PURELY COMMENTARY

FATHER'S DAY SALE AND
GIFT CERTIFICATE DRAWING

Draw a picture of
your father or
grandfather and
enter it in a draw-
ing for a $50 gift
certificate. The
prize will be
awarded June 18,
1990.

by
Jill Baskin
Age 6 1/2

%

Save

OFF Retail

On Dress Shirts, Ties, Underwear, Socks

Sale Ends June 16, 1990

O

SHIRT
30X

Men's furnishings and accessories

19011 West Ten Mile Road
Southfield, Michigan 48075

(Between Southfield and Evergreen)

Hours:
Monday-Saturday 9:30 a.m.-6:00 p.m.
9:30 a.m.-7:00 p.m.
Thursday

(313) 352-1080

PARKING AND ENTRANCE IN REAR

/or/ SAVE

(C)

C)

$

25

C)00C:10 C3C:)00

DOLLARS

SPECU. COUPON mu

TUBS & WALL TILE
REINED LIKE NEW

'25

DOLLARS

WITHOUT REMOVING THEM
WITH OUR EXCLUSIVE SYNTHETIC PORCELAINCOTE
CHECK THE FACTS FIRST:

,/WARRANTY I/RECORD i/PRICE

This Special Coupon Offer Expires 6/30/90

CALL BATHROOM MAGIC BY PERMA CERAM INC,
authorized Owens Corning/ 97 84131

Sterling Plumbing repairman
Chip repair on tubs/sinks

44001 00000)00

azdila4' Yna

36 MONTH LEASE SALE
1990 SEDAN DEVILLE
$398 76 per mo.

Stk. ll D093

*Price is plus 4% Mi. tax. Total payments for 36 mo. closed end MAC
smartlease equal $14,355.36. Vehicle may be purchased at lease end
for $12,134.37. 1st payment and $450 sec. dep. plus rebates required
at lease inception. Lease inc. 15,000 mi. per year. Additional mileage
charged at 10 1 per mile. Customer is responsible for excess wear
and tear on vehicle. Offer expires June 30, 1990.

AUDETTE CADILLAC, 7100 ORCHARD RD.

38

FRIDAY, JUNE 8, 1990

DAVID BURKE

SALES & LEASING

851-7200

Where Was God

Continued from Page 2

for the Messiah; the
Zionists had rebelled
against God by creating
the state of Israel by their
own hand.
Many Zionists, including
even David Ben-Gurion,
argued the opposite, that
the Holocaust was the
punishment of history on
those Jews who refused to
leave in time, long before
1933, for their own national
home. That God, or His
secular avatar "history,"
would let a million and a
quarter small children,
and five million of their
parents and grandparents,
die horribly because they
were either too Zionist or
not Zionist enough has
always seemed to me to be
an obscene idea. In my
angrier moments I have
said, and not only to
myself, that a God with
such motives deserves to
be defied.
A number of my friends
who were firmly Orthodox
before 1933 became fierce
athiests. I have not joined
them because I keep
rereading the Book of Job.
Every conceivable woe
happens to this righteous
man, Job. He rejects all the
explanations that his
solicitous friends try to of-
fer him. Ultimately he sum-
mons God to give him an
answer.
Replying out of the whirl-
wind, God offers Job no ex-
planation, but He does not
disclaim responsibility.
"Where were your God
asks Job, "when I founded
the world?" His powers are
indeed unlimited, and He
is never absent from the
world, either by choice or
because He is in eclipse.
God simply asserts that
there is meaning to the
world, and even to Job's
suffering, but it is beyond
man's understanding. And
yet, even as I read these
verses over and over again,
I keep asking the question:
What about Job's children?
Job survived the tragedy
of their death, but could he
ever forgive God?

It is the refusal to abandon
the people's sanctity that
emerges in Hertzberg's
recollection of the mes-
sianism, in the responses by
the survivors from the
Holocaust. Taking into ac-
count the mounting Holo-
caust libraries, the continual
flow of more and more books
about the Nazis and their
savageries, Hertzberg points
to the conclusive commitment
which is rooted in the
Psalmist's "Lo Amut Ki
Ekhya — I shall not die but

live." It is the treatment of the
challenge to God with the
"Ani maamin — I believe,"
that marks a positive ap-
proach by Hertzberg who con-
cludes his essay with this ad-
ditional emphasis on faith:
Very recently two new
collections about the
history of the Holocaust
have been published. One
is the four-volume En-
cyclopedia of the Holo-
caust, edited by Yisrael
Gutman, a survivor who is
head of research at Yad
Vashem and a professor at
the Hebrew University; the
other, Jewish Displaced
Persons Periodicals from
the Collections of the YIVO
Institute for Jewish
Research, consists of 33
reels of microfilm contain-

Hertzberg's
scholarship gave
him recognition
among the
distinguished in
Jewry.

ing 150 newspapers and
journals published in the
camps immediately after
the liberation in 1945.
The Encyclopedia con-
tains definitive accounts of
the woes that happened
during the Nazi years, but
these volumes are most im-
portant for their collection
of innumerable stories of
men, women and, above
all, children whom the
Nazis could kill but could
not break.
The periodicals that
YIVO has collected and is
now making available con-
tain horrifying stories of
the immediate past, but the
main purpose of these sur-
vivor journals was to an-
nounce, in the Yiddish
phrase that they used over
and over again, mir zeinen
doh (we are here).
The survivors did not
dwell on death; they rebuilt
life. This was the lesson
they were teaching; a peo-
ple must remember, but it
cannot live on by making a
cult of its woes. The faith of
the Jews is not simply
remembering the
Holocaust; it is the Jewish
religion, which — before
and after the Nazis —
reasserts the verse in
Psalms, "I will not die, for
I will live." Those who re-
mained after the Holocaust
and their children and
grandchildren, must live
all the harder and all the
more decently to carry on
for every one of the un-
finished lives.
This remains the lesson for

the ages, to guide the genera-
tions. The Hertzberg evalua-
tion in "Where Was God Dur-
ing the Holocaust," may be
accepted as a restoration of
faith and an acquisition of
power by Jews. That makes
survival and faith
synonymous. ❑

Quarrel

Continued from Page 2

at sea, landed together
with his wife and two
children and set out to find
a place to live. After a long,
excruciating trek, the
woman weakened and
died. Grief-stricken but un-
daunted, the husband car-
ried his two children until
all three of them fainted
from weakness and
hunger. Upon awakening,
he discovered that his
children too had died.
In his anguish, he stood
up and said: "0 Lord of the
world, You are trying
desperately to force me to
abandon my faith in You.
You will not prevail. Even
against Your own will, I
shall remain faithful." With
that, he buried his children
and continued his search
for a new home.
The Jewish fury at God is
not the vilification of an
alien and hostile force. It is
the distress and disap-
pointment of being wound-
ed by someone close. The
Jews and God are locked
in a lover's quarrel. Out of
it is born the rich theme of
protest and accusation

The Jewish fury at
God is not the
vilification of an
alien and hostile
force.

against the One who
represents ultimate justice.
Israel wishes to be com-
forted by God, but we are
told in the Midrash Israel
will accept no comforting
from God until they rebuke
Him for His conduct (Pes.
R. 30:4). God will accept the
reproof and admit He
"acted foolishly" with
Israel. Only then, having
registered the protest and
received their apology, will
Israel relent and accept
consolation.
While learning many
lessons from the Holocaust,
we aspire to faith in a demand
for justice not only for
ourselves but for all fellow
humans. The lessons are at
hand and the commitments
enforce them. ❑