Holy faith and holy disbelief

I stand in awe before the memory of the K’doshim [holy ones] who walked into the gas chambers with the Ani Ma’amin–I believe–on their lips. How dare I question, if they did not question? I believe because they believed. And I stand in awe before the K’doshim, before the memory of the untold suffering of innocent human beings who walked to the gas chambers without faith, because what was imposed upon them was more than faith can endure…

The faith is holy; but so are the disbelief and the religious rebellion of the concentration camps holy. The disbelief was not intellectual, but faith crushed, shattered, pulverized. And faith murdered a millionfold is holy disbelief. Those who were not there, and yet readily accept the Holocaust as the will of God that must not be questioned, desecrate the holy disbelief of those whose faith was murdered. And those who were not there and yet join with self-assurance the rank of the disbelievers desecrate the holy faith of the believers.

— Jewish theologian Eliezer Berkowits, quoted in Jonathan Magonet, The Explorer’s Guide to Judaism, pp. 289-90.

2 thoughts on “Holy faith and holy disbelief

  1. So you can neither believe nor disbelieve without desecrating somebody else’s faith or unfaith?

    What crap.

    People do talk a lot of rot about the Holocaust.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s