490 A History of Judaism
findings are absolute but religion is a matter of choice, Leibowitz defined
the halakhah as binding and the ultimate expression of commitment to
God, denying any possibility of any specifically Jewish philosophy,
theology or mysticism. Uncompromisingly independent, he advocated
complete separation between religion and the secular state in Israel after
- He fiercely opposed the annexation of territory after the 1967
war in case the increase in Arab population impaired the character of
Israel as a state in which the majority of citizens were Jews. He encour-
aged the full participation of women in learning the Torah (perhaps
encouraged by the exceptional reputation of his younger sister Nehama,
a scholar and teacher who published, among other works, a commen-
tary on the Bible portion for each Sabbath which reached students all
over the world).^15
Yeshayahu Leibowitz interpreted human atrocities as the product of
failings in humanity without theological significance and he therefore
saw no need to reflect on any deeper theological meaning in the events
of the Holocaust. A similar stance is to be found in much modern ortho-
dox thought. In the United States, Eliezer Berkovits asserted that God
was present but unseen in Auschwitz, and that the greatness and power
of God were demonstrated precisely by his refusal to intervene. In 1973,
in his Faith after the Holocaust, Berkovits claimed that, despite the
uniqueness of the horror, the Holocaust did not present any novel prob-
lem for faith, since Jews have acknowledged since the time of Job that
God may withdraw himself to give humans free will to commit acts
which may be oppressive. Orthodox theologians have even been able to
derive a positive message of redemption from the reality of horror. Dur-
ing the Holocaust itself, R. Isaac Nissenbaum declared in the Warsaw
Ghetto the need to sanctify life so far as possible by preserving it rather
than seeking martyrdom in death, and the American orthodox rabbi
Irving (Yitz) Greenberg, who was born only in 1933 and brought up in
the safety of the United States, sees the Holocaust as the end of one
stage in the relationship of God and Israel and the beginning of a new
stage, with implications for the obligation to perform the command-
ments. He argued in 1977 both that ‘the moral necessity of a world to
come ... arises powerfully out of the encounter with the Holocaust’ and
that ‘if the experience of Auschwitz symbolises that we are cut of from
God and hope ... then the experience of Jerusalem symbolises that
God’s promises are faithful and his people live on’. Thus Jews have a
special responsibility to those who died to work to bring to an end the
values which supported genocide.^16