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By Rabbi Dow Marmur

JERUSALEM—In classical Reform Judaism, to which I came from a secular background, a lot was said and written about the gap between Jewish peoplehood and the Jewish religion: liberal Jews were expected to be believers in a modernist version of the Jewish religion – striving for integration as Hebrews of the Jewish faith - whereas secular Jews were seen primarily as part of the Jewish people and thus alien to, say the American people, which even assimilation didn’t seem to overcome. That’s why, for example, liberal Jews often distanced themselves from Zionism, the liberation movement of the Jewish people.

Over the years I’ve witnessed a shift; in some small way perhaps I even participated in it. Though there were Reform Zionists – prominent men like Abba Hillel Silver, Stephen Wise and, of course, many others - there’s little to suggest that they tried to integrate the two into a coherent vision of Judaism. That has changed and now we even have a Reform Zionist organization.

I’ve been happy with this, for it combined my earlier life in a Yiddish speaking Zionist environment in the shadow of the Holocaust with my commitment to Reform Judaism. In fact, I was the founder chairman of the international organization of Progressive Jews (ARZENU).

My interest is ideological. I’ve often expressed ideas around the fact that the Hebrew Bible doesn’t have a word for “religion” and that the religious-secular divide has come to us under Christian influence. Emmanuel Levinas, one of the giants of modern philosophy in general and Jewish thought in particular, often cited the Talmudic dictum that God wants us to love the Torah more than to love God. The implication for Levinas, and with him for many of us, is that ethics comes before metaphysics; that doing isn’t just more important than believing but that doing is believing.

Of course, as my Reform teachers pointed out, doing can be abused into blind behaviorism and they cited telling examples. But we’ve also seen how believing can become blind fundamentalism. The challenge is not to look at the fringe but at the center.

I came to think about it last Wednesday evening when I attended a lecture at the Jerusalem Rainbow Group, reputedly the oldest Christian-Jewish dialogue group in Jerusalem and perhaps anywhere. The lecture was given by Professor Jesper Svartvik, the first holder of the chair in theology named after the late Krister Stendahl, former Dean of the Harvard Divinity School, former Bishop of Stockholm and one of the leading exponent of Lutheran Christianity in our time. The professorship is to be divided between the University of Lund in Sweden and the Swedish Theological Institute in Jerusalem. Svartvik is of the same ilk as Stendahl and the world will hear even more about him than it does already.

Svartvik’s topic was “The Notion of Sacred Space in Jewish and Christian Discourse.” Having first discussed the spaces of Sinai and Zion, his third “station” was Auschwitz. At Sinai Israel received the Torah, at Zion it got, in addition to the Torah, the Temple. What was there at Auschwitz?

It’s not my aim to summarize Svartvik’s brilliant address but to attempt an answer of my own in the light of the above reflections. Much of what I had written about in recent years about place and space became even more focused now.

The answer that most contemporary Jewish thinkers offer is that God was silent at Auschwitz. They put it in different ways. Some allude to the biblical notion of God hiding the divine face, others speak of God withdrawing to make room for human action and the world and Auschwitz is a manifestation of human action gone wild and sinful. This is in sharp contrast to those who, in a lame and despicable effort to defend God, speak of divine punishment for Jewish sins (occasionally ultra-Orthodox fanatics even point to Zionism and Reform Judaism as the cause).

For me the most persuasive Jewish Holocaust theologians are those who say that God was silent at Auschwitz. The Temple had, of course, been destroyed long ago. But the Torah remained – even at Auschwitz.

Emil Fackenheim has even formulated a new commandment coming, as it were, from between the chimneys of the crematoria: the duty of every Jew to survive.

Irving Greenberg suggests that, though the old covenant

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between God and Israel appears to have been broken (a very daring and for some uncomfortable idea), Jews have nevertheless continued to abide by it. Torah has remained on the Jewish agenda and not only among the so-called religious. The covenant has now become voluntary and Jews continue to practice Judaism.

David Weiss Halivni implies that despite Auschwitz there’re valid reasons for waiting for God while doing Judaism. Faith may be in abeyance, but hope is alive.

And then there’s the story by Elie Wiesel about God being put on trial in the camp and found guilty. But then someone called, “Time to say the evening prayers.”

In biblical times they didn’t have a word for “religion.” Later Judaism was mainly concerned with Torah observance. Only when Jews encountered other religions did they have to construct their own theology. Perhaps Auschwitz has made Jews revert to earlier epochs in their history. Though we don’t want to return to the desert or rebuild the Temple, we may need to re-affirm Torah in whatever way we can.

Israel is the product of Zionist celebration of Jewish peoplehood, often accompanied by a rejection of what was perceived to be religion, and greatly influenced by the reality and the memory of the Holocaust. Zionism can be interpreted to say that the distinction between religion and secularity in Judaism is false. Thus when I’m in Israel I’m not always sure what’s more “religious” – sitting in synagogue on Shabbat, as I do, or walking the streets of Jerusalem, whether or not on the way to shul.

There’re now secular yeshivot in Israel and some of them are even planning to “ordain” rabbis. Very little may be said about God in those circles, but there’s much talk, teaching, learning and practicing Torah. Though the concept may be difficult to get used to, I can’t think of a more compelling illustration of a fusion of the secular and the religious.

I was thinking along those lines as I was listening to Jesper Svartvik’s talk in the Biblical Pontifical Institute in Jerusalem, only a few days before the visit by Pope Benedict XVI. It occurred to me that this view of Judaism may complicate interfaith dialogue, because dialogue tends to be based on religious doctrines and ideas, not on what some may wish to call anthropology. Though I’ve always known that Christian-Jewish relations are asymmetrical, I haven’t always been sufficiently aware of the implications of the asymmetry.

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