Eliezer Berkovits - Holocaust Philosophy

Holocaust Philosophy

After the Holocaust, Berkovits asserted that God's "absence" in Nazi Germany should be explained through the classical concept of hester panim, "the hiding of the divine face." Berkovits claimed that in order for God to maintain His respect and care for humanity as a whole, He necessarily had to withdraw Himself and allow human beings—even the most cruel and vicious—to exercise their free will. Due to the role of Christianity in the Holocaust Berkovits rejected interreligious dialogue with Christians.

Read more about this topic:  Eliezer Berkovits

Famous quotes containing the word philosophy:

    Methinks it would be some advantage to philosophy if men were named merely in the gross, as they are known. It would be necessary only to know the genus and perhaps the race or variety, to know the individual. We are not prepared to believe that every private soldier in a Roman army had a name of his own,—because we have not supposed that he had a character of his own.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)