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likely to work after Auschwitz. Nevertheless, religion and religious ritual remain indispensable. This is especially true of lifecycle events such as the death of a family member with its rituals of leave-taking, the solemnization of a marital bond, or puberty rites, and in that sense the Covenant exists today as part of who we are; a social-psychological perception of what it means to be a Jew. That is why I go to religious services regularly. The Covenant as something that actually happened may no longer be credible, but the Jewish people must live, and there are times in our lives that remain sacred, that is, of decisive importance, to us, even if objectively we are not a Chosen People. We will not find that newly invented rituals can do for us what our traditional rituals can. What matters now are our hallowed, ancient traditions, not because they are better than other men’s or because they are somehow more pleasing in God’s sight. We cherish them simply because they are ours, part of our family memory, and we would not with dignity or honor exchange them for any others. Every tradition has got to have rituals with which to deal with lifecycle events. We are no different. JS: The second reason you gave for the book’s controversy was that you were making the case that religion played a larger role in the Holocaust than people wanted to admit. RR: Yes, religion played a large role in the Holocaust and it starts with Paul of Tarsus and Augustine who wanted Jews to survive so that they could eventually come to recognize Jesus Christ as their Savior. Augustine said it best: “Jews must survive but not thrive.” Hitler, however, was not interested in persecuting the Jews; he sought to exterminate them. He claimed that the Jew sought to destroy Christian civilization. What made his claim credible was that
Jews had been among the leaders of the Russian Revolution and of Bolshevism, an intellectual movement that believed in an alternative, godless society. European Christians were already primed to view Jews as outsiders. It was not asking too much to have them now view the Jews as purveyors of godless communism seeking to destroy Christian civilization. The future Pope Pious XII, who would be pope during World War II, witnessed the establishment of the Munich Soviet Republic in 1918 as the Papal Ambassador to Germany. The founder of this short-lived attempt to establish a socialist state in the Free State of Bavaria, was Kurt Eisner, a Jew. There were also Trotsky and the Red Army, etc. JS: When the second edition of After Auschwitz was published in 1992 … chapters were eliminated, others were revised, and other new ones were added. At the time you explained that the first version contained a “spirit of opposition and revolt,” while the second contained a “spirit of synthesis and reconciliation.” I understand the “spirit of opposition and revolt” you felt in 1966. But can you explain the “spirit of synthesis and reconciliation” you were feeling in 1992. RR: I’ll start with reconciliation. I am reconciled in the sense that I have more sympathy for those who opposed me and even attempted to deprive me of my vocation. I now realize how painful it was for them to hear what I was saying. And in that sense I am reconciled to the struggles I had as an outlier. The synthesis comes from my belief that we Jews are or should be all in this together. And in that regard I have to say that I feel that this congregation and this rabbi are part of my extended family. I have found my religious community. And for that I am grateful.
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JEWISH LEDGER
| JUNE 18, 2021
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