Two Theological Responses To The Shoah Analysis

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Analyse two theological responses to the Shoah and give reasons to explain whether or not you find them convincing? Many things have affected Jewish thinking about God: evolution, existentialism and postmodernism being a few examples. However, nothing has affected it more, and presented such a challenge to the Jewish people than done by the Holocaust . Between 1941 and 1945, the Nazi party, led by Adolf Hitler, murdered between five to six million Jewish people. That was one third of the world Jewish population wiped out in four years . Many Jews prefer to use the Hebrew word Shoah instead of the Holocaust, which means destruction . So why has the Shoah had such a big influence on Judaism? Put simply, many Jews have found it hard to…show more content…
The Jews’ God-appointed mission is to serve the course of historical progress and bring mankind into a new era . The Jews are the sacrificial lamb, much like Jesus was in Christianity. Maybaum even makes this similarity: “The cross, the Roman gallows, was replaced by the gas chamber.” Maybaum’s response to the Shoah is very similar to the theodicy theology that suffering has its place in God’s plan. Many thinkers have argued that pain and suffering exist in the world because it is all part of some divine plan that God has made. This idea of a plan does help to reassure us that we are not the playthings of chance . However, as the scholar Louis Jacobs argues, this plan must contain within it an afterlife, or else: …it would be hideously unfair to justify the sufferings of a good man solely on the grounds that in the working out of God’s plan benefit results from them to other men here on earth. The Rabbi Arthur Lelyveld partly agrees with Maybaum’s theology. He too argues that: The covenant obligation that is central in Judaism calls upon the Jews to be God’s co-workers in perfecting the world – not to be saved, but

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