Kat - Post #2

In Night, an important (and perhaps the most important) theme is faith. Obviously, being targeted for their beliefs was not their fault, but it is what caused them to be hated. Many of the Jews followed their God blindly, until the Holocaust. The Holocaust, being such a traumatic event for all, caused many Jews to lose their faith in the merciless God. An example of this is an excerpt in the novel, when Elie is looking back on his time in the concentration camp. “Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes. Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself.” (Pg 34.) When we say lost faith, I disagree with that statement. The Jews might have lost their faith by definition, but in reality it was torn from them by the horrors they witnessed during their time in the concentration camps.

While some Jews chose to stop believing in a god that would allow such inhumane things to take place, others believed that he was testing them. Or that he was punishing them for some sins that they may have done in the past. “Akiba Drumer said: ‘God is testing us. He wants to see whether we are capable of overcoming our base instincts, of killing the Satan within ourselves. We have no right to despair. And if He punishes us mercilessly, it is a sign that He loves us that much more…’” (Pg. 45.) While there is no right or wrong when it comes to religion, I strongly believe that no God would let something like the Holocaust take place. At first I felt bad that they would blame themselves for what is happening to them, but after analysing this quote I realized that many of them must have struggled to find another answer to the reasoning behind the Holocaust. Just trying to think about how a country could be so cruel to a certain group of people is shocking to me. So, I believe that many of the suffering jews were struggling to come up with a reason other than that they were “paying” for their sins.

After what the Jewish people had to deal with in the Holocaust, there is no doubt that it destroyed lots of people's faith. Even if some still chose to believe in Him, there still must have been question about his goodness and justice.