Why Should Jews Survive?: Looking Past the Holocaust toward a Jewish Future

by Michael Goldberg

In the fifty years since the Holocaust, the Jewish People have felt one overriding survival . The ghosts of the murdered six million, along with the living generation of survivors, have called out the unifying chant, "never again." In 1948, this concern found a second focus in the state of Israel, the ultimate refuge of Jews worldwide. But Rabbi Michael Goldberg finds that these twin pillars of Jewish identity are brittle, and have already begun to crumble; they will not be enough to support or sustain the next generation. The time has come to answer the Why should Jews survive?
In this provocative book, Goldberg launches a bold attack on what he calls the "Holocaust cult," challenging Jews to return to a deeper, richer sense of purpose. He argues that this cult--with shrines like the U.S. Holocaust Museum, high priests such as Elie Wiesel, and rites like UJA death camp pilgrimages--is deeply destructive of Jewish identity. As the current "master story" of Judaism, Goldberg writes, the Holocaust has been used to depict Jews as uniquely victimized in human history--transforming them from God's chosen to those who manage to survive despite God's silent complicity in their persecution. This Holocaust-centered, survival-for-survival's-sake Judaism is already showing its emptiness, Goldberg contends; the generation that survived Hitler and founded Israel is dying, and the new generation seems adrift (for instance, one recent survey predicts that 70% of American Jewish marriages will be intermarriages by the turn of the century). Jews need positive reasons for
remaining Jewish, he argues; they need to return to the Exodus as their master story--the story of God leading the Jews out of slavery and making with them an eternal covenant that gave the Jews a unique place in God's plan. The Jews should survive, Goldberg concludes, because they are the linchpin in God's redemption of the world.
Rabbi Michael Goldberg has long wrestled with the crisis of identity facing today's Jewish community. In Why Should Jews Survive? , he provides a provocative and powerfully argued challenge to the dominant theme of modern Jewish thought.

Genres: Jewish

Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Michael Goldberg is a nationally-acclaimed writer and speaker. He has held two university chairs in religious studies, worked with an international strategic management consulting firm, served as a professional ethicist with the Georgia Supreme Court as well as with various hospital ethics committees, and as an ordained rabbi, provided support to religiously-diverse patients and their families as an ICU and hospice chaplain.

Goldberg completed his undergraduate studies in philosophy at Yale received his Ph.D. in systematic theology and philosophy of religion from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California.

Reviews

[Michael Lewyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every so often, I read a book that I am not persuaded by and yet still glad I read. This is one of those books.

The main question Goldberg tries to answer is: why be Jewish if (like Goldberg) you believe that the Torah was written by people instead of by God? His answer: Jews should "redeem God's name" out of "a sense of loving gratitude for the devotion God first showed them long ago in Egypt." On the other hand, he rejects Orthodoxy, believing that the broader ideas of the Exodus story should override centuries of tradition.

Although this argument is interesting I am not sure it will persuade the unconvinced. If you do believe in God, why is Judaism a better vehicle for that belief than Islam (which seems to have been grown while both Judaism and Christianity have shrunk)? If you don't believe in God, why would you care about redeeming God's name or bearing witness to God's presence? And if you believe that the Bible's story of redemption from Egyptian slavery is essentially fictitious, why would you be grateful for that story? Goldberg's positive vision of a covenant-based liberal Judaism was workable at a time when most non-Orthodox Jews still believed in God and in the Exodus story. That time seems to be long past, and we are the poorer for it.

Along the way, Goldberg takes some shots at Jews' overemphasis on the Holocaust. He correctly points out that a story of almost-extermination and vague sloans of "Never again" are not enough to make Judaism meaningful or to prevent Jews from marrying non-Jews. But as the last survivors die off and the story of the Holocaust recedes into memory, this part of his book is less relevant than it was decades ago.