“If God lived in our neighborhood, we’d throw stones through His (sic) windows.”
I do not know who originally said that, though I think that the original was in Yiddish.
But, it’s true.
And, if you were to ask me whether Jewish worship has a “design flaw,” I would say that this is it: Almost nowhere in our services do we get to yell at God and to protest God’s actions and inactions.
We want our worship experiences to be uplifting and inspirational. But, we are missing out on the emotional richness and depth of the religious experience. Yes — joy, gratitude, uplift. But, anger and questioning are part of any healthy relationship. Where is that in our prayer experience?
This is a crying shame — and I emphasize “crying.”
Because crying out at God and yelling at God and protesting God are a distinctive part of Judaism and Jewish texts. It goes back to Abraham, who protested God’s planned destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah; Moses, who protested God’s threatened destruction of the Israelites at the incident of the Golden Calf; Job, who demanded justice from God; the author of the Psalms, who has a lot to say about God’s actions and silence — all the way to Tevye (“I know we are your chosen people. But, once in a while, can’t You choose someone else?”) and to Elie Wiesel …
In fact, that is the original meaning of the term “chutzpah.” It means audacity — against, and with, God.
This is the essential sacred lesson of a new spectacular book by Menachem Rosensaft — “Burning Psalms: Confronting Adonai after Auschwitz.” Menachem is an attorney in New York, the founding chairman of the International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and, most notably, had been active in the early stages of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
“Burning Psalms: Confronting Adonai after Auschwitz” by Menachem Rosensaft. (Courtesy image)
In his introduction, Menachem writes:
The Kotzker Rebbe famously asked, “Where is God?” before answering his own question: “God is wherever you let God in.”
But what if we have quarrels with God? How do we manifest our uncertainties, our reproaches, even a deep sense of abandonment, of betrayal?
Again and again, we are told that Adonai is and always has been merciful and compassionate, that Adonai is our rock, our fortress, our redeemer, acting with lovingkindness and protecting us from evil and evildoers. And yet, we know that no such divine intervention, no such divine assistance was forthcoming, that no divine lovingkindness manifested itself at Auschwitz or Treblinka, at Majdanek, Babi Yar, Ponary, or Bergen-Belsen.
My father was once asked if he still believed in God after surviving numerous Nazi German death and concentration camps. “I do not hold the Rebboine shel-oilem, the Master of the Universe, responsible for the Holocaust,” he replied, “but I won’t give Him any medals for it, either.”
What does Menachem do? He writes new psalms. He remembers how the ancient Psalmist talked back to God, and he reproduces that chutzpah for our time.
That is what you will read in “Burning Psalm 106”:
no hallelujahs from me after auschwitz
I cannot give thanks to You, Adonai
for goodness You withheld
at majdanek
for lovingkindness You did not show at ponary
for mighty deeds You did not perform at babi yarremember Your people whom You did not favor at belzec
whom You did not save for Your name’s sake at sobibor…
You may have answered
isaac on mount moriah
but You did not answer
janusz korczak and his children at treblinkaYou may have answered
hagar and ishmael in the desert but You did not answer
regina jonas or edith stein
at birkenauYou may have answered joshua in gilgal
but You did not answer anne frank or helene berr in bergen-belsenYou may have answered
joseph in his egyptian prison
but You did not answer
charlotte salomon or horst rosenthal in gurs…
You may have answered
jonah inside the fish
but You did not answer
walter benjamin in portbou
or szmuel zygielbojm in LondonYou may have answered mordechai and esther in shushan but You did not answer
hannah szenes in budapest
or enzo sereni in dachauno hallelujahs from me I cannot bless You after auschwitz Adonai
the dead will not say amen
Menachem knows what he is doing, and he knows what he has inherited. The traditional liturgy contains a litany: “May the One Who answered … answer us as well.” It refers to biblical moments when God was present.
Not here and not now.
Menachem is adamant: God was silent during the Holocaust and Jews cannot echo that divine silence in the presence of contemporary evil.
Thus, “Burning Psalm 2”:
Adonai
when You heard nations curseYour children
saw them murder
Your children
did You laugh in Your heaven
did You rage?
and when You said
you are My son
you are My daughter
were You speaking to
were You thinking of
the jewish child
in a birkenau gas chamber?
jesus
on his cross?
anne frank
dying of typhus in a belsen barrack? the tutsi girl
being raped
before she was killed?
the bosniak boy
shot at srebrenica?
and if You were their creator
if You fathered them
is their death
is their anguish Your inheritance?
God is present, or should be present, in all catastrophes.
Even, yes, among those who suffer in Gaza.
It is now 80 years, this past week, since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Eighty years since the end of the Holocaust.
Every week, it seems, another survivor of the Holocaust dies. Their children and grandchildren inherit what author Thane Rosenbaum calls “secondhand smoke” — stories, memories, narratives and trauma.
This is the voice of the secondhand smoke.
This is not an easy book to read, but it is nevertheless a necessary book to read.
Remember how, when you were a kid, you sometimes sneaked a comic book into school and read it furtively between the covers of your textbook?
Time to do that again.
Sneak this book into services with you and hide it beneath the covers of your prayer book.
God will forgive you.
Because I think God needs our anger, as well. God knows it is not a sign of distance.
Anger, too, can be a sign of love.