B'chasdei Hashem, over the past almost 20 years, Beis Mevakesh Lev has produced over 13,300 audio shiurim and over 31,000 written posts, unmatched by any one-person website - all completely free of charge. There are no paywalls or anything else. Now we are turning to you for help so we can continue - any amount will help. Even 99 cents! Thank you to my sweetest and most beloved friends!!!:-)!!
alchehrm@gmail.com
---
For many years, the name of Pope Pius XII has been associated with one of the most charged moral debates in modern history. While Europe burned in the flames of the Holocaust, the throne in Rome maintained a thunderous silence. His critics claimed that he had "sold his soul" by refraining from a strong public condemnation of Nazism and the extermination of the Jews, even as information flowed to his office constantly.
As early as 1942, Pius XII received chilling reports. Pastor Pietro Scavizzi wrote to him that "the murder of the Jews of Ukraine is absolute" and that "two million victims are being discussed." Documents recently revealed in the Vatican's secret archives prove beyond any doubt that the Pope knew about the deportations to the death camps, the gas chambers and the scale of the massacre.
However, the response was selective and limited. The Vatican focused primarily on rescuing Jews who had been baptized into Christianity, mixed spouses, or children from Catholic families. Even when the raid on the Rome Ghetto took place on October 16, 1943, "under the Pope's windows," his intervention resulted in the release of only 252 converts, while over 1,000 other Jews were sent to their deaths in Birkenau. Pius XII believed that neutrality was the best way to protect the interests of the Church, even if it came at the cost of his moral authority.
With the death of Pius XII in 1958, the Catholic world was looking for a new leader. The choice of Angelo Giuseppe Ronckley, who became Pope John XXIII, was initially seen as the appointment of a "transitional pope" – a 77-year-old man destined to fill the role for a short time and quietly.
But Ronckley had a very different past. Unlike his distant predecessor, Ronkeli was a papal envoy to Turkey and Greece during the war, he did not remain silent. He forged baptism certificates for Jews in Hungary, pressured the Slovak authorities to stop deportations, and saved thousands of Jewish children from extermination.
The defining moment that opened the way for change occurred in June 1960. Jules Isaac, a world-renowned French-Jewish historian who lost his wife and daughter in Auschwitz, arrived in the Vatican. He submitted to the Pope a dossier detailing the roots of Christian anti-Semitism, which he called "the order of contempt." He argued that the Christian tradition that presented the Jews as a cursed people and the murderers of J' was the foundation on which indifference to the Holocaust grew.
The Pope, moved by the words, asked Isaac at the end of the meeting: "Can I leave with hope?" John XXIII replied to him: "You are entitled to much more than hope!".
While Pope John XXIII was opening the windows of the Vatican, across the ocean, in the United States, stood two people who were destined to shape the Jewish people's response to the Catholic revolution. Rabbi Yoseph Ber Soloveitchik and Abraham Joshua Heschel.
Both were born to the same fertile soil of Eastern Europe, both carried on their shoulders glorious rabbinical dynasties, and both came to Berlin to earn a doctorate in philosophy - but their spiritual paths were as different as the distance between east and west (at the university in Berlin, Heschel also met the Rebbe of Chabad and Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner Zatzal).
Rabbi Yoseph Ber Soloveitchik was born in 1903 in Poland, a descendant of the glorious Brisk rabbinical dynasty. As a child, he did not study in a formal school, but was educated by his father in in-depth and sharp Talmud study. Already in his youth, he mastered all the secrets of the Talmud even before turning to secular studies. When he went to Berlin to study philosophy, he did not abandon his old world; he used the tools of Kant and Hegel to build the spiritual fortress of "Halachic Man".
For Rabbi Soloveitchik, the Jew approaches the world with the Torah given at Sinai in his hands. Halacha is his map in reality, the system that gives order and meaning to existence. He was a man of discipline, personal responsibility and sharp thought. For him, religion was first and foremost a commitment to the law of the Holy One, Blessed be He. An inner fortress that no one can break through.
At the same time, in Warsaw of 1907, Abraham Joshua Heschel was born. He was a "Hasidic prince", a descendant of the "Ohev Yisrael" from Apta. Heschel grew up in a world of emotion, mysticism and devotion. He said that his cradle stood in the spirit of Hasidism, surrounded by people who were sure that something transcendent was hidden in everything.
The meeting with Hitler
One fateful night at the Berlin Opera in the early 1930s, the young Heschel experienced the power of the political terror that penetrated even the halls of the highest culture. In the middle of the show, Adolf Hitler entered the hall, and Heschel trembled in terror as he saw the entire audience rise to their feet as one man to pay homage to the terrifying figure. He could not bear the shocking sight of the masses cheering for tyranny and fled the scene as quickly as possible.
He did not know then that these events marked the beginning of the personal tragedy that would strike his family: his mother Reizel and three of his sisters, Esther, Gittel and Dvora Miriam, remained behind in Europe and were all murdered during the Holocaust. May their memory be blessed.
A few months later, on October 28, 1938, Heschel's life in Germany finally fell apart when the Gestapo raided Jewish homes to deport thousands of Jews with Polish citizenship. In the moments when he had to gather his life into a small load, Heschel made a choice that reflected his deep inner world: he filled two suitcases with valuable books and unpublished manuscripts, preferring them to his clothes or any other personal property.
With this luggage, in which the writings were more important to him than coverings for his body, he was taken to the Zbonszyn detention camp on the Polish border. Heschel managed to escape from the camp and return to Warsaw, where he stayed briefly with his family before managing to immigrate to London and from there to the United States in 1940.
Heschel arrived in New York as a penniless refugee, but with the spiritual baggage of the suitcases he saved and the open wound of the loss of his family. He later used to say that "since Auschwitz, I have only one rule of thumb for everything I say: would it be acceptable to those people who were burned there?"
Abraham Joshua Heschel placed at the center of his thought the revolutionary insight that God is not an abstract concept or a halachic object, but seeks man and demands from him partnership and a deep covenant with him.
He operated within a constant existential tension between Hasidic compassion and joy (the Baal Shem Tov) and the demand for incisive truth (Kotzk), a tension that required him to bring Jewish insights to the heart of modern reality.
For him, action for social justice and "Tikkun Olam" was a form of worship, even when he marched for black rights in the United States. In his approach to the world, he believed that human brotherhood stems from the recognition of God as a common "Father", in his opinion such a view gives every person infinite value and obligates us to repair the world out of deep religious responsibility or in his formula: "God's search for man".
After the Holocaust, the Catholic Church could no longer ignore the "Jewish question". Institutional anti-Semitism and the ancient accusation of murdering that man had to undergo a re-examination. The Vatican, under Pope John XXIII, sought to formulate a document that would change the Church's attitude towards Judaism - later the "Nostra Aetate" document.
But in order to write such a document, the Church needed Jews to talk to. Here arose the great dilemma that divided these two giants. Heschel believed that dialogue with the Church was a moral and theological necessity that could not be avoided. He saw it as an opportunity to uproot the roots of Christian hatred from the world. On the other hand, Rabbi Soloveitchik had a deep suspicion of the Church. He feared that the dialogue attempts were a guise for missionary work and attempts at conversion.
The invitation to historical change did not come in a vacuum. It was Cardinal Augustin Bea, appointed by John XXIII to head the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, who began the feelers. Bea turned to Jewish organizations, led by the American Jewish Committee (AJC), asking for recommendations and constructive criticism on drafting a document that would redefine the Church's relationship with the Jews. Here the great drama opened between the RYBS and Heschel, each of whom was asked by the AJC to advise on formulating the Jewish position.
In February 1964, Rabbi Yoseph Dov Soloveitchik delivered a speech in Yiddish before the Rabbinical Council of America, which became the founding article "Confrontation" in the Tradition journal. Rabbi Soloveitchik argued that faith communities are unique and incomparable; each religion has a private "intimacy" and religious experiences that cannot be translated to another.
He warned that any attempt at theological dialogue would necessarily lead to an effort on the part of the Church to "appease" the differences and negate the uniqueness of Judaism. In his view, Jews should cooperate with Christians on secular issues - fighting anti-Semitism or social justice - but stop at the gate of the religious fortress. He feared that dialogue was a guise for missionary work, and that Jews were being pushed to bless every crumb of Christian tolerance only because the Church had stopped teaching the "doctrine of contempt". The Rabbi emphasized that we have a duty to "communicate our otherness" and not try to blur it in order to please the Church.
On the other hand, Abraham Joshua Heschel saw the encounter as a deep religious opportunity. He believed that dialogue was necessary because "no religion is an island" and that moral responsibility requires Jews to influence the world of Christianity. Heschel, who was the central advisor to the AJC, drafted for them the third official memorandum submitted to the Vatican: "On Improving Jewish-Catholic Relations".
In this memorandum, Heschel did not only look at the past but offered a way to the future. He demanded that the Church recognize Jews as Jews, cease attempts at conversion and recognize that religious diversity may be the will of God. Heschel believed that in the post-Holocaust era, silence in the face of persecution is a sin, and that religious people must be "partners" in repairing the world.
The Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) was one of the most significant events of the 20th century. It was convened in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome under the motto "Aggiornamento" (updating and renewal), and was attended by about 2,900 bishops from all over the world. The conference also hosted observers from the Protestant and Orthodox churches, and even from the Russian Church.
It all started in a spirit of hope under the leadership of Pope John XXIII. But in the midst of the process, in June 1963, John XXIII died. Deep anxiety spread in the Jewish world; many felt that the entire enterprise would be lost and that his successor, Paul VI, would be too conservative and cautious. Paul did announce the continuation of the conference, but he found himself under tremendous pressure.
The struggle was not only theological, but political and international. The Arab countries, led by Nasser's Egypt, exerted heavy pressure on the Vatican. They feared that any religious gesture towards the Jews would be interpreted as political recognition of the young State of Israel. In the Vatican itself, conservative elements tried to soften the text, and at one point it seemed that the conference was about to retreat from its original promises.
The drama reached its peak when a draft was published that hinted that the Church still hoped for a "future union" of Jews with Christianity - i.e., conversion. Heschel responded with a rage that shook the foundations. In a scathing interview with the "Maariv" newspaper and in the headlines of the "New York Times", Heschel sharply criticized the Church's silence during the Holocaust and finally, without fear, he declared: "I am ready to go to Auschwitz at any time if I am faced with the choice: conversion or death!".
His words were heard by the Vatican people as if he was comparing them to the Nazis, causing a storm in the corridors of the Vatican. Cardinal Bea wrote to Heschel that the interview caused him "the greatest embarrassment he had ever experienced", after having to endure 45 minutes of scolding from his colleagues who claimed that Heschel was "ruining the most precious plans".
In an attempt to save the situation, a personal meeting was scheduled for Heschel with Pope Paul VI on September 14, 1964. In a chilling coincidence, the meeting was held on the eve of Yom Kippur. On the morning of the meeting, while staying at a hotel in Rome under heavy secrecy, Heschel wrote a personal letter to his wife Sylvia and daughter Susanne: "The Pope's office expressed regret that they forgot that I cannot arrive on Shabbat... Take away worry from your heart just be happy and pray"
Heschel entered the room carrying a sharp and demanding theological memorandum. Paul VI was friendly but firm, and made it clear that he could not change doctrine at the request of "external factors", but promised to consider his words. Heschel left the meeting worried, but his words had already begun to seep in.
In the end, Heschel's stubbornness paid off. On October 28, 1965, by an overwhelming majority, the "Nostra Aetate" declaration (= in our time) was approved. For the first time in two thousand years, the Catholic Church cleared the Jewish people of the guilt of "murdering the father of the Church", condemned anti-Semitism and recognized Judaism as a living religion with eternal value.
Heschel succeeded where many had failed: he forced the Christian world to look in the mirror of Auschwitz and correct its ways.
Alongside his formative and constitutive actions, Heschel was one of the thinkers of Conservative American Judaism, and although he was a religious and observant man throughout his life - his ideas and thoughts remained almost lonely.
Dror Bondi, a doctor of Jewish thought, specializing in the thought of Abraham Joshua Heschel, notes: that despite his fame, Heschel remained a lonely person religiously; on Shabbos mornings he prayed in a Conservative synagogue, at noon in the "Shtiebel" of Gerrer Hasidim, and on Motzei Shabbos he davened alone in his home.
