God and the Shoah

Rabbi Arthur Waskow

GOD AND THE SHOAH

I have been thinking about God & the Shoah. (This is very short-hand; I go much deeper, and with more space to evoke the emotional & spiritual agony, in *Godwrestling -- Round 2*)

First: I see the Shoah as an outgrowth of one aspect of Modernity: the ability/power to DO, MAKE, PRODUCE. Before modernity, pogroms but not the Shoah were possible: It was a giant leap in both physical technology & administrative technology that made the Shoah do-able. Turning murder into a grotesquely high-productivity industry.

These same leaps forward in technology also make possible world-wide intercultural communication, women's control over their own reproduction, etc. AND the H-bomb. ozone destruction, global scorching, burning the Amazon.

Second: I see this leap in CONTROL & Power to DO/ Make etc as a leap in the 15-billion-year process of the infusion of more and more Divine Power into the world. This power to DO and COHERE and CONTROL is what turns space-dust into galaxies & stars & planets; what turns carbon compounds into proteins, DNA, life-forms; what turns amoebas into humans, redwoods, and mosquitos; what turns human hunter-gathering communities into agricultural, commercial, industrial, & informational societies. What turns tiny clans as independent politico-military units into continental super-states and global corporations.

Third: AND -- There is another aspect of this constant infusion of more and more God-energy into the world. (Constant but it comes in leaps and floods, not smoothly). This is the infusion of Love & Community, which are ALSO aspects of God.

In short, God is BOTH I-It and I-Thou.

The infusion of both into the world in greater and greater doses comes about because the world is itself an aspect of God, that aspect which is a finite left-over of God-energy, left-over from the great Tzimtzum or inward contractionof the Eyn Sof (Infinite One) to leave space for a world.

This finite aspect of God-as-Universe exists because the Eyn Sof wanted a Mirror for Itself -- was deeply characterized by self-reflectiveness. So the universe is constantly seeking to emulate and mirror the Eyn Sof. The result is a continuous dynamic double spiral of It-It/ I-Thou/I-It/I-Thou etc. Each step in one arena calls forth and demands the analogous step in the other arena. More ability to kill requires more ability to love -- otherwise, the killing takes over and the system breaks down from an overwhelm of death.

So the Shoah -- painful to say this -- was an authentic result (though not a necessary one) of a surge of God as I-It into the world. It demands from us openness to a similar surge of God as I-Thou into the world.

All this has precedents on a smaller scale in human (and pre-human) history, The only unprecedented element is scale: All this now applies on the planetary level. I-Thou must now extend to the whole human race and to all species and "organs of Gaia" (like ozone, etc).

We need to invent new forms of community to do this. Just as the invention of Rabbinic Judaism (and of Christianity and later Islam) were I-Thou responses to the great Divine I-It wave of Hellenism into the world, so we need now to create new I-Thou forms in response to the great Diivine I-It wave of Modernity into the world.

Jewish renewal, and Christian renewal (e.g. MLKing, Dorothy Day, Pope John XXIII) and Buddhist renewal (e.g. the present Dalai Lama, Thich Nath Hanh) and Muslim renewal (Sadat), and feminist spirituality, and others, are efforts to express and shape these new I-Thou forms, these waves of divine energy into the world.

We ourselves are one part of the I-Thou aspect of the Godwave. We can choose to shape the Godwave into ourselve

The Shoah was one part of the I-It aspect of the Godwave. We (i.e. some humans) chose to shape the Godwave into the Shoah.

Trepidation and trembling.

Blessed is the One Who shapes light and makes darkness, Who makes shalom and creates ALL -- which, when it is not shaped by our mitzvah/connection making into the harmony of shalom, comes thru as evil.

by Rabbi Arthur Waskow
Director, The Shalom Center.