Beyond Auschwitz: Post-Holocaust Jewish Thought in America, Michael L. Morgan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), ix + 288 pp., cloth $65.00, pbk. $24.95.
Michael Morgan, professor of philosophy and Jewish studies at Indiana University, has been a noted voice in the field of Jewish ethics for many years. This is his second book focusing on the question of the Holocaust as understood among Jewish thinkers in America over the last half-century.
In his introduction, Morgan describes this volume as the culmination of a twenty-year project, during which time he discussed its themes with a wide array of Jewish and some Christian thinkers, as well as with many of his students. Extended conversations with Charles Taylor, Saul Friedländer, and Michael Bernstein were especially significant for the development of this book, but its roots go back to mimeographed essays by Emil Fackenheim, essays that Morgan first read as a rabbinical student. Fackenheim became a major resource for Morgan, and he is a scholar for whom Morgan exhibits a strong personal affection.
The first two chapters offer a succinct overview of Jewish intellectual developments in the realm of history, philosophy, and literature in the immediate post-Holocaust period. Morgan summarizes the contributions of Hannah Arendt, Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, Lionel Abel, and Jean Améry. In their writings Morgan finds the first serious reflection upon the experience of the Holocaust. Raul Hilberg's The Destruction of the European Jews (1961) appeared at this time as well, but it did not have great impact until much later.
These two chapters (which could serve well as class readings for courses covering the initial period of Holocaust studies) are essentially a prelude to a treatment of Morgan's principal interest—the impact of the Holocaust upon Jewish theology in America. He launches this discussion in chapter three, where he analyzes the thought of five important figures: Richard Rubenstein, Fackenheim, Irving Greenberg, Eliezer Berkovits, and Arthur Cohen.
For Morgan, these five thinkers play a crucial role in Holocaust philosophy and theology because, despite their widely divergent approaches, all agree that theology today must confront the Shoah seriously and with full integrity. The first generation of thinkers did not connect the Holocaust experience as directly to basic faith identity as these five scholars do. In addition, while they profoundly disagree as to the nature of an adequate theological response to the Holocaust, they all recognize that such a response requires both rupture and continuity with the past, as well as grappling with the role of history in shaping religious identity today. For all of these thinkers, and for Morgan himself, there simply is no way authentic religious understanding can isolate itself from the impact of modern history. Holocaust theology especially must make a decisive turn toward history, as Christian scholars, such as Johannes Metz, David Tracy, and Rebecca Chopp, have also argued.
The volume concludes with a brief excursus on how Holocaust theology has been [End Page 178] received within the general Jewish scholarly community and its role in a postmodern era. Extensive notes and a comprehensive bibliography bring the volume to a close. Inthe central chapters, Morgan describes Rubenstein's emergence as a major voice. Deeply disillusioned with growing antisemitism within the civil-rights and antiwar movements (which often coalesced) and profoundly affected by the Six-Day War and the threat it posed to the State of Israel's survival, Rubenstein argued for the absolute need to gain and use power for Jewish survival. Increasingly, he related his views to the Holocaust, which, he regarded on one hand, as radically changing the understanding of the divine role in the world, and on the other, as explicable through established sociological and political categories.
Morgan provides considerable analysis of Rubenstein's thought. Although he is quite appreciative of Rubenstein's pioneering role in bringing the Holocaust to the forefront of Jewish theological consciousness, in the end Morgan rejects Rubenstein's theological response to Auschwitz. One could question whether Morgan has correctly interpreted Rubenstein, whose thought is complex and evolving. Rubenstein has said he does not feel Morgan has captured fully the essence of his thinking on the Holocaust. 1 While there may be more subtlety and complexity to Rubenstein than Morgan presents in this volume, his analysis is sound and sufficient for the purpose of the overview he presents.
Morgan also devotes extensive space to Greenberg's writings. While admiring his overall contribution to religious interpretation of the Holocaust and seeing him as on the right methodological track, Morgan is more critical of Greenberg than of any of the other figures whose work he highlights in this volume.
Morgan feels strongly that Greenberg has misrepresented the perspectives of Rubenstein, Fackenheim, and even Berkovits. According to Morgan, it is misleading, even false, for Greenberg to describe Rubenstein as an "atheist" and Fackenheim as a "classical theist." On the whole, Morgan judges as severely inadequate Greenberg's understanding of the dialectical challenge Auschwitz presents to traditional theological categories. For Morgan, Greenberg's perspective is skewed overly towards innovation rather than retrieval. The question that most grips Morgan is why Greenberg's new faith narrative of the voluntary covenant after Auschwitz should be any more convincing than anyone else's faith narrative if the tradition ceases to have a fundamental dimension.
As one who has worked extensively with Greenberg's writings in the development of my own theological and ethical vision, I find Morgan's summary to be reasonably accurate as an overview but his critique to be somewhat lacking. True, Greenberg may have overstretched his critique of Rubenstein or of Fackenheim, but his assessments also contain elements of truth. As we see from the outset of the volume, Morgan has a decided preference for Fackenheim's writings. I believe this colors his judgment of Greenberg's contributions. Greenberg's writings, rather than Fackenheim's, continue to offer the greater resource for constructive theological and ethical affirmation [End Page 179] today—whether by Jews or by Christians. Greenberg's thought is in the final analysis much broader in scope.
In his treatment of Fackenheim, Morgan once again provides an admirable synthesis of the development of his thought. He argues that Fackenheim has understood better than Greenberg and other major theologians the need to ground the argument for the continued significance of Auschwitz in the very process of philosophical thought—a process that leads from an initial recoiling from Auschwitz to a life lived (through concrete actions) in opposition to it but that does not automatically move to a higher plane, as with Hegel. Here lies the basis for Morgan's preference for Fackenheim. Fackenheim, Morgan believes, can move us through the challenge of the Holocaust to a reaffirmation of a divine role in human history. This point has some validity, but I find it too narrow a basis for preferring Fackenheim over Greenberg. While both have made substantial contributions, in the end Greenberg's writings remain a richer and more comprehensive resource for post-Holocaust theology and ethics.
Morgan's book makes a solid addition to the body of Holocaust religious
interpretation. Beyond Auschwitz will serve as a useful companion
for reading the authors he has examined, and it has a strong potential
for classroom use. Yet it does not tell us very much about Morgan's
personal perspective other than to say that he favors Fackenheim. This
is particularly the case with respect to the concluding chapter, in which
Morgan does not clearly articulate his understanding of how the Fackenheim
perspective can be brought to bear on postmodern consciousness. I am
glad he introduced the postmodern dimension, because it has been largely
missing from post-Holocaust theological discussion. But I am disappointed
with the incomplete way in which he discusses it. Certainly there are
points of connection to Greenberg's writings.
John T. Pawlikowski
Catholic Theological Union
Note
1. Richard Rubenstein, conversation with author, Aspen, CO, June 2002.