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date: 08 March 2021

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter examines the difficulties the Holocaust posed and continues to raise for Jews, Jewish theology, and specifically Jewish ethics, identifying eight major commitments made by Jews and non-Jews that have since then inspired Jewish and global responses to human-made atrocities such as genocide and crimes against humanity. These are (1) to survive; (2) to perpetuate the memory of what happened; (3) to survive as Jews; (4) to set the moral bar high such that people are expected to be “upstanders,” not bystanders, in the face of evil; (5) to recreate relationships with people of other faiths; (6) to combat discrimination and genocide; (7) to define and demand humane standards for medical research; and (8) to learn how to attain both justice and reconciliation after genocidal atrocities.

Keywords: Jews, ethical theories, Jewish theology, genocide, crimes against humanity

Michael Berenbaum

Michael Berenbaum is the director of the Sigi Ziering Institute: Exploring the Ethical and Religious Implications of the Holocaust, and Professor of Jewish Studies at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles. He was Executive Editor of the Second Edition of the Encyclopaedia Judaica, which was awarded the Dartmouth Medal of the American Library Association for the outstanding reference publication of 2006. He has been a visiting professor of Holocaust studies at Chapman University, Richard Stockton College, Clark University, and Claremont-Mckenna College. From 1988 to 1993 he served as Project Director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, overseeing its creation, and later worked as Director of its Research Institute. He has helped conceive and develop holocaust museums around the world, including in Illinois, Poland, and Macedonia. Author or editor of twenty books, he has also co-produced the award-winning One Survivor Remembers: Gerda Weissman Klein Story. Berenbaum is a graduate of Queens College (B.A., 1967) and Florida State University (Ph.D., 1975) and also attended The Hebrew University, the Jewish Theological Seminary, and Boston University.

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