Post-Holocaust theology - Fackenheim and Maybaum

Fackenheim and religious duty

Emil Fackenheim, called Emile in OCR's wording, argues that the Holocaust confronts Jews with a duty not to give Hitler a posthumous victory. His 614th Commandment is a theological formulation alongside the traditional enumeration of 613 commandments. It is not a newly discovered verse of Torah or a claim that Hitler legitimately becomes Judaism's lawgiver.

The duty includes Jewish survival, remembrance of the victims, refusal to despair of God and refusal to despair of humanity or the world. These dimensions belong together. Survival without memory could abandon the murdered; memory without a future could leave Hitler's annihilating aim effectively unopposed. Religious duty is addressed to continuing Jewish life, not a judgement that victims failed to survive because of deficient faith.

Fackenheim's God's Presence in History (1970) and The Jewish Return into History (1978) connect this response with a continuing divine claim encountered through history. He does not supply a benevolent reason why each death had to occur. The approach can be understood as a response to evil rather than a full explanatory theodicy. Refusing despair is a religious orientation, not evidence that grief or questioning is forbidden.

Its strength is that it turns attention from speculative justification to memory, practice and responsibility. A criticism is that defining duty through defeating Hitler might grant the perpetrator excessive influence over Jewish identity. The reply distinguishes Hitler's authority from resistance to his aims: duties derive their meaning from Jewish life and divine relationship, while the historical threat makes them urgent. A further question is whether a duty not to despair can be compelling without assuming the very faith under challenge. The proposal sustains commitment more directly than it proves theism.

Maybaum, churban and providence

Ignaz Maybaum, in The Face of God after Auschwitz (1965), interprets the Holocaust through churban, destruction that marks a historical rupture. He compares it with the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE and the Second Temple in 70 CE, presenting the Holocaust as a third churban. In his account, destruction ends one order and permits a new historical stage, while a remnant carries Jewish witness forward.

Maybaum links this interpretation with sacrifice and suffering-servant imagery. Jewish suffering can be understood as vicarious, borne in relation to the wider world, within a providential transformation. Hitler's role is consequently framed within an account of historical judgement and change, not as a morally admirable actor. Describing a person as an instrument within a providential theory does not erase that person's culpability, but it does make the theory responsible for explaining God's relation to the evil.