Struggling with forgiveness after the Holocaust: Case’s Rosenthal professor explains Jewish position in dialogue
Traditional belief is forgiveness cannot pass to next generation
November 29, 2004 | For more information: Susan Griffith (216)-368-1004
 Peter Haas, Case Western Reserve University’s Abba Hillel Silver Professor of Jewish Studies, tells the story of how he picked up a German lecturer at the airport. The German, born after World War II, asked Haas, the son of Holocaust survivors, for forgiveness for what his country had done to Haas’s parents.
“How can I forgive him?” asks Haas. He explains that centuries-old Jewish law and tradition dictate that forgiveness comes when the perpetrator makes a sincere repentance and a request for forgiveness from the victim. That forgiveness cannot be given by others nor can it be requested by the perpetrator’s heirs.
“Forgiveness in the Judaic tradition is different from the views of forgiveness by Protestants and Catholics,” says Haas. “Forgiveness cannot pass to the next generation.”
Now the question becomes, he says, what happens when all the victims and perpetrators are dead?
He explores that question within the framework of Judaic traditions of forgiveness in the essay, “Forgiveness, Reconciliation and Jewish Memory after Auschwitz,” for After-Words: Post-Holocaust Struggles with Forgiveness, Reconciliation, Justice (University of Washington Press, 2004). Haas contributes to the book his scholarly research as chair of Case’s department of religion and director of the Samuel Rosenthal Center for Judaic Studies in the university’s College of Arts and Sciences.
As the Holocaust moves from “the realm of experience to the realm of memory,” Haas says questions of repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation have to be viewed in a new context. Since forgiveness is not an option, the issue becomes what is the new relationship for Jews and Christians.
While forgiveness may not be available, Haas says it does not mean that “joint work and friendly relations cannot exist today between Jews and Christians.” Historic context
Haas derives his views from Moses Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, compiled in 1154—the ideals of forgiveness that remain in Judaic tradition to this day.
Haas writes about Maimonides: “Just as sin sets into motion a chain of consequences, so must repentance set off a chain of events that will cancel out, as it were, the effects of the misdeed.” This requires three steps: sincere regret on the part of the sinner, confession and repayment of ill-gotten gain.
“The transgressions committed in the Holocaust are beyond the realm of human repentance and forgiveness,” Haas says. “Expecting forgiveness, especially forgiveness in the Christian sense, from the Jewish community is to ask the Jewish community to do what its tradition simply is not equipped to do.”
Questions around this topic have become part of an ongoing dialogue that has taken place over the past decade. Haas is among more than 35 scholars from the arts, philosophy, theology, ethics and education from Great Britain, Europe, America and Israel who have continued to meet biennially for the Pastora Goldman Holocaust Symposium at the Wroxton College (England) campus of Fairleigh Dickinson.
After-Words’ origin
After-Words is the first of three edited books derived from those dialogues. Haas has made contributions to all three, and over the past three years he has met with the other contributors for working sessions at Case’s Squire Valleevue Farm in Hunting Valley. The group’s books differ from other edited volumes in that they become a dialogue, too, as an essayist offers a point of view, the other writers respond and the essay’s author responds in turn.
The editors of After-Words, David Patterson and John K. Roth, write “Our working together helped us glimpse more fully some of the concerns and prospects that are most important after the brokenness and fragmentation of the human condition are confronted.”
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