The Hebrew Prophets after the Shoah. Hemchand Gossai
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without people,
and the land is utterly desolate;
until the Lord sends everyone far away,
and vast is the emptiness in the midst of the land.
Even if a tenth part remains in it,
it will be burned again,
like a terebinth or an oak
whose stump remains standing when it is felled.”
The holy seed is its stump.5
While much has been written and spoken about the call of Isaiah, the details of the text beyond the well known and foundational “‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I; send me!’” lies a very problematic and challenging outline of what is at the forefront of the call. Indeed the call of Isaiah is not only a matter of sending the prophet to proclaim a message to the people that contains a quality of indictment because of injustices, and perchance a possibility of redemption. Rather, this message given to Isaiah to be pronounced to the people, and in so doing be effected, is one of utter devastation. The principal message is to destroy and sever the relationship. There is no point of restoration, but rather an utter annihilation of the present. If the message that is given to Isaiah is taken for what it is, and not even to imagine it to a logical conclusion, it would be of apocalyptic proportions. The prophet is to speak to the people and cause them to lose their relational quality: no intellect, no hearing, no sight, no capacity to comprehend, no healing. But beyond their personal incapacities, the people are scattered, and land, homes are destroyed. No longer is there a sense of home or belonging, even as communities and families will be separated and scattered. One is left to wonder what is God’s end plan. The vocabulary in this text itself tells the devastating story: no comprehension; no perception, dull; deaf; blind; no healing; wasteland; forsaken; desolation; burnt to the ground; displacement; emptiness! With such destruction, the prophet’s response is encapsulated in, “How long?” Just as well that the prophet is not given an inkling of the message before he accepts! One is reminded that the “How long, O Lord?” question has more to do with a lamentation than a quest for a timeline. Yet, surely this cannot be enough. Such devastation cannot only be met with a sigh that suggests a sense of resignation. If the prophet does not raise his voice under such circumstances, then what is the message to those who today face such devastation and genocide by those with power to destroy? Painful as it is to say and acknowledge, Isaiah at this point is complicit with God’s and this complicity underlines the destructive role of silence under these circumstances. What might have been the difference or consequence had he said, no?
“In the end, Isaiah becomes complicit in the evil proposed by YHWH for the people by his failure to act.”6 While it almost certainly will not be overwhelmingly embraced or accepted, there is, I believe, truth to Sweeney’s observation. When translated into the context of the Shoah, and indeed in contexts such as Darfur, Rwanda and Kosovo, and certainly in the context of domestic abuse, the truth is much more striking, and cannot be dismissed casually or uncritically. The voice of the victim cannot be silenced, and be blamed for his or her suffering, as is far too often the case. This is not to say that there are no consequences to certain actions, but the one with power cannot routinely be protected and the powerless who are victimized routinely be blamed and silenced.
Posing the Difficult Questions
In reading biblical texts interpreters must not only resist the temptation of navigating around the many challenging acts attributed to God, but resist the very tempting notion of seeking to justify divine acts of violence that by any measure under different circumstances might be extraordinarily difficult to justify.
Our world no less than the world of our ancient forbears is a world of violence. Whether it is at home, in the schoolyard, on the city streets, or on the shores of another country, violence would appear to be sown into the fabric of our domestic, social, and political lives. We all, in one form or another, are caught up in violence’s vicious play, either as victims or victimizers, or more likely, a bit of both . . . Divine violence cannot be treated in isolation from other language about God. If God is violent, God is also loving, benevolent and compassionate, all powerful and wise. And for Christians the violence of the cross itself represents preeminently, the revelation of the non-violent love of God, God’s solidarity through Christ with us as victims of violence and the promise of God that violence and counter violence of this world will not win out in the end.7
In Dobbs-Allsopp’s astute encapsulation, he observes that to overlook, or for that matter minimize the importance of divine violence is to marginalize the central act of the crucifixion in Christianity. The crucifixion in Christianity has been a dividing point for many denominations and Christians, namely its centrality in the faith. There seems to be two options for many Christians. Some seek to hasten the distance between crucifixion and resurrection. The darkness for some is so overwhelming that they cannot bear the thought of living through the darkness, and so it is brushed aside. “In an age after Auschwitz such a risk, even if unwitting, cannot be tolerated.”8 In Lamentations, the malevolence of God’s silence and inattention is not so much represented or inveighed against, as it is felt, evoked in the reader, and thus implicitly criticized. “It is self-destructively sentimental for Christians to allow their understanding of the God who is Love to be separated from the hidden God. We must be willing, religiously and theologically, to face the dialectic of the revelation of God’s radical hiddenness as we—and the Bible—experience that hiddenness in life.”9
Many Jewish thinkers, including some who survived the Shoah have raised significant questions about God, about divine silence, about the role of humans after the Shoah. Where was God? Why was God silent and perhaps even absent during the Shoah? These questions, difficult as they are, must be posed and pursued. Buber has argued that ultimately it is humanity’s idolatry that has been the basis for the historical moments of punishment in different forms. Buber does develop this idea with particular reference to the Shoah, but one is left to wonder somewhat given that this idea is articulated in a volume published in 1952. Could one make and sustain this argument about the Shoah and what led to the Shoah? Buber’s idea is predicated on the notion of hestēr pānîm, that is, the hidden face of God as espoused in Jewish thought. Sweeney notes that this idea “posits that the all-powerful and righteous G-d sometimes chooses to remain hidden in times of crisis.”10 Certainly this idea raises substantial questions about God and the manner in which God is involved in the affairs of the world and the lives of the people. An immediately apparent issue would be, if God does not act, and is in fact absent during times of crises, then what might be God’s role. Indeed as Sweeney notes, there are several essential questions that have been raised, and indeed must be raised. Thus for example Sweeney responds to Ignaz Maybaum’s The Face of God after Auschwitz, in which Maybaum argues that Jews are destined to suffer and the Shoah was theologically justified in order to save the world. That is, there is a greater good and importance to the slaughter of six million Jews, for such is their lot in this life; thus their suffering and death will witness to and save the world. Not surprisingly, Maybaum’s ideas have not generated widespread support, and indeed have met with astonishment by many. However, this notwithstanding, Sweeney notes that there are a number of critical questions that might be raised. “Can G-d’s love and justice be understood in relation to the Shoah? Is it even possible for the Shoah to be understood as a form of punishment? What sins would justify the punishment the magnitude of the Shoah?”11 This idea can certainly be expanded to include other genocides, exiles and such altering and dramatic moments that transform the landscape of human life. Indeed after such extraordinary events, one might very well be left to wonder how a human-divine relationship might continue, and if so in what re-designed form. Even if one wanted to, one cannot