ABSTRACT
From the post-war period to the present, Jewish women have not offered a sustained theological response to the Holocaust, feminist or otherwise. Jewish women’s private theological reflections on their own holocaustal times and experience are not, of course, unknown and the two best known sources of such reflection are the writings of Etty Hillesum and Anne Frank, both of whom perished in the camps.Yet Frank’s writing was that of one who was barely more than a girl; both were Jewish more by birth rather than religious identity. They knew little of their religious heritage and were each in their own way attracted to Christianity.These two women, who may well represent other Jewish women of the same class and temper, were the products of the liberal, humanistic, universalistic spirit of emancipated, often assimilated, Western Jewry, not of the Jewish scriptures or rabbinic tradition. As Rachel Feldhay Brenner notes in her recent study, although each sought consolation and support from God, it was not that of the Jewish God or the Jewish tradition.2
