History, Metahistory, and Evil

Through a comparative reading of postwar North American and wartime Orthodox Jewish texts about the Holocaust, Krawcowicz offers a novel interpretation of Jewish responses to the Holocaust that focuses on the role of metahistorical paradigms employed to employ historical events.

Barbara Krawcowicz is Assistant Professor in the Institute for the Study of Religion at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland.

“Barbara Krawcowicz’s [volume] provides a novel comparative analysis of the theological struggles of key Jewish thinkers during and after the Holocaust. Usually considered in isolation, Krawcowicz’s placement of Holocaust and post-Holocaust thinkers in proximity to each other uncovers new points of connection and disjuncture. At the same time, by situating these responses within a long-range view of Jewish theology that takes seriously its encounters with modernity prior to the Holocaust, Krawcowicz is also able to provide a far more historically nuanced analysis of continuity and rupture than previous studies… Krawcowicz’s project illuminates and complicates traditional and more modern theological struggles with the Holocaust in Jewish thought. In so doing, her book comprises essential reading for those who seek to understand the profound theological impact of these events and the ongoing challenge they present for Jewish life and thought today.”

–Avril Alba, University of Sydney, Journal of Religious History

“Much of ‘post-Holocaust theology’ in North America has started from the assumption that the Holocaust cannot be accommodated by any extant theory of history. In this book, Barbara Krawcowicz lucidly and elegantly shows that this is precisely the most important question that must be addressed in any theological approach to the Holocaust. The thin volume packs an intellectually hefty punch… [T]he book breaks new ground in putting disparate figures together and then identifying and articulating the single question that all theologians struggling with the Shoah have to answer: does this fit the historical paradigm of Jewish history? As Krawcowicz shows so well, the approach that thinkers take to the Holocaust generally flow from their prior historiosophical assumptions. When it comes to theology, 'data' and 'interpretation' are entirely inseparable. This book does an excellent job of analyzing and articulating the assumptions that flow into different theologies of the Shoah.”

–Aaron J. Koller, Yeshiva University, H-Judaic (H-Net Reviews)

“Barbara Krawcowicz manages to bring a fresh and creative approach to the crowded field of Holocaust theology. She pairs orthodox thinkers who directly experienced radical evil with post-Holocaust theologians in striking ways that provoke us to rethink writings we thought we understood in an entirely different light. This deeply probing book measures up to the profound challenges posed by its theologically and philosophically devastating subject.”

—Prof. James A. Diamond, Joseph & Wolf Lebovic Chair of Jewish Studies, University of Waterloo, author of Jewish Theology Unbound