CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2016
| Author | Kupinska, Anna |
|---|---|
| Title | ???Mending the World??? in Approaches of Hassidism and Reform Judaism: The Piaseczner Rebbe Kalonymus Kalmish Shapira and the philosopher Emil L. Fackenheim on the Holocaust |
| Summary | Holocaust raised many theological and philosophical problems that questioned and doubted all previous human experience. Many believers asked is it possible to keep faith in God after mass exterminations, many thinkers were concerned with a future of philosophy that seemed to lose its value, facing unspeakable and unthinkable. There was another ontological question – how to fix all the damage, caused by Holocaust (if it is possible at all), how to prevent new catastrophes and to make the world a better place to live. On a junction of these problems two great works appeared – Esh Kodesh (The Holy Fire) by Kalonymus Kalmish Shapira and To Mend the World by Emil Fackenheim. The first was a Hassidic leader, the Rabbi of the Polish town Piaseczno and also the Rabbi in the Warsaw ghetto, who didn’t survive Holocaust but spent rest of his days, helping and comforting his Hasidim likewise other fellow Jews. Fackenheim was German Reform Rabbi, whose works combined profound knowledge of European philosophy and spiritual devotion of religious thinker. These two authors came from different backgrounds, but devoted themselves to the problem of mending (post)Holocaust world, in Kabbalistic terms – tikkun. Both Shapira and Fackenheim transferred the idea of the heavenly catastrophe, adopted from Lurianic Kabbalah, to mundane dimension, seeing a resemblance between cosmologic tragedy and human distress of the Earth. Hereby, in my work I will compare approaches of Shapira and Fackenheim in their description of Holocaust as historic and spiritual catastrophe, pointing out the differences and similarities in comprehensions of Orthodox and Reform Judaism. |
| Supervisor | Wilke, Carsten; Miller, Michael Laurence |
| Department | History MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2016/kupinska_anna.pdf |
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