Theological Implications of the Shoah: Caesura and Continuum as Hermeneutic Paradigms of a Jewish Theodicy

The Shoah – the Hebrew term for Holocaust – has continued to pervade theological thought, religious practice, and the contemporary identity of Judaism. Using the title of Franz Rosenzweig’s masterpiece, the Shoah could – and perhaps should – be called «the star of irredemption» because of the struggling implications of its radical evil. In Auschwitz, God is at stake because the very existence of the Jews is threatened, but the Jewish identity is also at stake because the justice and reliability …