Holocaust and Resurrection in the Teachings of Rabbi Dr. Mordechai Vogelmann

Rabbi Dr. Mordechai Vogelmann, rabbi of Katowice before World War II and afterwards of Kiryat Motzkin in Israel, was an important halakhic decisor and rabbinical scholar in the Religious Zionist world. The article investigates his singular philosophy of the Holocaust. In Vogelmann's thought, the Holocaust is not an event of independent ontological significance; instead, it should be seen in the context of a God Who urges man to be responsible for and involved in reality. For this reason, he has little to say about the purpose of the Holocaust, the reasons for its occurrence, and the moral lessons that should be learned from it, rather focusing on the doing of good, justice, and rectitude, and striving for the consolidation of Jewish independence and sovereignty in the Land of Israel. For all that, the absence of the beneficent and merciful God in Vogelmann's writings, the God for Whom many thinkers in the rabbinical world yearned, cannot be ignored. The article argues that Vogelmann's emphasis on practical human endeavor is an instrument meant to help believers to cope with the existential problems that the Holocaust foists on them as individuals and as believers.