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Revelation at Auschwitz

Giving the ghosts of the Holocaust a place in Jewish liturgy

by
Menachem Z. Rosensaft
January 27, 2025

Werner Forman/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Werner Forman/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

As we observe International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27, which this year marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, it is incumbent on those of us who consider ourselves religiously observant Jews—and I include Conservative, Reform, Orthodox, and Reconstructionist Jews as well as members of other streams of Judaism in the category of “religiously observant”—to ask ourselves, not for the first time, the question that risks shattering our faith in and our relationship with God: How do we reconcile, how can we reconcile, the brutal, systematic genocide of millions of women, children, and men with the concept of an omniscient, omnipotent, protective God whom we consistently praise and thank in our liturgy for performing miracles on behalf of the Jewish people in biblical times? How can we praise God for saving the Israelites fleeing Egypt by parting the waters for them, when we know that the same God did not rescue some 6 million Jews from annihilation at the hands of Nazi Germany and its accomplices?

Talmudist and Auschwitz survivor professor David Weiss Halivni wrote, “There were two major theological events in Jewish history: Revelation at Sinai and revelation at Auschwitz … At Sinai, God appeared before Israel, addressed us, and gave us instructions; at Auschwitz, God absented Himself, abandoned us, and handed us over to the enemy.”

While God’s self-revelation at Sinai forms the bedrock of Jewish theology and liturgy, the Divine manifestation Weiss Halivni called “revelation at Auschwitz” is generally ignored at Jewish religious services or, when unavoidable, often glossed over, almost as an inconvenience.

Psalm 137, memorializing how Jews wept and yearned for Jerusalem in their Babylonian exile, epitomizes the disconnect between recognition of ancient historic upheavals and our failure to even acknowledge the unfathomable trauma of the Shoah in our liturgy. “if I forget the dead of birkenau / if I forget the dead of treblinka” “Burning Psalm 137” now commands us, “if I forget to see their eyes / if I forget their anguish / their agony / if I cease hearing their / screams / may my heart shrivel / into dust / may my soul wither / into ashes”

I wrote Burning Psalms: Confronting Adonai After Auschwitz not to seek answers to the unanswerable but to try to bring the theological enigma represented by the Holocaust squarely into the Jewish liturgy by invoking the ghosts of Auschwitz who, in “Burning Psalm 148,” remind Adonai “that You / did not keep Your faithful / close to You / that they / were left to die / alone”

The Holocaust challenged and shattered many of the previously accepted norms of human existence, including our Jewish religious norms. While we have had no problem allocating blame and responsibility for the Holocaust to its mortal perpetrators, we have, simply put, let Adonai—the God we pray to—off the hook.

Psalm 115 is recited during Hallel on the festivals of Sukkot, Pesach, and Shavuot as well as during the eight days of Hanukkah, including “The heavens are Adonai’s, the earth is given to human beings. The dead do not celebrate God, nor do those who go down to the grave, but we shall bless God, now and always.” “Burning Psalm 115” ends on a different, far more discordant note: “the heavens are indeed yours / Adonai / and the earth / has become Your people’s graveyard / the dead / who descended into silence / do not praise You / cannot praise You / so how can we / now bless You?”

The destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem, respectively almost three and two millennia ago, are sources of theological sorrow and mourning in a way that the destructions of thousands upon thousands of temples, synagogues, Hasidic prayer rooms, and Jewish homes have never become. It is the rare bar or bat mitzvah who features—rather than give passing lip service to—a grandparent’s or great-grandparent’s experiences during the Holocaust. But that is largely due to the sobering reality that there is nothing, absolutely nothing, in a regular Shabbat, Days of Awe, or festival service that might indicate to that bar or bat mitzvah that the hell their grandparent or great-grandparent went through is a core or even a tangential element of the contemporary—that is to say, post-Holocaust—Jewish theological and liturgical existence.

This must change if we want Holocaust remembrance to be more than a perfunctory catchphrase for future generations of Jews who never interacted with or even encountered a survivor.

To a large extent, we express our faith in and devotion to God through the biblical psalms that are interspersed throughout the Jewish liturgy and in which God is consistently praised and exalted. This idyllic, harmonious relationship with and to God depends on our not confronting God with the reality and horrors of the Holocaust because we know that there can be neither praise not exultation for God in the context of Auschwitz, Treblinka, the Warsaw Ghetto, Babi Yar, or Bergen-Belsen.

My father was once asked if he still believed in God after surviving numerous Nazi German death and concentration camps. “I do not hold the Rebboine shel-oilem, the Master of the Universe, responsible for the Holocaust,” he replied, “but I won’t give Him any medals for it, either.”

Birkat Hamazon, the blessings recited after a meal, includes the following verse from Psalm 37: “I was young and now I am old, but I have not seen a righteous man forsaken, nor his children begging for bread.” “Burning Psalm 37” echoes why my father refused to utter these words after the Holocaust: “I was young and became old / and I have seen far too many / of Your righteous sons and daughters / forsaken by the world / forsaken by You / and their children / begging for bread / starving”

I believe—ani ma’amin—with perfect faith—be’emuna shlema—in the coming of the Messiah is the 12th of Maimonides’ 13 principles of faith. But how do we reconcile, how can we reconcile such absolute trust with the failure of the Messiah, any Messiah, to appear at the nadir of Jewish history? ​The Yiddish poet Shmerke Kaczerginski, a survivor of the Vilna Ghetto, enunciated this fundamental spiritual and theological quandary in his song, “Zol shoyn Kumen di Geule“ (Let the redemption come already) when he pleaded with the “tatele in himl,” the father in heaven, that the Messiah shouldn’t arrive on the scene “a bissele tzu shpet,” a little too late.

It is easy, albeit altogether facile, to quote Nietzsche’s madman to the effect that “God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him.” But if we take this route, we have no business participating in synagogue services centered around prayers that uniformly and unequivocally praise God and seek God’s help.

Martin Buber’s formulation of the “Eclipse of God,” a variation on the traditional concept of hester panim, of God hiding the Divine Countenance from humankind, is less radical in its attempt to provide an explanation for God’s perceived absence during the Holocaust. But this approach leaves us and God in what amounts to a standoff, with us accepting at face value— perhaps reluctantly, definitely uneasily—Adonai’s refusal to even look at, let alone take any steps to avert, the cataclysm in which millions of women, children, and men were systematically, savagely murdered.

The Buberian hester panim premise has its origins in the biblical acknowledgments that God may choose to be absent, to turn away. “Then My anger will flare up against them on that day, and I will abandon them and hide My countenance from them,” Moses quotes God in Deuteronomy 31:17. Moses then reiterates God’s intention to “keep My countenance hidden on that day because of all the evil they have committed by turning to other gods.” (Deuteronomy 31:18), and that “I will hide my countenance” from the Israelites in the moments of their greatest distress, their greatest need. (Deuteronomy 32:20)

Even more problematic is the possibility, set forth unequivocally only a few verses later, that God might actually be the perpetrator of destruction and devastation. “I will sweep misfortune on them,” God told Moses, “use up my arrows on them: Wasting famine, ravaging plague, deadly pestilence, and fanged beast will I let loose against them … The sword shall deal death without, as shall the terror within.” (Deuteronomy 32:23-25)

We cannot accept—I certainly cannot accept—the contention of some ultra-Orthodox rabbis that the Holocaust was a Divine punishment for perceived sins and heresies committed by Jews under the influence of Zionism, socialism, communism, the Enlightenment, or just for failing to adhere to God’s commandments. To his credit, the late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher rebbe, categorically rejected this approach. “The destruction of 6 million Jews in such a horrific manner that suppressed the cruelty of all previous generations,” he declared, “could not possibly be because of a punishment for our sins. Even the Satan himself could not possibly find a sufficient number of sins that would warrant such genocide.”

Still, while insisting that “no evil descends from Above,” the Lubavitcher rebbe believed that “buried within torment and suffering is a core of exalted spiritual good. Not all human beings are able to perceive it, but it is very much there. So it is not impossible for the physical destruction of the Holocaust to be spiritually beneficial.”

Rabbi Irving Greenberg elaborates on the hester panim concept in his new book, The Triumph of Life: A Narrative Theology of Judaism, by invoking a modern incarnation of the kabbalistic notion known as tzimtzum, a Divine self-limitation of revelation, in which “God came closer, and humans were handed full responsibility—including in the end the full responsibility to stop the Holocaust.”

The stumbling block inherent in hester panim and tzimtzum is that both are predicated on a voluntary Divine act. If Adonai could have chosen to turn away from humankind, the same Adonai could presumably have reversed that decision at will.

Consequently, wrapping God in the mantle of hester panim or tzimtzum strikes me as a somewhat contrived theological rationalization for maintaining a covenantal relationship with the Divine in the face of Adonai having opted to remain aloof from and uninvolved in the decimation that was the Holocaust.

None of us can presume to know God’s essence or God’s countenance. If, however, we wish to continue to interact with God after Auschwitz as Avinu Malkeinu, our parent and sovereign, in the same way we did before Auschwitz, then we have not just the right but the obligation to bring the ghosts of Auschwitz into our dialogue with Adonai.

Psalm 120 asks Adonai to “save my soul from false lips, from a deceitful tongue” before concluding with a sense of relief that “For a long time, my soul dwelled with those who hate peace, I am at peace ….” In contrast, “Burning Psalm 120” takes us into the depths of the Shoah: “cursing lips / malignant tongues / pernicious words / were only / the beginning / I was shot / at ponary / inhaled zyklon-b / at birkenau / carbon monoxide / at treblinka / typhus ravaged my soul / in belsen barracks / and I am not at peace / in the grave”

And so the apparent standoff between ourselves and Adonai remains. ​Writing in early 1944, while the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau were operating in full force, Abraham Joshua Heschel asked the most basic and most critical of all theological questions: “The day of the Lord is a day without the Lord. Where is God? Why dost Thou not halt the trains loaded with Jews being led to slaughter?” This question, which was asked in one form or other by Jews in the ghettos and camps of the Holocaust, is studiously avoided in post-Holocaust Jewish religious services. It is also the very question that must, in my opinion, be transposed into precisely those services.

At the same time, regardless of whether Adonai was present or absent, regardless of what God did or did not see, we cannot allow ourselves to shift responsibility for the Holocaust away from its human perpetrators and from the bystanders who let it happen. Which means that the voices and perspectives of the survivors, “the generation / of ashes / risen from the inferno” must perforce resonate in the Burning Psalms as well. While refusing “to utter words of praise / to Adonai / to anyone,” those who “were not meant / to return” say, “to the nations” in “Burning Psalm 126”: “you abandoned us / you betrayed us / we will not let you forget / what you did to us / we who sow with tears / reap our future / with nightmares”

Jewish religious ritual has become largely standardized but it was never meant to be static. New prayers and new hymns were added over the centuries. The Hashkiveinu prayer, recited during the evening Maariv service in which we ask God to “spread over us Your canopy of peace,” was written in the fourth century of the Common Era. Kol Nidre was probably written 200 or 300 years after that.

The Yedid Nefesh (Beloved of the Soul) hymn that implores God to “hurry ... do not hide ... Spread over me the shelter of Your peace ... come quickly ... Have compassion for me as in days of old,” was written sometime in the 16th century in Safed by the kabbalist and poet Eleazar ben Moshe Azikri and entered the liturgy in the shadow of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal.

The prayer for the State of Israel—Avinu Shebashamayim—that is recited every Shabbat in synagogues across the globe was written in 1948 by the then Ashkenazi “chief rabbi of the Holy Land,” Rabbi Yitzhak Halevi Herzog, the grandfather of Israeli President Isaac Herzog, and edited by the future Nobel laureate in literature S.Y. Agnon.

The need for innovative, theologically rooted Holocaust remembrance has long been apparent. “We were slaves to Hitler in Germany,” began a Passover Haggadah, written in 1946 in a displaced persons camp in Germany by Yosef Sheinson, a survivor of the Kovno Ghetto, analogizing the suffering of Jews under the Nazis to that of the Israelites in Pharaoh’s Egypt. In 2002, the Conservative movement’s Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies and Rabbinical Assembly published a Holocaust scroll—Megillat HaShoah—to be read on Yom HaShoah, the day set aside on the Jewish calendar to commemorate the Holocaust. More recently, Israeli poet and novelist Michal Govrin, herself the daughter of a survivor, spearheaded an entirely new liturgy called Hitkansut, or the Gathering, for Yom HaShoah.

But the Holocaust should not be remembered and commemorated only on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, on Yom HaShoah, or in the Martyrology on Yom Kippur. If, as David Weiss Halivni maintained, the Holocaust was the second watershed event in Jewish history after Revelation at Sinai, it must be intrinsically integrated as such into our overall Jewish religious observance. My fervent if presumptuous hope in writing my Burning Psalms was that one or more of them might eventually find their way into a synagogue service, perhaps juxtaposed with their corresponding biblical psalms, if only as a reminder of unperformed miracles, of lovingkindness withheld.

Thus, the phantasmal narrator of “Burning Psalm 122” says to Adonai, and to us: “You were not with me / on the train / Adonai / You were not with me / when I walked / through the gates of hell / You were not with me / on the ramp / You were not with me / when they threw me / into the abyss / and You have not been with me / are not with me / in the emptiness”

The Burning Psalms are meant to give the ghosts of Auschwitz, the ghosts of the Holocaust, a central role in Jewish liturgy, not as shadowy intruders into our consciousness but as vocal center-stage protagonists. By attempting to reimagine the biblical psalms in their voices, I knew full well that I was treading into a perilous unknown. But I have no doubt whatsoever that in order to continue our interaction with Adonai, we must confront Adonai with these voices in our dialogue with the Divine. And perhaps, just perhaps, Jews praying to Adonai will begin to hear these voices as well.

burning-psalm-37Burning Psalm 37

The storm belongs to You
Adonai
I have seen the humble and the innocent
the poor and needy
who walked in Your path
slaughtered
their killers’ arms unbroken

You did not sustain the just
You let them starve
let them fall
let them die
their inheritance misery
pain
despair
desolation
devastation

they
not their enemies
were cut off
they
not their enemies
were destroyed
they
not their enemies
were consumed by smoke

rabbis
scholars
their beard ripped from their faces
beaten to death
young women
humiliated
their hair shorn
jeered at
groped

infants
ripped from their mothers’ arms
hurled into pits of fire

I was young and became old
and I have seen far too many
of your righteous sons and daughters
forsaken by the world
forsaken by You
and their children
begging for bread
starving

they turned away from evil
Adonai
still You abandoned them
they trusted in You
but You
did not act
they sought refuge in You
called out to You
waited for You
but You
did not rescue them

now they will not rescue You

burning-psalm-37


burning-psalm-77Burning Psalm 77

how can Your name be exalted at birkenau
Adonai
how can It be sanctified?

with the doors shut behind me
my voice
still strong
still trusting
calls out to You
on the day
in the final hour
of my distress
my despair
in minutes that seem
without end
still waiting
still hoping
that You hear me
still waiting
still hoping
perhaps to awaken
from the nightmare
but You
send no eagle
swooping down from nowhere
to carry me
to carry us
any of us
through the walls
through nonexistent windows
in the walls
I weep from fear
from panic
I force my eyes
to remain open
just one more second
but You do not appear
are not there
my throat throbs
I can no longer speak
eyes now closed
I remember
a shabbat table
the taste of a kiss
my mother’s hug
my father’s voice
blessing You
children playing
the smell of a flower
perhaps a rose
I try to hear melodies
to drown out the screams
I remember You
Adonai
have You forsaken me
have You forsaken us
forever?
has Your lovingkindness
come to an end
forever?
why are You
pouring out Your wrath
on me
on us
who have always known You
loved You
been faithful to You?
what did I do
what did any of us do
to You
to anyone?
why have You withdrawn
why are You withholding
Your compassion?
toxic air envelops me
suffocates me
there is no thunder
no lightning
the earth does not shake
You
have not redeemed me
did not redeem us
allowed Your people
Your children
to be slaughtered

why should You be exalted at birkenau
Adonai
why should You be sanctified?


burning-psalm-77

burning-psalm-115Burning Psalm 115

no longer
Adonai
no longer
corpses with mouths
that no longer speak
eyes
that no longer see
ears
that have ceased to hear
noses
that do not smell
hands
that do not feel
feet
that do not walk
throats
unable even to murmur

not the nations
but we
ask
“where is our God?”

You
in Your heavens
looked away
hid Your countenance
from them
from us

israel
the house of jacob
trusted in You
but You were not
their help and their shield

You did not remember
those who feared You
were faithful to You
You did not bless
the small together with the great

the heavens are indeed Yours
Adonai
and the earth
has become Your people’s graveyard
the dead
who descended into silence
do not praise You
cannot praise You
so how can we
now bless You?


burning-psalm-115

burning-psalm-120Burning Psalm 120

an elegy from the dead for the dead

in my distress I called to You
Adonai
but You
did not answer me
did not save my soul
from cursing lips
did not protect me
from malignant tongues
honed arrows
disguised
as pernicious words
die juden sind unser unglück
turned into fist
kauft nicht bei juden
turned into cudgels
jüdische weltverschwörung
turned into mobs
saujude
beards shorn in the street
untermensch
burning synagogues
rassenvergiftung
ransacked homes
juda verrecke
jews burned alive in synagogues
wenn das judenblut vom messer spritzt
ghettos
vernichtung der jüdischen rasse
slaughter
judenfrei
german laughter
cursing lips
malignant tongues
pernicious words
were only
the beginning
I was shot
at ponary
inhaled zyklon-b
at birkenau
carbon monoxide
at treblinka
typhus ravaged my soul
in belsen barracks
and I am not at peace
in the grave


burning-psalm-120

burning-psalm-122Burning Psalm 122

lasciate ogni speranza voi ch’entrate

when they said to me
“you are leaving
you are never coming back”
they would not tell me where
they were taking me

for days
in the stifling cattle car
without food
without water
without light
my only hope
was that You
Adonai
would be with me
that You
would rescue me

together with Your tribes
from across cursed europe
I walk through gates
not of righteousness
but of evil
not of jerusalem
but of birkenau

I see a city
built within itself
a city
cut off from Your world
a vast city
of wooden barracks
one after the other
after the other
a city
of fear
of pain
of hunger
of tears
a city
in unrelenting distress
without goodness
I hear dogs barking
german voices snarling
I feel a piercing wind
choke my heart
paralyze my soul
but I do not see You
do not hear You
do not feel You

on the ramp not You
but they
clean shaven in their uniforms
stand in judgment
determine who
would be murdered
who would not be murdered
yet

we who love You
search for You
call out to You
plead
for Your salvation
but You are not there
and I refuse to pray
for the peace of jerusalem
at birkenau

You were not with me
on the train
Adonai
You were not with me
when I walked
through the gates of hell
You were not with me
on the ramp
You were not with me
when they threw me
into the abyss
and You have not been with me
are not with me
in the emptiness


burning-psalm-122

burning-psalm-126Burning Psalm 126

we are the generation
of ashes
risen from the inferno
to remind Adonai
that we were not meant
to return

our eyes have forgotten
how to laugh
our mouths sing elegies
one for each of our dead
our tongues refuse
to utter words of praise
to Adonai
to anyone

we say to the nations
you abandoned us
you betrayed us
we will not let you forget
what you did to us

we who sow with tears
reap our future
with nightmares


burning-psalm-126

burning-psalm-137Burning Psalm 137

the temple fades
into the fog of time
we no longer weep
by the rivers of babylon
and a new discordant song
chanted by crematory ghosts
haunts our nightmares
if I forget the dead of birkenau
if I forget the dead of treblinka
if I forget to see their eyes
if I forget their anguish
their agony
if I cease hearing their screams
may my heart shrivel
into dust
may my soul wither
into ashes


burning-psalm-137

burning-psalm-148Burning Psalm 148

Your angels
may want to acclaim You
Adonai
kings and princes
rabbis and priests
imams and patriarchs
may want to magnify
Your name
but the ghosts of auschwitz
remind You
remind us
that You
must not be praised
from the heavens
that Your name
should not be exalted
on high

the earth and oceans
the mountains and all the hills
fruit trees and all the cedars
are Your splendor
but the ghosts of auschwitz
remind You
remind us
that they haunt
Your eternity

the animals and birds
remind You
remind us
of the freedom
brutally torn away
from Your people

the heavens
and the waters
above the heavens
remind You
remind us
of Your vast universe
that could have been
but never became
a sanctuary

snow and hail
remind You
remind us
that the children of israel
were forced to stand
for hours
outside their barracks
in the freezing cold
day after day
during winter roll calls

the sun and moon
remind You
remind us
that they looked on
that You looked on
in silence
as millions
were slaughtered

the stars of light
blanketing the sky
remind You
remind us
of the million-and-a-half
jewish children
whose lights
were extinguished

stormy winds
raging into the night
remind You
remind us
of no longer breathable air
in zyklon-b chambers

fire and smoke
remind You
remind us
of crematory flames
consuming flesh and bones
leaving behind
only ashes

the ghosts of auschwitz
remind You
remind us
that You
did not keep Your faithful
close to You
that they
were left to die
alone

burning-psalm-148

From “Burning Psalms: Confronting Adonai after Auschwitz” (Ben Yehuda Press) © Menachem Z. Rosensaft

Menachem Z. Rosensaft teaches about the law of genocide at the law schools of Columbia and Cornell universities and is general counsel emeritus of the World Jewish Congress. He is the author of Poems Born in Bergen-Belsen.