Shall Not the Judge of All the Earth Do Justly? Theological Dilemmas Posed by the Pittsburgh and Poway Synagogue Massacres
There is an immutable framework of biblical faith, expressed in Israelite monotheism, namely, that God is both all-powerful and all-just. Such divine attributes, however, have been called into question throughout the course of Jewish history and experience, from earliest antiquity, through the annih...
| Published in: | Journal of ecumenical studies |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
University of Pennsylvania Press
[2020]
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| In: |
Journal of ecumenical studies
Year: 2020, Volume: 55, Issue: 3, Pages: 333-345 |
| RelBib Classification: | BH Judaism HB Old Testament NBC Doctrine of God |
| Further subjects: | B
Shoah
B Pittsburgh and Poway synagogue massacres B Theodicy B Sodom and Gomorrah B Antisemitism B Book of Job |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | There is an immutable framework of biblical faith, expressed in Israelite monotheism, namely, that God is both all-powerful and all-just. Such divine attributes, however, have been called into question throughout the course of Jewish history and experience, from earliest antiquity, through the annihilation of European Jewry in the twentieth century, and down to the present. The dual tragedies of the recent synagogue massacres, both in Pittsburgh (October 27, 2018) and at Poway (April 27, 2019), have brought a renewed focus to the most fundamental theodic question regarding the goodness of God in an imperfect world. It is tragically ironic that the weekly parasha read in Pittsburgh's Tree of Life Synagogue on the day of the carnage was VaYera' (Genesis 18-22), containing (in addition to the 'Aḳedah) the judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah and Abraham's pointed question, "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do justly?" Eventually, it would be the Israelites themselves who would reshape the divine image from that of a tribal deity, known as the "God of Armies" in the account of the Exodus from Egypt, to a transcendent emblem of compassion. They would eventually address the troublesome theological issues revolving around divine justice with a powerfully "subversive" treatise of Israelite wisdom literature, the Book of Job, wherein we find two poetic and elegant answers to Abraham's question and to the perennial problem of evil. |
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| ISSN: | 2162-3937 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of ecumenical studies
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1353/ecu.2020.0031 |