In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Modern Judaism 22.2 (2002) 142-168



[Access article in PDF]

The Holocaust in Contemporary Israeli Haredi Popular Religion

Kimmy Caplan


Introduction

Rabbi Yerahmiel Kerom, a popular Ashkenazi Haredi preacher, describes in one of his sermons a conversation he held with a nonreligious Jew from Ashdod, a Holocaust survivor who had been a yeshivah student as a young man. According to Kerom, the man objected to the use of sirens in major cities to herald the beginning of the Sabbath because they evoked grim memories of the Holocaust. As he continued to speak, Kerom distinguished between those who survived the Holocaust and those who make associations with the event decades later. He explains that people in the former category find it difficult to grapple with the Holocaust in an unbiased manner. Thus, he says,
For me, buddy, it's hard to believe in God because I don't really think the Holocaust was all that serious. For me, the Holocaust is like South Vietnam, for me it's like Biafra, because I did not see what was special about the Holocaust. You, who were in the Holocaust and experienced it on your flesh, in your family, you saw the horrors, you saw the devastation. . . . You saw the tremendous hatred, and only you can tell me that you've seen nothing like it in any people in history. I've read history books; I have not witnessed it in any nation. So, don't you see the answer here? 1

Since the Second World War, Haredi society has been vastly preoccupied with the Holocaust, and publications on this subject seem to have proliferated with special intensity during the last two decades of the twentieth century. Menachem Friedman terms this preoccupation "almost obsessive." 2 The popular literature produced over the past twenty-five years has gained a very wide circulation and oral references to the topic are even more profuse. 3 This popular literature has reached every possible sector of Haredi society: Hasidim and Mitnagdim, Ashkenazim and Sephardim, men and women, adults and children. It is circulated in diverse ways, such as books; articles in the Haredi press; sermons and lectures; pamphlets on the weekly Torah portion read on Sabbath in synagogues that are circulated in synagogues countrywide each week; children's literature, and plays.

Focusing on some of this vast literature, the purpose of this article is to raise questions and point the research effort in various possible [End Page 142] directions, rather than to infer and explain. This, by raising four interrelated elements:

1) A preliminary and partial typology of contemporary Israeli Haredi responses to the Holocaust.

2) The variety of forms this literature takes, its frameworks, structures, and contents, which change over time.

3) The relationship between Haredi popular literature and academic research on the Holocaust.

4) A suggestion that the dominant anti-Zionist theme in Israeli Haredi responses to the Holocaust between the late 1940s and the 1980s has made way in the last two decades of the twentieth century for other themes and aspects.

Following the last element, this article relates to Menachem Friedman's work on the Haredi effort to cope with the Holocaust between the 1940s and the 1960s, 4 and to Dina Porat's work on the same subject in the 1980s. 5 Both Friedman and Porat emphasize the centrality of the Haredi claim that the Holocaust and its consequences can be attributed to Zionism in general and to the Holocaust-era Zionist leadership in particular. This accusation, expressed in many ways, is associated, inter alia, with theological difficulties, alternative manifestations of heroism, and the attitude of various Haredi groups toward the State of Israel. 6

Finally, it is hoped that the continuation of this study will shed light on the process of continuity and change in the way Haredi society, in its many factions, grapples with the Holocaust.

A Methodological Note

There is Haredi literature that targets a relatively small and learned population, but the extent to which it trickles down to the public at large, if at all, is unclear. 7 In contrast, the sources discussed here fall...

pdf

Share