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Holocaust theology is a body of theological and philosophical debate concerning the role of God in the universe in light of the Holocaust of the late 1930s and early 1940s. It is primarily found in Judaism. Jews were killed in higher proportions than other groups; some scholars limit the definition of the Holocaust to the Jewish victims of the Nazis as Jews alone were targeted for the Final Solution. One third of the total worldwide Jewish population were killed during the Holocaust. The Eastern European Jewish population was particularly hard hit, being reduced by ninety percent. While a disproportionate number of Jewish religious scholars were killed, more than eighty percent of the world's total,[1] the perpetrators of the Holocaust did not merely target religious Jews. A large percentage of the Jews killed both in Eastern and Western Europe were either nonobservant or had not received even an elementary level of Jewish education.[2]
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have traditionally taught that God is omniscient (all-knowing), omnipotent (all-powerful), and omnibenevolent (all-good) in nature.[citation needed] However, according to many believers and unbelievers, these views are in apparent contrast with the injustice and suffering in the world. Monotheists seek to reconcile this view of God with the existence of evil and suffering. In so doing, they are confronting what is known as the problem of evil. One solution to the problem of evil is dualism, which envisions a second God with evil characteristics. Another solution is to propose that God is actually an evil entity with the goal of increasing suffering in the world.
Within all of the monotheistic faiths many answers (theodicies) have been proposed. In light of the magnitude of depravity seen in the Holocaust, many people have also re-examined classical views on this subject. A common question raised in Holocaust theology is "How can people still have any kind of faith after the Holocaust?"
A scholarly literature, including a variety of anthologies and commentaries, has developed that reflects upon Holocaust theology as a religio-cultural phenomenon.[3]
- ^ Steven T. Katz; Shlomo Biderman; Gershon Greenberg, eds. (2006). Wrestling with God: Jewish Theological Responses during and after the Holocaust: The Third Era. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199885206.
- ^ Reeve Robert Brenner (2014). The Faith and Doubt of Holocaust Survivors. Transaction Publishers. p. 81. ISBN 9781412852975.
- ^ Useful surveys include: Daniel R. Langton, 'Theology' in Writing the Holocaust, D. Langton and J-M Dreyfus, eds (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011), 76–99; Stephen Katz, Shlomo Biderman, Gershon Greenberg, eds, Wrestling with God: Jewish Theological Responses During and After the Holocaust (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Dan Cohn-Sherbok, Holocaust Theology: A Reader (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2002).[ISBN missing]