Hanhagah ha-Rashit shel Noar Halitsi Me'uhad (Munich) 6 (12 Apr. 1946): 1 [Hebrew].
8. Yossele F6hrenwalder, "Di moderne Haggadah shel Pesah," Ba-Midbar: Vokhentsaytung fun di bafrayte Yidn (Munich) 2 (15 Apr. 1946): 12.
9. Shlomo Diamant, "u-Vaharta ba-Hayyim" [And choose life], Yidishe shtime 1 (6 June 1947): 4 [Hebrew title, Yiddish text].
10. Elchonon Ferson, "Di mitsvah fun sukkah," Yidishe shtime 2 (28 Sept. 1947): 3. See also idem, "Dos religieze leben in kovner geto," Fun letstn khurbn 9 (Sept. 1948): 36-46; and idem, "Di bene-yeshiva in kovner geto," Yidishe shtime 2 (21 Nov. 1947)- 4.
11. A[yyin] Y[od], "Hanukkah 5706" [Hanukkah 19451, Nitsots 6 (30 Nov. 1945): 1 [Hebrew].
12. [Meir Baram], "Zakhor et Yom ha-Shabbat le'Kadsho" [Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy], Kol Israel ba-Golah 3 (16 Jan. 1947): 1 [Hebrew].
13. Yitzchak Ya'akov Bistritzer, "Mir tsinden on di likhtalakh," Yidishe shtime 2 (12 Dec. 1947): 2.
14. Idem, "Tish'ah be-Av" [The Ninth of AvI, Yidishe shtime 1 (25 July 1947): 1 [Hebrew title, Yiddish text].
15. Yudel Schiff, "Fun faynd biz fraynd," Kol Israel ba-Golah 21 (14 Apr. 1948): 3.
16. Mordechai Schlaperbersky, "Ekhah-Ayyeka" [How doth-Where are you], Yidishe shtime 1 (25 July 1947): 1, 6 [Hebrew title, Yiddish text]. On 27 Oct. 1944, Abraham Kalmanowitz, President of the Mir Yeshiva in New York, cabled Apostolic Delegate Amleto Giovanni Cicognani in Washington, DC, that Schlaperbersky-along with Snieg-was in Kovno when the Germans evacuated the city. See Gershon Greenberg, "American Catholics During the Holocaust," SWC Annual 4 (1987):186.
17. Yudel Schiff, "Fun faynd biz fraynd."
18. Meir Baram, "Ha-Sefer ve-ha-Sayif Yordu Kerukhim," [The book and the sword descended together], Kol Israel ba-Golah 16 (31 Oct. 1947): 2 [Hebrew].
19. [Baram], -Zakhor et Yom ha-Shabbat."
20. Schlaperbersky, "Ekhah-Ayyeka."
21. Ferson, "Di mitsvah fun sukkah."
22. Nathan Zevi Freidmann, "Dos Torah likht in velt keyos," Yidishe shtime 1 (3 Oct. 1946): 3.
23. Shlomo Frank, "Der yomtov fun Mattan-Torah," Yidishe bilder: unpar- teyisher ilustrirter hodesh zshornal far ale Yidn (Munich) 1 (May 1947): 5.
24. Abraham G. Schiff, "Ne'umo shel Yoshev Rosh Aguclat Israel Tahat ha- Rav ha-Gaon be-Assefat ha-Rabbanim ha-Sheniyyah be-Germaniyah" [Address of the Chairman of Agudat Israel, substituting for ha-Rav ha- Gaon (of Klausenberg) at the Second Rabbinical Gathering (7 July 1947) in (Munich), Germany], Kol Israel ba-Golah 11 (8 Aug. 1947): 2 [Hebrew].
25. A[yyinj Y[od], "Hanukkah 5706."
26. Shmuel Abba Snieg and Shmuel Ya'akov Rose, dedicatory page to Massekhet Berakhot min Talmud Baz7li, (Munich and Heidelberg, 1948) [Hebrew]. See also Gerd Korman, "Survivors' Talmud and the U.S. Army," American Jewish History 73 (1984): 252-85.
27. Meir Gruenewald, "Ne'umo shel ha-Rav M[eir] Gruenewald (Av Bet Din Tetsch) be-Assefat ha-Rabbanim" [Address of Rabbi M[eirl Gruenewald, Av Bet Din of Tetsch, at the (Second) Rabbinical Gathering (in Munich, 7 July 1947)], Kol Israel ba-Golah 12 (15 Aug. 1947): 2 [Hebrew].
28. Abraham G. Schiff, "Ne'umo shel Yoshev Rosh."
29. Shlomo Diamant, "Darkhay Tsiyyon Avelot" [The ways of Zion do mourn], Yidishe shtime 1 (25 July 1947): 3 [Hebrew title, Yiddish text]. Diamant made aliyyah in the fall of 1947. See also idem, "Onu olim artsah ... a brif fun veg keyn Eretz Israel," Yidishe shtime 2 (28 Sept. 1947): 5.
30. Schlaperbersky, "Ekhah-Ayyeka."
31. Shmuel Joseph Fendruck, "Hole ha-Nefesh u-Refu'atam" [The sick- nesses of the soul and their cure], Kol Israel ba-Golah 16 (31 Oct. 1947): 2 [Hebrew].
32. [Baram], -Zakhor et Yom ha-Shabbat."
33. Shlomo Diamant, "u-Vaharta ba-Hayyim" [And choose life], Vaad Agudat ha-Rabbanim Shabuoth Buletin (Munich, 1947): 8 [Hebrew title, Yiddish text].
34. Friedmann, "Dos Torah likht in velt keyos."
35. Bistritzer, "Tish'ah be-Av."
36. Josef Schawinsky, "Oyfen hoyhen barg Sinai," Ba-Midbar 2 (4 June 1946): 1.
37. Y. Nussbaum, "Der or ha-Meir laykht vider," Kol Israel ba-Golall 16 (31 Oct. 1947): 3. There is a list of the students of Yeshiva Hakhme Lublin who perished in the hurban in Meir Shapiro, Sefer Marganita Darkhe Meir Kolel Hiddushim Amukkirn be-Pilpul ... He-orot ve'He'orot al Seder ha-Shas ve-ha-Rambarn (Jerusalem, 1967), pp. 137-40 [Hebrew]. Yeshiva graduate Moshe Rothenberg, Bikkure Aviv, 2nd ed. (St. Louis, 1947), pp. 7-16, tells of the survival of Torah in his own life through the hurban. Also see Rabbi Meir Shapiro, ed. Aaron Sorski, 2 vols. (Bnai Brak, 1963-64), 1: 46- 47, 74-80, 110-13 [Hebrew], and Isser Frenkel, Rabbi Meir mi-Lublin (Tel Aviv, 1952), pp. 71-80 [Hebrew].
38. Bistritzer, "Tish'ah be-Av."
39. Meir Baram, "Samahti be-Omrim Li" [I was happy they told me], Kol Israel ba-Golah 15 (30 Sept. 1947): 4 [Hebrew].
40. Frank, "Der yomtov fun Mattan-Torah."
41. Freidmann, "Dos Torah likht in velt keyos."
42. Nathan Baruch and Aviezer Burstein, prefatory page to Massechet Megillalt min Talmud Bavli (Munich, 1947) [Hebrew]. There are many tributes to Meir Shapiro (1887-1934) in She'erit ha-Peletah literature. See, for example, Abraham Mordechai Hershberg, "R. Meir Shapiro zal: tsum elften yortsayt Cheshvan 5694-5705," Di orthodoksisher tribune (New York) (Nov. 1944): 10, 12. Also Or ha-Meir, ed. Abraham Shapiro [brother of Meir] (New York) I (Dec. 1947-jan. 1948), and ibid. I (Mar.- Apr. 1948). Kol Israel ba-Golah carried the daily Talmud reading accord- ing to Shapiro's program (daf yomi) on its masthead and reported that Shapiro's father, Ya'akov Shimshon, endeavored to bring the bones of his son to the Land of Israel. Kol Israel ba-Golah 15 (30 Sept. 1947): 1.
43. Snieg and Rose, dedicatory page.
44. New York, Aguclat Israel Archives, folder 2-6/19: Aharon Chaim Shta- rim, Secretary of the Vaad ha-Yehudit ha-Haredit in Lanclsberg am Lech, to the World Aguclat Israel executive in New York (?), 24 Aug. 1945.
45. Bistritzer, "Dos religieze leben fun der She'erit ha-Peletah," Hemshekh (Munich) (Apr. 1948): 52-59.
46. Aguclat Israel Archives, folder 2-6/19: Sz. Benisz of the Vaad Poale u-Tse'ire Aguclat Israel in Lanclsberg am Lech, to the American Agudat Israel chief executive, 10 Sept. 1945; also Aguclat Israel in Landsberg, to the directors of the Aguclat Israel executive in New York, 1 Nov. 1945.
47. Cincinnati, OH, Eliezer Silver Archives: cable from Paris to Eliezer Silver, Vaad Hatzalah Director in Cincinnati, I Sept. 1945.
48. "Tamtsit mi-Kri'at ha-Azakah shel ha-Rav Shlomo Baumgarten ha- Mivakker ka-Yom be-Mahanot Germaniah Etsel Ahenu ha-Plitim le- Hamtsi Lohern Sefarim ve-Tashmishe Kedushah be-Hekdem" [Summary of the statement of alarm of Rabbi Shlomo Baumgarten, who is currently visiting the camps of Germany with our brother refugees, to provide religious books and ritual articles for them right away], Kol Israel (Jerusalem) 24 (30 Aug. 1945), unpaginated copy [Hebrew].
49. Gruenewald, "Ne'umo shel ha-Rav M[eir] Gruenewald.-
50. Meir Baram, "Le-Hakhrazat ha-Medinah" [On the proclamation of the state], Kol Israel ba-Golah 17 (23 Dec. 1947): 1 [Hebrew].
51. Abraham G. Schiff, "Der gaystiger referat fun ha-Rav Schiff, yoshev rosh Agudat Israel takhat ha-Rabbanim shlita, oyfen tsvayten kongres fun der She'erit ha-Peletah [Bad Reichenhall, 25-27 Feb. 1947]," Kol Israel ba-Golah 5 (3 Mar. 1947): 1.
52. Diamant, "u-Vaharta ba-Hayyim."
53. [Editor], "Agudat Israel ruf tsum yidishen folk," Buletin aroysgegeben durkhen sekretariat fun Merkaz Agudat Israel be-Germaniah azor Amerikani (Feldafing) I (I Feb. 1946): 1.
54. Abraham G. Schiff, "Ne'umo shel Yoshev Rosh."
55. [Meir Baram], "Tsu di religieze Yidn fun der She'erit ha-Peletah," Kol Israel ba-Golah 19 (27 Feb. 1948): 3; idem, -Zakhor et Yom ha-Shabbat."
56. Meir Gruenewald, "Ne'umo shel ha-Rav ha-Gaon mi-Tetsch. ba- Kongres ha-Shlishi shel She'erit ha-Peleta be-Bad Reichenhall" [Ad- dress of ha-Rav ha-Gaon of Detsch at the Third She'erit ha-Peletah Con- gress, 30 Mar.-2 Apr. 1948, Bad Reichenhall], Kol Israel ba-Golah 21 (4 Apr. 1948): 4 [Hebrew].
57. Chananiah Lippa Goldmann, "Pesher Dvar Kiyyurn Amenu" [The meaning of our nation's existence] [Address at the Ve'idat ha-Rabbanim of Germany in July 19471, Kol Israel ba-Golah 10 (25 July 1947): 4 [Hebrew].
58. Idem, "Lema'an ha-Hinukh" [For the sake of education], Netsah Israel: monatlikhe oysgabe fun Vaad Hatzalah (Munich) I (May 1948): 11-12 [Hebrew]. I have been unable to verify Shapiro's statement, which Goldmann cites from the conclusion to Shapiro's commentary on Trac- tate Niddah.
59. Gruenewald, "Ne'umo shel ha-Rav M[eir] Gruenewald."
60. Abraham G. Schiff and Appelbaum provide slightly different readings of Shabbat 88a. See note 24 above.
61. Sh. Appelbaum, "Har ke-Gigit: Hirhure Shavuot" [Over the mountain like a vault: Shavuot reflections], Nitsots 7, no. 11 (78) (23 May 1947): 1 [Hebrew].
62. [Editor], "Agudat Israel ruf le-ahenu ve-ahyotenu ha-me'unim ba- mahanot be-emek ha-bokhah!" [Aguclat Israel calls to our brothers and sisters suffering in the camps in the valley of tears], Buletin aroysgegeben durkhen sekretariat fun Merkaz (1 Feb. 1946): 1 [Hebrew].
63. Eliezer Silver Archives: Rabbi Salamon Gottlieb of Brooklyn, to Israel Meir Akselrad of Fbhrenwald, 15 Apr. 1948.
64. lbid.: Aviezer Burstein of the American Vaad Hatzalah Emergency Committee in Munich, to Eliezer Silver in Cincinnati, 2 Oct. 1948.
65. Y. D. Schaimon, "Hag ha-Herut 5706" [Holiday of liberation 19461, Nitsots 6 (12 Apr. 1946): 1 [Hebrew].
66. Ferson, "Hagy ha-Purim" [The celebration of Purim], Yidishe shtime 2 (26 Mar. 1948): 4 [Hebrew title,, Yiddish text].
67. "Memorandom fun Agudat Israel for U.N. Komisie," Kol Israel ba-Golah 11 (8 Aug. 1947): 4.
68. Meir Baram, "She'erit ha-Peletah ve-Agudat Israel" [She'erit ha-Peletah and Agudat Israel], Kol Israel ba-Golah 9 (4 July 1947): 1 [Hebrew].
70. D. B., "Oyfen shvel fun nayem yor," Yidishe shtime I P Oct. 1946): 2, 6.
71. Cholovsky, "Tsvishen entoyshung un ervakhtung."
72. Frankel, "Be-Damayikh Hayyi."
73. Gruenewald, "Ne'umo shel ha-Rav M[eirl Gruenewald."
74. Diamant, "Darkhe Tsiyyon Avelot."
75. Benzion Firer, "Erev Pessach 5703 [19431-Erev Pessach 5708 [19481: tsum finften yortog fun varshaver geto oyfshtand," Yidishe shtime 2 (23 Apr. 1948): 6. By 1963 Firer was living in Nir Galim. There he wrote "Oker Harim" [Very Brilliant Scholar (Meir Shapiro)], Rabbi Meir Sha- piro, 2: 228-30 [Hebrew]. For Firer's views on the contemporary decline of Judaism, see "Torah Mefoeret be-Khli Mefoar" [Glorious Torah in a glorious vessel], Omer (Tel Aviv), 6 Oune 1960): 32-34 [Hebrew].
76. Frank, "Tsvey historishe dates: tsurn finften yortog fun varshaver geto oyfshtand," Yidishe bilder 2 (23 Apr. 1948): 2
77. Diamant, "u-Vaharta ba-Hayyim."
78. Y[itzchak] Y[osefl Cohen, "Or Hadash al Tsiyyon Ta'ir" [A new light will shine on Zion], Kol Israel ba-Golah 21 (14 Apr. 1948): 4 [Hebrew].
79. Yudel Schiff, "Fun faynd biz fraynd."
80. Moshe Bernstein, "Fun Malkhut Israel biz Malkhut Shaddai," Yeshurun 6 (Aug. 1948): 15-16. See also Barikhtfun der erster landeskonferensfun Brit- Yeshurun Germania velkhe iz forgekumen in F6hrenwald 14-15 Sivvan / 2-3 Yuni [19471.
81. Aviezer Burstein, "Netsah Israel" [Eternity of Israel], Netsah Israel I (May 1948): 1 [Hebrew title, Yiddish text]. See also idem, "Tahel Shanah u-Virkhoteha" [May the year and its blessings commence], ibid. 4 (Sept. 1948): 1 [Hebrew title, Yiddish text]; and idem, "Fun Malkhut Israel biz Malkhut Shamayim," ibid. 2 (June 1948): 1.
82. Yitzchak Zemba, "Der yesod ha-yesoclot fun unzer kiyyum," ibid, 1 (May 1948): 14. See also idem, "Hemshekh oder kiyyum, " ibid, 2 (June 1948): 9. The text reads: Rabbi Simon ... said, "If the Torah is not mentioned in [the blessing for] the land [in the Grace after Meals], [the person saying Grace] is [forced to] return [to the beginning of Grace and start over]. What is the reason? 'And he brought. . . .'Why? 'That they may keep His statutes and observe the laws' " (Jerusalem Talmud Be- rachot, chap. 1, hal. 6). In order to fulfill the obligation of the Grace, the Torah must be included in the blessing for the land; that is, Torah and the Land of Israel are inseparable. I am indebted to Jonathan Weiser for providing this material in connection with my 1988 course on "America and the Holy Land" at the Institute for Contemporary Jewry of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
83. Abraham G. Schiff, "Der gaystiger referat fun ha-Rav Schiff."
84. Baram, "Le-Hakhrazat ha-Medinah."
85. Gruenewald, "Ne'umo Shel ha-Rav ha-Gaon mi-Tetsch."
86. Goldmann, "Pesher Dvar." See also Snieg and Rose, dedicatory page.
87. Sh. Appelbaum, "Be-Yom ha-Evel ha-Leumi" [On the day of national mourning], Nitsots 7 (25 July 1947): 1 [Hebrew].
88. Z. Schechnowitz, "Le-Shnat 5708" [To the year 19481, Kol Israel ba-Golah 16 (31 Oct. 1947): 2 [Hebrew].
89. Bistritzer, "Tish'ah be-Av."
90. [Meir Baram], "Be-Esh Dat" [In the flame of religion], Kol Israel ba-Golah 6 (23 May 1947): 1-2 [Hebrew].
91. Bistritzer, "Es iz gekumen di groyse sha'ah" Yidishe shtime 2 (5 Dec. 1947): 2.
92. Hoveret Mukdeshet le-Yom ha-Zikkaron ha-11 shel ha-Gaon ha-Rav ha-Tsadik Rabenu Avraham Yitzkhak Kook Zeklier Tsadik ve-Kadosh li-Verakha (Munich, 27 Aug. 1946) [Hebrew title, Yiddish text]. See also Tal ha-Re'iyah, ed. Moshe Zevi Neriah (Tel Aviv, 1985) [Hebrew].
