From: MASH@WEIZMANN.WEIZMANN.AC.IL (Michael Shimshoni)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish
Subject: The Holocaust (was Please!  I need your help etc.)
Date: 13 Oct 92 14:02:43 GMT
Organization: Mail to News Gateway at Wang Labs

In: <1992Oct6.183402.29893@umbc3.umbc.edu>
shimoff@umbc4.umbc.edu (Eliot Shimoff) is appalled:

>In article <1992Oct6.131051.23312@wam.umd.edu> aap@wam.umd.edu (Alberto Adolfo
>>In article <1992Oct6.123111.23779@cbnewsl.cb.att.com> saal@cbnewsl.cb.att.com
>>>Even if completely
>>>man-made, G-d helps those who help themselves.... (to borrow a
>>>phrase).
>>>--
>>
>>It did not work for at least 6 million Jews.
>>Or, may be, they did not help themselves?
>>
>
>It is only a few hours before Yom Kippur, a day in which all Jews
>stand together before G-d, as individuals and as members of the
>Jewish community, and I stare at your comment.

Although it  is now after  Yom Kippur, I, a  Jew, have stopped  a long
time ago to "stand .. before God".   I cannot speak for Alberto, but I
know that I  am not the only  Jew for whom God  has become irrelevant,
especially after the Shoah.

>                                                I do not know how
>to start a reply, yet I cannot let your statement remain unanswered.

I also feel, that Eliot's statement has to be answered.

>Your statement is appallingly insensitive, and wilfully ignorant.
>It is inexcusably cruel, and reflects shocking poor taste.

In what  way? Sam brought this  tired cliche that God  helps those who
help themselves,  and in just  one line  Alberto could show,  from the
greatest tragedy of our century, and  the greatest ever that came upon
the Jews, that this is simple, to  put it very mildly, not so.  In the
sciences we call it a Gegenbeispiel (counterexample).

>                                                            To reduce
>the Holocaust to a quick one-liner suggests your lack of understanding
>of what the Holocaust means -- to Jews and to the entire world, as a
>theological issue, as a philosophical challenge, as a personal tragedy
>(for many of us), and as a calamity for the Jewish people at large.

Eliot is not alone  in thinking that what it means to  him it also has
to mean to "Jews  and to the entire world".  Well it  does not, not to
everyone, not perhaps  to many.  This "calamity for  the Jewish people
at large" was so enormous that some  of us just could not continue the
way they  went before.  I  would not be  surprised if Eliot,  and many
others have  used this Yom  Kippur the  same Mahsor (prayer  book) his
parents and grandparents  have used before.  Not one  word got changed
by this calamity.  I know that Eliot  and all of you know the facts of
the Holocaust,  what I  do not  comprehend is  how (counting  only the
Jews) after 6000000 dead, of them 1000000 children of them uncountable
babes torn from their parents and  thrown alive into the flames of the
furnaces, they  can still  repeat Adonai Adonai  El Rahum  veHanun etc
(Adonai, Adonai a merciful and  compassionate God, my own translation)
as they did before 1939.

Eliot can,  many others perhaps can,  but I will never  address myself
any more to such a being even if it exists.  For me either there is no
God or  if there is  one and lets these  things happen, then  I better
ignore him as  I want nothing of  such an entity.  Bialik  in his last
lines of  Ir Hahareg, (the city  of the slaughter) about  the Kishinev
1905 pogrom said it well.  Yes, it  really can be said in a one liner,
there is no need  for long books to try and  save one's belief.  Those
who cannot  live without the comfort  of believing in a  higher being,
can keep him and his "mercy".

Yes, the  Holocaust was for  me a "philosophical challenge"  and after
facing  it there  were  no  longer any  "theological  issues" left  to
consider.

>Eliot Shimoff

 Michael Shimshoni
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish