Jewish identities in Poland and America

It was only from the 1960s that a profound interest in the Holocaust arose amongst world Jewry, and serious scholarly and theological attempts to understand it and its impact on Jewish identity began to appear. Two theological approaches emerged among Jewish thinkers: a traditional one which regarded the Shoah as, ultimately, an act of God; and a radical approach represented by Rubenstein, Berkovits, Fackenheim, and Greenberg. Addresses the question of how deeply the Holocaust affected the identities of diaspora Jews and their religiosity. Sums up two series of interviews conducted by Rejak in 2000-02 - with 49 Jews or people of Jewish ancestry in Warsaw (17 of them survivors) and 52 Jews or people of Jewish ancestry in Greater New York City (four of them survivors). The results showed that the Holocaust was only one of many factors that formed their Jewish identity. Very few of the respondents appeared to have been influenced by the Holocaust in their attitude toward the idea of God. Those who lost their faith or who perceived God and their Jewishness in a "Kaplanian-Kantian" sense, did so under the impact of their upbringing and other factors rather than under the impact of the Holocaust. They did not agree with Rubenstein; their understanding of the Holocaust was closer to that of Greenberg. Notes that Polish Jews did not experience a shock of encounter with the Holocaust in the 1960s-70s, as did American Jews, because the memory of the Nazi war and genocide was always part of the national culture in Poland. (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism - The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)