After the Holocaust, many people clung to their religions because they knew no other place to turn. Yet what Rubenstein is attempting to prove is that the religion is the cause of all suffering. He affirms that the God after the death of God can still be believed in, but there is not necessarily a need to believe in a religion. Rubenstein deeply discusses the most important, but least noticed aspects of Zionism: the “Jewish expression of the twentieth century’s urge to return to primal origins” . Decades after the Holocaust, years after the birth of a new life for many survivors, and moments after the Vatican’s apology for a lack of intervention, many Jews are yearning to return to their roots and the orthodox Jewish religion. This, while Rubenstein argues that it is nearly impossible to fully trust a God that created such evil in a world that can no longer be relied on, a great many Jews are restoring their faith in God, just as others are renouncing a belief in his existence.

From a scholarly standpoint, there are five important intellectuals who have studied extensively on the ideas of theodicy surrounding the Holocaust. Each has something in common, while each also has a very distinct point-of-view just as some are stronger arguments than others. To begin with, John T. Pawlikowski, a professor of Social Ethics at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, discusses, in depth, the ideas surrounding the Holocaust and the convictions and hardships that occurred in the wake of this event. He takes the ideas of many other scholars and synthesizes them into his own personal opinions, eventually drawing his own conclusion as to what Jews and Christians, alike, must do in order to deal with the idea of God in the wake of the Holocaust. A second approach is that of David R. Blumenthal, a professor of Judaic Studies at Emory University in Atlanta. Blumenthal makes a very interesting observation regarding Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and their reactions post-World War II. He asserts that Holocaust survivors display many of the same responses as do adult survivors of child abuse. A third approach taken is that of Stephen Haynes and John Roth, professors of Religious Studies at Rhodes College and Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College, respectively. These two well-respected men in the field of Holocaust studies fuse together the ideas of many scholars and create a debate within their own style and discuss the American assertion that God is dead. What is known as the “death of God movement” in 1960s America creates a heated debate among many scholars and is how Haynes and Roth maintain that American Christians and non-Christians alike responded to the Holocaust. A fourth and final intellectual standpoint on theodicy in a God-created world, is that of recognized Richard L. Rubenstein. A professor of Religion at Florida State University, Rubenstein is a Jew that was rejected by his own people because of his publications concerning the Holocaust and the idea of a God afterwards. These five influential men each make strong points and many of them build their ideas off those of their intellectual equals, yet some arguments are more viable and convincing than others. By looking intensely into each argument, one will see an emergence of similarities as well as differences, but what will inevitably remain is the need to understand the being that could allow such an atrocity to occur.

All five of these scholars made numerous assertions and presentations of their views on Christianity and Judaism in the wake of the Holocaust. Each delves deeply into the role that God played in the Holocaust, yet none but Pawlikowski laid a great deal of blame on humanity. It is as if God was playing puppeteer with mankind and forced the killing of six million people, without the perpetrators being given a mind of their own. This is one of the downfalls of three of the analyses; it isn’t logical to place all the blame on God without analyzi

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