When god beheld god: Notes towards a Jewish feminist theology of the Holocaust

Feminist Theology

Volumn 7, Issue 21, 1999, Pages 53-78

  Raphael, Melissa ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 77954988406     PISSN: 09667350     EISSN: 17455189     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/096673509900002105     Document Type: Article

References (70)

1. Marc H. Ellis, Toward a Jewish Theology of Liberation (London: SCM Press, 1987), p. 111.
2. Among other reasons, this is partly because there is still very little Jewish feminist theology per se. Judith Plaskow's Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective (New York: Harper San Francisco, 1990)remains the only fulllength work of Jewish feminist theology to my knowledge. However, Plaskow's book barely refers to the Holocaust.
3. Judith Tydor Baumel, 'Gender and Family Studies of the Holocaust', Women: A Cultural Review 7 (1996), pp. 114-24 (115-16).
4. Tydor Baumel, 'Gender and Family Studies of the Holocaust', p. 122.
5. Myrna Goldenberg, 'Different Horrors, Same Hell: Women Remembering the Holocaust', in Roger S. Gottlieb (ed.), Thinking the Unthinkable: Meanings of the Holocaust (New York: Paulist Press, 1991), pp. 150-66.
6. Deborah Lipstadt, 'Introduction' to Lucie Adelsberger, Auschwitz: A Doctor's Story (London: Robson Books, 1996)
7. Carol Rittner and John K. Roth, 'Prologue: Women and the Holocaust', in C. Rittner and J. Roth (eds.), Different Voices: Women and the Holocaust (New York: Paragon House, 1993), pp. 3-19.
8. Adelsberger, Auschwitz, p. 100.
9. Joan Ringelheim, 'Women and the Holocaust: A Reconsideration of Research', in Rittner and Roth (eds.), Different Voices, pp. 373-418 (378).
10. See Raul Hilberg, Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe 1933-1945 (New York: Harper Collins, 1992), pp. 126-30.
11. Sara R. Horowitz, 'Mengele, the Gynaecologist, and Other Stories of Women's Survival', in Miriam Peskowitz and Laura Levitt (eds.), Judaism Since Gender (New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 200-212 (201).
12. Kitty Hart, Return to Auschwitz (London: Granada, 1983)
13. Clara Isaacman (as told to Joan Adess Grossman), Clara's Story (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1984)
14. Sara Nomberg-Przytyk, 'The Camp Blanket', in Rittner and Roth (eds.), Different Voices, pp. 143-48.
15. Lucie Adelsberger, for example, describes being 'adopted' as mother by two girls in the children's infirmary in the women's camp at Auschwitz who at the same time styled themselves as Adelsberger's 'mother' and 'grandmother' (Auschwitz, pp. 98-100).
16. Judith Tydor Baumel, 'Social Interaction among Jewish Women in Crisis during the Holocaust', Gender and History 7 (1995), pp. 64-84 (72-76).
17. Ringelheim, 'Women and the Holocaust', pp. 378-79.
18. Baumel, 'Social Interaction
19. among Jewish Women', p. 78.
20. Baumel, 'Social Interaction among Jewish Women', pp. 70, 74, 78.
21. Chava Weissler, 'The Traditional Piety of Ashkenazic Women', in Arthur Green (ed.), Jewish Spirituality from the Sixteenth-Century Revival to the Present (London: SCM Press, 1989), pp. 245-75 (254,245-46).
22. Cited in Baumel, 'Jewish Women in Crisis', p. 79.
23. Paul Mendes-Flohr, 'Law and Sacrament: Ritual Observance in Twentieth- Century Jewish Thought' in Green (ed.), Jewish Spirituality, pp. 317-45 (323).
24. Rachel Feldhay Brenner, Writing as Resistance: Four Women Confronting the Holocaust. Edith Stein, Simone Weil, Anne Frank, Etty Hillesum (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997).
25. Cited in Baumel, 'Jewish Women in Crisis', p. 74.
26. Baumel, 'Jewish Women in Crisis', p. 79.
27. It is not that the commandments (mitzvot) were simply forgotten. For example, some religious Jewish women went to great lengths to make a Sabbath blessing over any available source of light. See Sybil Milton, 'Women and the Holocaust: The Case of German and German-Jewish Women', in Rittner and Roth (eds.), Different Voices, pp. 213-249 (230).
28. See Pesach Schindler, Hasidic Responses to the Holocaust in the Light of Hasidic Thought (Hoboken, NY: Ktav, 1990), pp. 59-70. For his account of some of the Rebbes' (necessarily masculine) acts of martyrdom, see pp. 61-63.
29. Issues in Contemporary Judaism (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991), p. 17.
30. Pelagia Lewinska's important record of the Nazis' deliberate profanization of the women in Auschwitz, and of her attempts to resist it, in 'Twenty Months at Auschwitz', in Rittner and Roth (eds.), Different Voices, pp. 85-93 and esp. p. 87.
31. Schindler, Hasidic Responses to the Holocaust, p. 53.
32. Louis Jacobs, Hasidic Prayer (London: The Littman Foundation, 1993), p.106.
33. Z'ev ben Shimon Halevi, Kabbalah: Tradition of Hidden Knowledge (London: Thames & Hudson, 1979), p. 5.
34. Midrashim are Jewish biblical commentaries in narrative form
35. Chani Smith, 'The Symbol of the Shekhinah: The Feminine Side of God', in Alix Pirani (ed.), The Absent Mother: Restoring the Goddess to Judaism and Christianity (London: Mandala, 1991), pp. 5-13 (6).
36. Schindler, Hasidic Responses to the Holocaust, p. 26.
37. Jacobs, A Jewish Theology p. 63.
38. See Smith, 'The Symbol of the Shekhinah', p. 6.
39. Helen Freeman, 'Chochmah and Wholeness: Retrieving the Feminine in Judaism', in Sybil Sheridan (ed.), Hear Our Voice: Women Rabbis Tell their Stories (London: SCM Press, 1994), pp. 179-89 (187).
40. Emil Fackenheim, God's Presence in History: Jewish Affirmations and Philosophical Reflections (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), p. 84.
41. The Face of God After Auschwitz (Amsterdam: Polak and Van Gennep, 1965), pp. 66-68.
42. With Fury Poured Out: The Power of the Powerless During the Holocaust (New York: Sure Seller, 1988).
43. The Tremendum: A Theological Interpretation of the Holocaust (New York: Crossroad, 1981).
44. Faith After the Holocaust (New York: Ktav, 1973), p. 106.
45. Berkovits, for example, writes that in the creation of the state of Israel 'we have seen a smile on the face of God. It is enough.' (Faith After the Holocaust, p. 156.)
46. Towards a Jewish Theology of Liberation, passim.
47. Cynthia Ozick, 'Notes Towards Finding the Right Question', in Susannah Heschel (ed.), On Being a Jewish Feminist: A Reader (New York: Schocken Books, 1983), pp. 120-51 (133-38).
48. Lengyel O.
49. Sara Nomberg-Przytyk, Auschwitz: True Tales from a Grotesque Land (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1985), pp. 13, 20-21, 75-76.
50. Milton, 'Women and the Holocaust', in Rittner and Roth (eds.), Different Voices, pp. 224-25.
51. Cited in Lawrence Langer, Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), pp. 12-13.
52. Joan Ringelheim, 'The Unethical and the Unspeakable: Women and the Holocaust', Simon Wiesenthal Annual 1 (1984), pp. 69-87.
53. Joan Ringelheim, 'Women and the Holocaust: A Reconsideration of Research' in Rittner and Roth (eds.), Different Voices: Women and the Holocaust pp. 378-84. Most of this article was also published in Signs: Journal of Women and
54. Culture 10 (1985), pp. 741-61.
55. Holocaust Testimonies, pp. 25, 26.
56. Holocaust Testimonies pp. 48, 37.
57. Holocaust Testimonies, p. 6.
58. Holocaust Testimonies, p. 9.
59. Holocaust Testimonies, pp. 11, 12.
60. Holocaust Testimonies, pp. 103,105 (italics mine).
61. Holocaust Testimonies p. xi.
62. Pesach Schindler, Hasidic Responses to the Holocaust in the Light of Hasidic Thought (New Jersey: Ktav Publishing House, 1990), pp. 71-85 (75).
63. See Ghetto Diary (New York: Holocaust Library, 1978). Trans. from the Polish by Jerzy Bachrach and Barbara Krzywicka (Vedder).
64. Rudolf Otto (trans. J.W. Harvey), The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the Rational (London: Oxford University Press, 1958 [1917]), pp. 1-40.
65. Aggadah is an Aramaic word from the Hebrew haggadah, itself from the root 'to tell' or 'relate'.
66. Howard Schwartz, 'Introduction' to Howard Schwartz, Elijah's Violin and Other Jewish Folktales (Harmonsdsworth: Penguin Books, 1983), pp. 11-13.
67. Schwartz, Elijah's Violin, p. 21. I am conscious that religious feminism is not well served by the perpetuation of the traditional monarchical motifs
68. 'False Goddesses: Thealogical Reflections on the Patriarchal Cult of Diana, Princess of Wales' in W. Griffin [ed.], Daughters of Gaia: Women in the American Goddess Movement forthcoming, 1999).
69. Gisella Perl witnessed this event in Auschwitz
70. A Doctor in Auschwitz