The concept of faith, as the term is used in the context of Western Christian civilization, does not exist within classical Judaism. One might define the meaning of faith in the Western sense as the subjective affirmation of the truth of something, or the existence of someone, for which there is no objective proof. Nowhere in the Bible does such a concept occur, nor is such a faith anywhere demanded of the Jew.
The word that is usually taken to mean faith in the Bible is emunah. It will be useful to consider first the way the adjectival form, ne’eman, is used. It may apply to objects. Occasionally it is said of lifeless things that they are ne’emanim. Isaiah, for instance, says of the person who walks uprightly and speaks the truth: “His bread shall be given, his waters shall be ne’emanim (sure).”1Isaiah 33:16. In a country where the water resources are rather meagre, waters that are ne’emanim — sure, enduring, reliable — are of the utmost importance. In another place Isaiah uses the same adjective of a place. The rule of Elyakim will be established firmly, for God says concerning him: “And I will fasten him as a peg beMakom ne’eman (in a sure place).2Ibid., 22:23–25.Makom ne’eman is a place that holds the peg so that it cannot be moved. Ne’eman is also used of interpersonal relationships, especially in the sense of “reliable.” “Reliable witnesses” are edim ne’emanin.3Ibid., 8:2. Of a messenger who is ne’eman it is said that he is “as the cold of snow in the time of harvest” for his sender; “he refreshes the life of his master.”4Proverbs 25:13. The witness who is ne’eman is objectively trustworthy; the messenger who is ne’eman is subjectively faithful to his sender. The loyal messenger stands in a relationship of trust with the one whom he represents. Of Abraham the prophet Nehemiah says that God found his heart ne’eman before Him.5Nehemiah 9:8. Quite clearly, ne’eman describes the quality of the relationship between him and God. He was faithful to God. When God says of Moses that he is ne’eman in all His house,6Numbers 12:7. the word bespeaks a relationship of special intimacy between God and Moses. He entrusts His servant with the secrets of His house that he would not entrust to anyone else. When all Samuel’s prophecies were fulfilled, all Israel knew that he was ne’eman to be a prophet of God.7I Samuel 3:20. Prophecy is a relationship between the prophet and God. He is God’s ne’eman in a twofold sense: he is faithful to God and he is trusted by God. In very much the same sense the adjective ne’eman is applied even to God. He, too, is ne’eman for he “keepeth covenant and love with them that love Him.”8Deuteronomy 7:9. We may then say that in an interpersonal context the word connotes being reliable, trustworthy, faithful.
What now is the meaning of the verb leha’amin which is usually translated “to believe”? The grammatical form suggests that the verb means to acknowledge someone as reliable, trustworthy, faithful. After the miracle at the Red Sea, it is said in the Bible that the children of Israel va’ya’aminu in God and in his servant Moses.9Exodus 14:31. In this context the verb cannot simply mean that they believed in Moses, that he existed, that he was real and not a mere illusion. In keeping with the meaning of the adjective ne’eman, we would have to say that the children of Israel acknowledged him as deserving their trust. Whereas before they had been wavering, they were not sure whether he was indeed sent by God, now they realized that they might trust him completely. Similarly regarding God, their problem was never whether there was actually a God or that He was the almighty creator of the universe. The entire story of the Exodus shows that what the children of Israel doubted was whether God was really concerned about their plight, whether He was indeed leading them. But in view of the miracle of the splitting of the waters in order to save them from the clutches of the pursuing armies of Pharaoh, they trusted in Him, they knew that they could rely on Him. Of course, we know that their trust did not last too long. When the spies returned from reconnoitering Canaan the people accepted the report of those who considered the undertaking of entering the land to be hopeless. God then turned to Moses and said: “How long will this people scorn Me? How long will they lo ya’aminu bee (not, as usually rendered, ‘not believe in Me,’ but), not trust Me despite all the signs which I have shown among them.”10Numbers 14:11. The question was one of trust. God had promised to lead them into the land. Through signs and miracles He had shown them that He was faithful to them, yet they still did not trust His promise.
When God told Abraham, “Look up to the skies and try to count the number of the stars above; such will be the number of your seed,” the Bible confirms regarding Abraham: vehe’emin… “and he…” well, “believed in God” would be non-biblical. What the Bible says is: “and he trusted God.”11Genesis 15:6. Although all nature seemed to reject the possibility that an old childless man married to an old barren woman could yet beget children, Abraham trusted God’s promise. This has nothing in common with the leap of faith. There was no question in Abraham’s mind that God existed; in an act of self-revelation He had concluded a covenant with him. Nor did he have any doubt as to the power of God to keep His promise. Having experienced the presence of the Creator, the possibility of the fulfillment of the promise had nothing of the absurd about it. To him, it did not contradict any laws of logical reasoning. What then is the meaning of such trust? It can mean only one thing. Abraham fully realized that in the normal course of nature the promise made to him was unrealizable. Its feasibility was beyond his understanding, yet he trusted. The unquestioning acknowledgement of the divine promise was Abraham’s response of faithfulness. The act of trust was Abraham’s share in the activation of the living relationship of mutuality between him and God.
We may then say that emunah is not faith in the usually accepted meaning of the term, but reliability, trust, faithfulness. Habakkuk’s words, ẓaddik beEmunato yiḥyeh, do not mean “the righteous lives by his faith,” but “the righteous lives by his faithfulness,”12Habakkuk 2:4. For a more thorough discussion of this theme, see my Man and God, Studies in Biblical Theology, Detroit, 1969, chapter 6. by his trust in God.
As they were leading Rabbi Shalom Eliezer Halberstam, the Ratzfirter Rebbe, to be killed, an SS officer approached him and said: “I see your lips are moving in prayer. Do you still believe that your God will help you? Don’t you realize in what situation the Jews find themselves? They are all being led to die and no one helps them. Do you still believe in divine providence?” To which the Rebbe replied: “With all my heart and all my soul I believe that there is a Creator and that there is a Supreme Providence.”13Unger, Admorim…, p. 259. The question of the officer is no less significant than the answer of the rabbi. It contained in a nutshell the historic meaning of the confrontation between the Jew and the Nazi. Questions of this nature — and we know that they were often put to Jews by Nazis — reveal that the Germans, when confronted with such manifestations of Jewish steadfastness, were ill at ease. They sensed somehow the ultimate issue: if — in spite of it all — there was indeed divine providence in history, then they were doomed; if the Jewish people survived, then Nazi Germany was lost. In the moment before his death, the eighty-two-year-old Ratzfirter Rebbe was more sure of himself and of what he represented in the world than the Nazi officer, behind whom stood all the might of world-conquering Nazi Germany. Rabbi Halberstam was not only expressing the thoughts of one ḥasidic rabbi, but was formulating the conviction of untold numbers of Jews from all strata of the Jewish people.
Many faced the ultimate ordeal with quiet composure in the conviction: “It is God’s will! We accept it with joy!” Were they really that naive? And contemporary western Jews, who never had to face the trials of the deathcamps and yet find it hard to believe in a divine providence because of God’s silence during the Holocaust, do they really have a superior understanding of the processes of history that makes them wiser in the conduct of their personal lives? Whether one accepts the lifestyle of the authentic Jew or not, one would be gravely mistaken if one believed that this Jew was unaware of the same problems of faith that alienate the sophisticated western Jew in this last quarter of the 20th century.
Questions about faith have been asked throughout Jewish history. They are of two kinds: intellectual and existential. The challenges of reason to faith present us with the intellectual problems: How to prove the existence of God? How is creatio ex nihilo, creation out of nothing, possible? How to accept miracles in view of the orderliness of natural laws? How to reconcile the idea of creation with the theory of evolution? On the other hand, questions of God’s providence, of the justice of His providence, of His active presence in history, we call existential problems. They do not derive from reason but from human experience. Although Judaism has been familiar with both kinds of questions from its inception, one might say that the confrontation with reason, the struggle with the intellectual questions, has been the chief preoccupation of the philosophies of Judaism through the Middle Ages and beyond. Even as recently as the early part of this century, such a philosopher as Hermann Cohen was contending with the same kind of religious problematics in his The Religion of Reason from the Sources of Judaism. The existential questioning of God considerably antedated the intellectual confrontation; it is boldly discussed in the Bible itself and in the Talmud.
All through history, the greatest Jews have confronted God with the same problems that have been raised, with justifiable passion, by this post-Holocaust generation. Thus, for instance, the prophet Habakkuk:
“Thou that art of eyes too pure to behold evil,
And that canst look on mischief,
Wherefore lookest Thou, when they deal treacherously,
And holdest Thy peace, when the wicked swalloweth up
The man that is more righteous than he?“14Habakkuk 1:13.
We may recall the words of Jeremiah, too, questioning the justice of divine providence:
“Right wouldest Thou be, O Eternal,
Were I to contend with Thee,
Yet will I reason with Thee:
Wherefore does the way of the wicked prosper?
Wherefore are all they secure that deal very treacherously?”15Jeremiah 12:1.
The classical biblical discussion of this theme is found, of course, in the book of Job. The undeserved suffering of the innocent is the basis of the most severe questioning of God’s ways with men. It is not a little surprising that God Himself approves of Job’s contending with him.
In the Talmud, too, there is a full realization that the question of divine justice presents the Jew with a very serious problem. It is expressed in the terse formula: “A righteous man and it is ill with him; a wicked one and he does well.”16See the discussions in T.B. Ta’anit 11a and Kiddushin 39b. Elisha ben Avuyah became a heretic because of this problem and was known thereafter as aḥer, “the changed one.” He looms large in the pages of the Talmud and forces upon the conscience of Judaism the awareness of the seriousness of this issue. The teachers of the Talmud took painful notice of God’s many silences in history at times when his manifestation in the affairs of men was most anxiously awaited. Thus, for instance, the words of the Psalmist: “Who is a mighty one, like unto Thee, O Eternal” were explained in the following way: “Who is so mighty and strong as Thou, able to listen to the blasphemy and insult of that wicked man (in this particular case, Titus) and yet remain silent.”17T.B. Gittin 56b.
It is worth noting that while it is not too difficult to find solutions for the problems of reason, it is doubtful that they greatly influence the condition of faith. The believer usually proves to himself what he had already accepted prior to the finding of the solutions and the non-believer remains, mostly, “unconvinced.” The existential questions, however, usually raise great passions and lead to strong accusations against God. Nevertheless, the faith of the questioner often remains unaffected despite the Heaven’s silence. Neither Habakkuk nor Jeremiah were ever given an answer. Job was, in a sense, silenced by divine omnipotence, with his questions still unanswered, and yet he was at peace. And so it was in the ghettos and the camps, the questions were asked, even rebelliously, and though there were no answers, in the midst of questioning faith remained alive.
It would seem then that resolution of the intellectual questions of faith is of little avail and that God’s silence in the face of existential questioning is not critical. This phenomenon is related to the very essence of religion as presented by Judaism. Religion is not based on the belief that there is a God. There are philosophies that affirm the existence of God and yet cannot serve as the basis of religion. Aristotle’s First Cause, for instance, is pure form, so pure that even the knowledge of anything that has matter in its composition would contaminate its purity. But since, according to Aristotle, everything that exists consists of matter and form, his God knows nothing of individual existence. In other words, he does not know of man and, ergo, cannot consider man. But surely, a God who does not know me cannot be my God, cannot be the God of religion. Aristotle’s God was, of course, not the Creator. At a much later time in history, during the Enlightenment, the deists conceived of God as the creator of the universe. Yet even their God idea could not serve as a foundation for religion. Their God created the universe in his infinite wisdom. The result is a perfect world; the laws of nature reflect the infinite wisdom of the deity. This, of course, means that having created the universe, the Creator left it to continue to function in accordance with the infinite divine wisdom incorporated in its structure. Not only is there no room for any miracles within such a perfect structure, but once completed, there is no place left in it for any specific divine function. God himself cannot intervene in his creation for intervention would be interference, disturbing its infinite rationality. It is pointless to pray to such a God. He cannot answer prayers, he cannot respond, he cannot act in his own world. Divine providence is represented by the way the laws of nature function; beyond that nothing is possible. Obviously, one cannot turn to such a God, one cannot look to him. There is no place for religion within such a world view. Sartre was right when he stated that even if there be a God, if he does not know me and is not concerned about me, he is of no consequence; he might as well not be.
Religion, in the understanding of Judaism, is based on acknowledging the reality of a personal God, a God who after creation did not leave this world, who continues to be involved in the destinies of His creatures, who is concerned about man, a God who cares, to whom we may turn in prayer and who responds to man’s call; a God who stands in relationship to His world and who enters into covenants with man. But how does one know of such a God? Surely not through the power of reason, but through experience. A care, a concern has to be experienced or it does not exist. A covenant must be a form of actual relationship or it is a sham. The source of religion is in experience and not in reason. Is religion irrational then? One might as well ask if the gravitational pull between masses of matter is irrational. It does exist and it can be described in exact mathematical formulae, but it is certainly not rational. Facts do not have to validate themselves in the court of reason. This is even truer in the realm of interpersonal relationships. Friendship, love! Nothing could be more absurd than the idea that they have their origin in reason. Are they therefore irrational? They are neither rational nor irrational. There are ideas, concepts, intellectual preoccupations that have to claim their validity through the categories of reason. And there are facts unto whom it is sufficient that they are, such as the laws of nature. All they need is exact description. Interpersonal relationships are living reality, existing by the strength of mutual acceptance in which two persons are covenanted to each other.
Judaism, too, is based on mutuality of experience. In the Judaism of the Torah God speaks and man is able to respond; man calls and God answers. There was a revelation, an encounter between God and the Jew, the Jewish people, establishing a covenantal experience, a mutuality of relationship. If this revelation happened, it was not because it was logical. This is the foundation of Judaism. One may take away creatio ex nihilo — as indeed Gersonides did, following in Aristotle’s footsteps and rejecting the idea as a logical impossibility — one may reject all the rational proofs for the existence of God, one may explain all the miracles rationally — an attempt already undertaken by Maimonides — and one has not yet so much as touched the essence of Judaism. But take away the encounter between God and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or deny the Exodus from Egypt, the revelation at Sinai, or the covenant between God and Israel, and you have destroyed Judaism.
What then is faith? Is it the acknowledgment of the encounter, the experience? Is it the actual awareness of the Divine Presence? When these are present there is no need for faith. Nor is it the belief that God exists. That alone, as we saw, would be of little help. Is it, perhaps, the belief that the Exodus did indeed take place, that there was a revelation at Sinai, that God did conclude a covenant with the Jewish people? These are reported events. If they did take place, they are matters of history. As such they require some form of historical verification (which, needless to say, will be different from logical validation). If, on the other hand, they did not take place, faith that they did happen would be so much foolishness, without any religious significance. So what is faith?
We shall attempt to define it with the help of an analysis of the Akedah, God’s request to Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, recorded in Genesis chapter 22. To be told to sacrifice the son that was born to him in his old age, after all hope had been given up, was the ultimate test to which Abraham was subjected. At least, this is how we usually see the testing of Abraham. Kierkegaard, who considered Abraham “the Knight of Faith,” made the story of the Akedah the focal illustration of his own understanding of the leap of faith. He noted correctly that apart from the test of having to offer up the precious son of his old age, Abraham was also exposed to another dilemma. God, who now asked him to take his son and to sacrifice him, had also promised Abraham that “in Isaac will thy seed be called.”18Genesis 21:12. Was God not contradicting Himself? If Isaac were to be sacrificed, then this promise would not be fulfilled. On the other hand, if God kept His promise, then the command to sacrifice Isaac would be meaningless. What might be going on in the mind of Abraham as he sets out with his son on the journey to Moriah? Which of God’s words is he to believe? If the promise is valid, then the test of the sacrifice is nothing but a cruel joke played on an old man. Abraham climbs up the mountain slope with his son, but all the time he knows that the whole thing is but an exercise in futility, for did not God promise him that in Isaac will his seed be called? But if the sacrifice is to be taken seriously, if it is indeed what God desires of Abraham, then God will not keep His former promise to him. But what kind of God is it that cancels His own words? Kierkegaard saw the greatness of the Knight of Faith in that he knew well that he had to offer Isaac on that mountain altar but he also believed that God would keep His promise. He was ready for the sacrifice as if there were no promise; and he believed in the promise as if there were no Akedah. He was to slaughter Isaac but he also knew that his son would be given back to him. This is, of course, absurd. But it is of the very essence of faith, to take that leap of absurdity, that leap of faith.
Notwithstanding the brilliance of his analysis, we are unable to accept Kierkegaard’s conclusions as valid. Coming from the Western and Christian tradition, he was probably ill-equipped to understand Abraham. Judaism does not accept Tertullian’s credo quia absurdum. Even Yehudah Halevi, who was not a rationalist, found it necessary to exclaim: “God forbid that there should be anything in the Torah that is contrary to reason!” The Torah is not absurd and the authentic Jew does not engage in religious acrobatics. To believe in the absurd is absurd. There was no escaping the fact that in God’s request for the sacrifice of Isaac there was a contradiction that was irresoluble. Abraham was not “the Knight of Faith” because he was able to reconcile the contradiction with a leap of faith across the abyss of logic, ready to sacrifice Isaac yet believing that the promise would be kept. He knew well that the sacrifice meant losing Isaac and the nullification of God’s own promise. How then did he face this aspect of the test?
It should be noted that the leap of faith is the forcible ejection of logic from the court of religious affirmation. The absurd is always logically absurd. When one “jumps,” one jumps from rationality. The leap of faith “answers” a logical problem by denying the authority of the law of contradiction. But Abraham’s real problem was not a problem of logic, merely to show how one thing and its denial can both be true. Abraham was not dealing with concepts and ideas; he was dealing with God. To use Martin Buber’s terminology, he was struggling intellectually with a problem presented by an “It”; he was confronted by a “Thou” who was Abraham’s God not just because He is the God of all the universe, but because He revealed himself to Abraham and called him to live in a covenantal relationship with Him. And now Abraham’s God was contradicting Himself and denying His promise. Abraham knew God for He had spoken to him. God’s existence could not be doubted. So the question before Abraham was an existential one: what was the nature of the relationship between him and his God? How should he act in a moment of crisis in a covenanted life? Abraham’s problem was not essentially different from any crisis situation that may arise in an I-Thou relationship. In a relationship of loving mutuality it does happen occasionally that the behavior of one of the partners becomes inexplicable to the other, even appearing to deny the sustaining promise of the relationship. The question here is not how to solve a logical dilemma, but how to resolve an existential crisis. The problem is one of confidence; can you trust your “Thou” in spite of everything? The resolution of the crisis, emerging from the quality, the depth and the vitality of the relationship, can be through trust alone. But trust is not a leap of faith, but a continuation of the life of the covenant. The very essence of trust consists not in “leaping,” but in standing firm. Its moral value derives from its truthfulness in having the courage to face the irreconcilable, in seeing with open eyes that the sacrifice is a denial of the promise and yet continuing to trust. It is as if one said to one’s “Thou”: “In this situation I do not understand you. Your behavior violates our covenant; still, I trust you because it is you, because it is you and me, because it is us.”
This was how Abraham resolved the crisis that arose between him and God. He was giving up Isaac without any hope of regaining him, as if saying to God: “Almighty God! What You are asking of me is terrible. I do not understand You. You contradict Yourself. But I have known You, my God. You have loved me and I love You. My God, You are breaking Your word to me. What is one to think of You! Yet, I trust You; I trust You.” Such was the trust of Abraham in God and such was the trust of the authentic Jew in the ghettos and the camps. He did not accept the monstrosity as meaningful because God tolerated it. The monstrosity remained monstrous; the inhumanity remained foul injustice tolerated by God. Yet, he rose early in the morning before the “Appell” to put on tefillin; he sought opportunities to pray and to study, to celebrate the festivals in some manner, and to continue to guard the divine image sacred to the Jew. Because, in spite of everything, the authentic Jew lives in the covenant, because Israel and God have been linked to each other through a long, common history. Because he trusts, and trust is the bond of love between two who have found each other, who belong to each other. It is not reason that it rejects; it is the hurt that it overcomes. Trust affirms the reality of the relationship. It is the truth of the covenant in action.
The authentic Jew lives in such a relationship and receives the very essence of his being from it. Even if, unlike Abraham, he himself has not received the Presence in a personal revelation, he experiences the continuity of the eternal covenant between God and Israel in the continuity of the historic reality of the people of Israel. His trust is not the affirmation of a transcendental truth but the living of the life of the covenant here and now. Therefore he does not say, “I believe,” but “I am,” because he owes his being to the covenant. He stands in the Presence at all times together with all the generations of Israel and he hears the Voice in the midst of God’s exasperating silences.
Let us listen to one more Jew who heard the Voice.
In 1943 some few remaining yeshivah students and Talmud scholars assembled in the deserted synagogue in the Vilna Ghetto on Simḥat Torah in order to celebrate the holiday. Together with some children they started to sing and to dance. When a man by the name of Kalmanowitz was honored with the first hakafah, the traditional circuit of the synagogue with a Torah scroll, he addressed the assembled Jews in the following words:
“Song and dance are also divine service. The song is thanksgiving to the One who rules over life and death. Here in the midst of this small congregation in this poor and ruined synagogue we join ourselves to all Israel. Not only to those who are still around today, but also to those who departed to another world, to that holy and pure community in their thousands and ten thousands, as well as to all the generations that preceded us. With our joy we express our gratitude to the illustrious generations that lived before us and in whose time to live would indeed have been most rewarding. We feel that with our song we sanctify the Name of the Heaven as our forefathers did. Even I, an erring Jewish soul, sense here the roots. I know that the Jewish people will live as long as ‘the days of the heavens over the earth.’ And even if we were the last generation, we could well have praised and thanked and said: Enough that we have found our place among all the generations of Israel. Every day that the Holy One, blessed be He, still grants us is a gift, it is loving kindness. We accept it with joy, thanking His Name, may it be blessed.”19Eliav, pp. 172–3; quoted from Yoman Ghetto Vilna, Yivo Bletter, 1951.
The man of faith is forever with his “It,” i.e., with himself; the man of trust is always with his “Thou.” He who has faith, when he questions, doubts; he who trusts, when he questions, makes demands by virtue of the life of the relationship in which he stands. Occasionally God reveals his approval of those who contend with Him, as He did in the case of Job. He rejects the well-meaning defenders of His “justice” toward Job in the words which He addresses to Eliphaz the Temanite:
“My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends:
for ye have not spoken of Me the thing that is right,
As My servant Job hath…”20Job 42:7.
Job, the questioner, the accuser, is recognized as God’s true servant. In fact, God advises Eliphaz and his friends to ask Job, His servant, to pray and to seek atonement for them. Moreover, it is conceivable that the more intimate the relationship between man and God, the greater the urge to question the ways of the divine partner. Only thus can one understand the boldness of Abraham’s challenge to God, as he exclaims: “The judge of all the earth, shall He not act justly?” Only with the power of the confidence generated by a convenantal relationship dare one turn to God with such “impudence.” In a midrashic interpretation, the rabbis even dare suggest that, following the Akedah, Abraham said to God:
“It is open and known to You that when You asked me to sacrifice my son, I had what to answer to You. I could have said to You: Yesterday You promised me that my ‘seed will be called in Isaac’ and now You tell me ‘offer him as a burnt offering’! But I remained silent…”21T.J. Ta’anit 2:4.
Just as they maintain that Abraham was aware of the fact that he had ample grounds for contention with God, so the teachers of the Talmud do not hesitate to suggest that Moses, after the people’s sin with the golden calf, returned the accusation to God by saying: “It was the gold and silver that You so generously bestowed upon them that caused their deviation.” In another context it is asserted that he who pleads with God on behalf of the needs of the community may do it bizro’a, literally with an “arm,” but meaning with an inordinate amount of violence. Thus the rabbis pictured Moses holding on to God in prayer and saying: “I shall not let you go until you forgive them.” Similarly, it is said of the prophets that they prayed to God like a woman demanding of her husband the means to meet the needs of her household.22T.B. Berakhot 32a; Midrash Rabbah, Bemidbar 21:15.
Thus, notwithstanding their trust in God, Jews through the ages contended with Him, talking back to him, as it were, because of the unconvincing performance of divine providence in history. They were trusting and they were questioning, but their trust did not weaken their questioning and their questioning did not undermine their trust. On occasion, they even “called” God to a Din Torah (rabbinical court), endeavoring to judge Him according to the laws of the Torah that are supposed to be binding on Him no less than on the Jew. It was no different during the Holocaust. Heshil Rappaport’s last words to his wife were: “Do not cry. We have done what was up to us to do. But I have a great deal to say before the Heavenly Court.”23Prager, I, p. 61.
Even those who were willing to grant that what had befallen them was punishment for their sins argued with God over the fate of young children.24Eliav, p. 38. A Din Torah that was held in a shtiebel in the ghetto of Lodz in 1943, after twenty-two thousand Jews had been taken to a concentration camp, called on God to stop the undeserved punishment.25Ibid., p. 206. It is the very reality of the relationship, the intimacy between the partners to the covenant, that not only allows but, at times, requires the Jew to contend with the divine “Thou.”
Among the ruins of the Warsaw ghetto was found a document hidden in a small bottle and written by one Yossel Rakover shortly before his death as the ghetto was burning. It is dated April 28, 1943. We quote from it:
“I Yossel, the son of Yossel Rakover from Tarnopol, a Gerer ḥasid, descended from saints and great ẓadikkim…write these lines at a time when the Warsaw ghetto is in flames. The house in which I am now is among the last ones which the fire has not yet reached…It will not be long before this house too…will become the grave of its defenders and tenants. By the rays of an exceptionally red sun, which penetrate through the small and half-covered window from where we have been shooting at the enemy for days and nights, I can see that it is evening now. Twilight of sunset. To be sure, the sun knows not how little sorry I am for never seeing it again…
My time has come now. Of myself I can say as once Job did, ‘naked did I leave my mother’s womb and naked do I return…’ I am forty years old. As I contemplate my life I can say with assurance — as far as any human being may be sure about himself — that I have led an honest life. I was not unsuccessful but I was never proud about it. My house was open to the needy. I was happy when I could help another human being. I have served God with fervor and my only request to Him was that He let me serve Him ‘with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.’
I cannot say that after what has passed over me my reaction to God has not changed. What, however, I am able to say with certainty is that my emunah has not changed a bit. Formerly, in the good times, my relationship to Him was like to one who was continually pouring out His loving kindness on me and I remained forever indebted to Him for that. Now, my relationship to Him is like to one who owes me something…
God has hidden His face from His world. Thus He left His creatures to their wild instincts. To my sorrow I must therefore recognize the fact that when instincts rule the world it is natural that those in whom the divine element is still alive, the pure ones, must become the first sacrifices. There is not much comfort in this. But since the destiny of our people is not decided by earthly considerations but by transcendental, spiritual, and divine ones, it is incumbent on the man of emunah to see in these events aspects of an overriding divine reckoning, compared to which human tragedies are of lesser importance. This does not mean that a pious Jew ought to ‘justify the judgment’ and say: ‘God is just and His judgment is just,’ and that we have deserved the blows that we are receiving. To assert that would be self-desecration as well as desecration of the Divine Name…
I am proud of being a Jew, not in order to spite the world because of its relationship to us…I would be ashamed to belong to the nations who have produced and nurtured this evil and are responsible for what has been done to us…
I believe that to be a Jew means to be a fighter, to swim against the befouled and guilty human stream. The Jew is a hero, oppressed, holy. You, our enemies, say that we are bad. We are by far better and nobler than you are. I would have liked to see how you would look if you were in our situation.
I am happy to belong to the most unfortunate people among the nations, whose Torah is the quintessence of what is exalted and most beautiful in all law and in all ethics; the Torah, which is even more holy and more triumphant now that it has been desecrated, trodden underfoot by the enemies of God.
I trust in God, the God of Israel, even though He does everything to destroy my trust. I have trust in His statutes, although I cannot justify His deeds…I bow my head before His greatness, but His staff with which He castigates me I shall not kiss…
I wish to tell You, my God, clearly and openly, that now more than at any other time of our endless martyrology we, the oppressed, the down-trodden, the suffocating, buried alive and burned alive, have the right to know, where are the limits of Your patience?
Furthermore I have to tell You: do not pull the rope too tight lest it snap. The testing that You have placed upon us is so hard and so bitter that You have to forgive those children of Your people who in their misfortune and their anger turned their back on You…
Forgive those who despised Your name and went after other gods, who became indifferent towards You. You have castigated them so hard that they lost their faith that You were their father, that indeed they all had one father…but if You are not my God, whose God are You? The God of the murderers?
If those who hate me, who murder me, are so dark and so wicked, what am I if not someone who in his depth carries something of Your light and Your goodness?
I cannot praise You for the deeds that You tolerate; but I bless You and praise You for Your very existence, for Your awesome greatness that seems to be so mighty that whatever is happening now in the world is like nothing in Your eyes. However, just because You are so great and I so small, I ask You, I warn You for Your name’s sake: stop emphasizing Your greatness by countenancing the torment of the unfortunate.
I do not ask You to punish the guilty. It is of the fearful nature of these events that in the end the guilty will suffer of themselves. For in our death dies the conscience of the world. A whole world was murdered when it murdered the Jewish people. This world will consume itself in its own wickedness; it will drown in its own blood.
Death cannot wait any longer. I have to finish. From the floors above me the shooting becomes weaker and weaker. The last of the defenders of our fortress are falling now. With them falls and perishes the great, beautiful, God-fearing Warsaw; Jewish Warsaw. The sun is setting and I thank God that I shall not see it rise again…Soon I shall be with my wife and children, with millions of others of my people, who perished, in a better world…without doubts, where God alone rules.
I die peacefully, but not satisfied; beaten, but not despairing; trusting, but not pleading; in love with God, but not a blind Amen-sayer of His.
I followed Him, though He pushed me back; I fulfilled His commandments, even though He made me suffer for it; I loved Him and remain in love with Him, though He has pressed me into the dust, afflicted me to death, reduced me to mockery and derision…
And these are my last words to You, my God of anger: nothing will avail You! You have done everything that I deny You, that I shall not trust You. Yet, I die as I lived — with rocklike emunah in You.
May He be praised forever, the God of the dead, the God of vengeance, the God of truth and justice, who will yet let His countenance shine upon the world and shake its foundations by the power of His voice…
Shema Yisra’el! Hear, O Israel! The Eternal is our God, the Eternal is One! Into Thy hand I entrust my spirit.”26Eliav, pp. 213–8; the original Yiddish was published in Die Goldene Keit.