Theology and Ethics After the Holocaust
Learning With Your Own Havruta
Course Details
The Holocaust was more than the greatest catastrophe in Jewish history. It is a watershed in human civilization. The event challenges the credibility of religions, in particular Judaism and Christianity, confronts the fundamental assumptions and self-understanding of modern civilization, and demands revisions in ethical norms and behaviors.
One of the world's leading Holocaust theologians, Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, in decades of teaching and writing, has taken up the challenges of this conversation head-on. As he concludes, the Holocaust is far too big an event to assimilate into any prior version of Jewish theology. It requires new answers and new paradigms.
In this course, we will explore Greenberg's revolutionary framework of covenant and what he sees as the core vision of Judaism in the modern world in order to begin thinking about these huge, terrifying, and challenging themes.
Rabbi Irving "Yitz" Greenberg is a preeminent Jewish thinker, theologian, activist, president of the J.J. Greenberg Institute for the Advancement of Jewish Life, and Senior Scholar in Residence at the Hadar Institute. Together with Elie Wiesel, he founded CLAL: The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership and served as its president until 1997. From 1997 to 2008, he served as founding president of Jewish Life Network/Steinhardt Foundation. Rabbi Greenberg was one of the founders of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry and a pioneer in the development of Holocaust education and commemoration, serving as the Executive Director of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust in 1975 and as chair of the United States Holocaust Memorial and Museum in 2000-2002. He is the author of five books, including The Triumph of Life: A Narrative Theology of Judaism (JPS, 2024).
