Faith After the Holocaust
Chicago, IL · 1973
E
Eliezer Berkovits
Eliezer Berkovits
1908 CE–1992 CE · Modern · Oradea (Nagyvárad)
Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits (1908–1992) was a leading Modern Orthodox philosopher and one of the few Holocaust-era thinkers to write systematic Jewish theology in response to it. Born in Oradea (Romania) and ordained by R. Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg at the Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary in Berlin, he fled to England in 1939 and served congregations in Leeds, Sydney, Boston, and Chicago before joining the faculty of Hebrew Theological College in Skokie.
His *Faith After the Holocaust* (1973) defended the meaningfulness of religious faith in the face of Auschwitz through the categories of hester panim (divine hiddenness) and human freedom. His *Not in Heaven* (1983) is a major work of halachic philosophy arguing for the inherent humanism and dynamism of the halachic process. In retirement he moved to Jerusalem, continuing to write until his death.
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Stop 1 of 71908–1928Born
Oradea (Nagyvárad)אוראדאהRomania
What they did here
Born in Nagyvárad (Oradea), then Austria-Hungary.
In the same place & time
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Sages whose lives overlapped with Eliezer Berkovits’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
Across the traditions
In the same tradition
Jacob Nachum Epstein, Chaim Heller, Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg, Yechezkel Abramsky, Isser Yehuda Unterman, Shlomo Yosef Zevin, Tzvi Yehuda Kook, Menachem Mendel Kasher, Yisrael Alter, Gershom Scholem, Saul Lieberman, Meir Chadash, Yitzhak Kaduri, Yaakov Mutzafi, Chaim Shmuelevitz, Yitzchak Weiss, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, Yeshayahu Leibowitz
The world in their lifetime
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Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Eliezer Berkovits’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Buddhist world
Christian world
Hindu world
Works(3)
Not in Heaven: The Nature and Function of Halakhaלא בשמים
Jerusalem · 1983
1983 philosophical defense of the halachic process as inherently humanistic, dynamic, and pluralistic.
Full text not yet available in our corpus.
Faith After the Holocaustאמונה אחר השואה
Jerusalem · 1973
1973 systematic theological response to the Holocaust, drawing on hester panim and human moral freedom.
Full text not yet available in our corpus.