ABSTRACT
In Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory, Josef Hayim Yerushalmi points out that the fathers of transcendent meaning in history were the Jews, that “human history revealed God’s will and purpose” (Zakhor 8). This set up a pattern of “divine challenge and human response . . . a tense dialectic of obedience and rebellion.” Thus there was a profound sense in which traditional Jews considered the destruction of the first and second Temples a result of their sins. The Holocaust has shaken this mentality to near oblivion. Few contemporary Jews would consider the Holocaust their fault. Yet many consider the Holocaust.
