The Holocaust: During recent
Sunday morning study sessions, the question of the
Holocaust reared its head, as it has done often
through the years of study sessions. How could G-d
have permitted the Holocaust? Did He stand silently
by? Why? It seems that many Jews never have found
satisfactory answers.
I look back at an automobile
accident occurring in May 1972. A car crossed the
center divider at high speeds, and hit me head on.
The force of the impact pushed the hood of my car to
the windshield, and was so great it tore the
driver’s seat, my seat, right out of the
floorboard of the car. I was kept in the hospital
five days because no one, police or medical doctor,
could imagine I didn’t carry a single serious
injury.
Obviously, as an observant Jew
before the accident, I was thankful to Hashem for
saving me from the injuries which should have be
fallen me. Everyone told me it was a miracle, and how
I should thank G-d for saving me from worse injury.
No doubt you agree.
However, if I applied the logic
many at study sessions apply to G-d’s silence to
or absence from the Holocaust, I might have said,
“What type of G-d allowed me to get into the
accident in the first place!”
Pause for a moment, and think of
the true dynamic of the Holocaust: it was an event
which could have resulted in the deaths of all the
Jews. My accident could have caused my death.
Everyone saw the miracle that saved me from any
injury. However, even if I were injured, I would have
been, as you would have been, thankful, for even
surviving with the ability to live on and raise a
family.
Likewise, right in accord with
the words of the Torah, which specifically references
the Holocaust, Hashem intervened and saved us. This
means He saved us from being all destroyed [1]. Thus G-d intervened and we should
be quite thankful that we weren’t all destroyed;
via a history which could have resulted in Germany
and Japan winning, instead of losing, WWII.
Thus, each of the days of
my life, after the accident, have been a gift, free
from any injury, and consequence, from an event which
occurred. If I had a personal Torah and it said that
during my life I would be in an otherwise fatal car
accident, but that G-d would intervene and save me,
how special the knowledge and the result! The Torah
speaks to the Holocaust and that if we called out for
G-d He would not forsake us, He would save us, He
would honor the covenant (return of the Land of
Israel – another miracle of this time), and we
would then encounter a period of great prosperity.
How can anyone complain about
G-d’s silence or absence from the Holocaust when
He did as promised and written by the Torah before
the events themselves ever unfolded!
Centuries of Arduous Enslavement in Egypt:
The Torah relates that G-d by His design sent
Joseph to Egypt where the Jews – descendants of
Abraham and Sarah – small in number (seventy)
survived the famine. However, the Torah also says
that it was G-d’s design to establish Himself
through the Jewish people who would serve centuries
in bondage. Thus, how can one justify the suffering,
the pain and woes suffered by the descendants of
Abraham and Sarah through centuries of slavery as G-d
seemingly stood by watching His own grand design
unfold? What type of G-d is G-d?
At the first night’s Seder
my son, Max, for the first time, after my
participation in decades of synagogue discussions,
hit the nail dead center. us “G-d’s design
to bring us to Egypt and enslave there was to save us
as a people.First, ” Bravo my son. Exactly. G-d
saved us from the famine. Joseph saw seven years of
famine, and had Joseph not gone down to Egypt, the
same band of descendants of Abraham and Sarah,
represented in chief in the Torah by Jacob and sons,
could have all died. None of us, not a single Jew,
would have lived (existed today). Like my car
accident above, had I died at an early age, I would
have never seen children and my parents, Holocaust
survivors, would have seen a total end to their
family line. Thus G-d not only saved me, He saved all
of my family to live, G-d willing, long after me.
Further, aside from putative
total destruction to the entire future Jewish family
line from death by the famine, the descendants of
Abraham and Sarah may have faced a fate worse than
death. Jacob, his sons, and/or their sons could have
been enslaved by a barbaric people where our
ancestors would have faced a fate far worse than
Egypt, one where no Jew would have survived. Thus,
like the 1972 auto accident, to appreciate the Torah
and Hashem, one shouldn’t focus on the
horrible event as much as the intervention.
When G-d says that His design
would be centuries of enslavement in Egypt, this must
be seen and appreciated as a result far better than a
more horrible enslavement somewhere else, ending with
total destruction of the descendants of Abraham and
Sarah. The Torah makes it manifestly clear throughout
that without G-d’s intervention from the time of
Abraham until this very day, we would not even exist.
Thus His design must be seen
clearly as one of beneficial interventions, and one
never complains about an intervention which improves
the destiny which otherwise would have been the
reality. If you are in a serious auto accident, and
live, but must face pain, surgery and even the
possibility of some permanent damage, will you go to
the synagogue ultimately to thank and plead with
Hashem or to denigrate Him? The answer is clear. It
is very clear that when Jews are in distress
throughout our history, the synagogues are full of
those who call upon Him for intervention.
Regrettably, when our prayers are answered, and we
receive requested intervention, and later experience
better, if not the best of times, many, if not most,
Jews forget Whom they should thank.
Thus, since the very first days
of our forefathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,
G-d has affirmatively intervened all through history
to keep us alive, or else the tribe of the
descendants of Abraham and Sarah would never have
existed at all.
G-d found favor with our
forefathers and He has kept his word to them through
all of Jewish history. It is the Passover, which not
only speaks of the miracle of G-d passing over the
first born of the Jews when He slew the first born of
the Egyptians to establish Himself, but to the fact
that this was one of the many interventions all
through history where without Him, despite everything
and anything else, we would not exist, but for His
love for our forefathers[2] and His honor
in carrying out the covenant agreed to with them.
The miracle of the Jews has been
that we have survived. The miracle of the Jews has
been that we have prospered. The miracle of the Jews
is that we have been given another chance as promised
with the Land of Israel.
The duty of the Jews is only
that we should remember it, appreciate it, and
perpetuate the covenant, including the Ten
Commandments and Shema to our children so they can
dutifully remember why they enjoy the successes they
do today.