What is the place of Zionism in Holocaust theology? A comparison of Emil Fackenheim and Mark Ellis

The Holocaust, the most tragic event in Jewish history, has been grappled with by Jewish thinkers for decades, particularly in relation to its theological and ethical implications. For Emil Fackenheim and Marc Ellis, the Holocaust has played a pivotal role in shaping how they view Jewish identity and the State of Israel. Fackenheim, operating within post-Holocaust theology, sees the modern State of Israel as a necessity for Jewish survival after the Holocaust. Conversely, Ellis, influenced heavily by liberation theology, argues that Jews must draw ethical lessons from the Holocaust, specifically in relation to Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. Here, I contrast the arguments of these two thinkers on the relationship between the Holocaust and the State of Israel to argue that Fackenheim's is the most complete but can be improved using select insights from Ellis. 

Emil Fackenheim

German-born Canadian philosopher and Rabbi Emil Fackenheim (1917-2003) was not interested in theological explanations of how and why the Holocaust occurred; rather, he was primarily interested in the ethical implications of the Holocaust, specifically on Jews. In fact, for Fackenheim, to try and explain the Holocaust or theologically justify it was tantamount to blasphemy. Fackenheim viewed the Holocaust as both a root experience and an epoch-making event. A root experience, in his framework, is one that contains G-d’s awe-inspiring presence, occurs publicly and is accessible to future generations. An epoch-making event, by contrast, is one that tests and challenges the Jewish people. Crucially, Fackenheim sees the Holocaust as unique, as it is both a root experience and an epoch-making event. The Holocaust is an event that both forms the character of Judaism and simultaneously challenges its beliefs. Thus, Fackenheim sees the Holocaust as a unique event in Jewish history.  The scale and pervasiveness of the evil, the systematic murder of two-thirds of European Jewry, make it an epoch-making event. To be simultaneously considered a root experience is because, for Fackenheim, G-d was present at Auschwitz. G-d’s presence was through G-d’s commanding, but not redeeming, voice. The commanding voice of G-d commands that “Jews are forbidden to hand Hitler posthumous victories”. After being faced with a unique evil, Jews are commanded not only to survive as Jews but also to remember the victims of Auschwitz and not to abandon G-d. He refers to this as the 614th commandment.  

As Fackenheim is primarily focused on Jewish survival, the State of Israel is living proof of this commandment. While he did not see the creation of the Jewish state as the purpose of Auschwitz, he deems it necessary. Fackenheim not only deemed it necessary to connect the Holocaust and the State of Israel, but he also deemed it vital that the connection between the two be an “unbreakable bond”.  To reinforce this position, he argued that critically important to any response to the Holocaust is “a commitment to the autonomy and security of the State of Israel”. So then, we can see that for Fackenheim's notion of a 614th commandment to be successful, an autonomous and powerful Jewish State is crucial. 

Fackenheim extends this connection further by linking the commanding voice, first present at Auschwitz, to events in Israeli history. He claimed that the same commanding voice that was heard at Auschwitz was heard during the Six-Day War in 1967. Here, potential ethical issues begin to arise from Fackenheim’s notion of a divine commandment. If divine command is invoked to justify Jewish survival, this could potentially enable and justify an abuse of power when Jews are fighting a war, if they must survive by ‘all means necessary’. 

Zachary Breitman acknowledged the “theological and philosophical significance” that Fackenheim placed on the State of Israel, as well as his “pervasive fascination with Israeli power” that neither “war nor military occupation can upset”. Breitman challenged Fackenheim’s theological response in the 614th commandment, criticising it as offering “no reason, rationale or even heart behind Jewish existence”. However, for Fackenheim, the mere act of Jewish survival is “a momentous response, with the greatest implications”. He acknowledges that he was once highly critical of a philosophy of mere survival, until Auschwitz changed his mind. Genocide scholar Anthony Moses assesses that the Holocaust is often used to “express the fear of collective destruction: the apocalypse of genocide”, which can lead to “political action in the form of pre-emptive strikes and anticipatory self-defence to forestall feared destruction”. By linking the tragedy of Auschwitz to Israel’s wars, and by framing Jewish survival as a divine command, Fackenheim opens the possibility that Jewish trauma could be invoked to justify extreme military force against the enemies of the State of Israel in pursuit of his 614th commandment. However, this should not overlook the reality of Israel’s national security. The October 7 attack, alongside Israel’s confrontations with Hezbollah and Iran, demonstrates that threats to the Jewish state are not merely imagined but perilously real.

Marc Ellis

Moving on to American theologian Marc Ellis (1952-2024), we find a thinker who, like Fackenheim, was interested in the ethical and moral implications of the Holocaust rather than its theological causes. However, where Fackenheim was focused on Jewish survival, Ellis was concerned with the suffering of Palestinians. For Ellis, the Holocaust had become politicised and militarised, moulded into a tool used to justify Israeli acts against Palestinians. Where Fackenheim saw Jewish suffering as the justification for a powerful Jewish state, Ellis saw the same Jewish suffering as a moral lens through which Jews can empathise with others, specifically the Palestinians. Ellis emphasised that Jews must ‘enter into the suffering of others’. 

A crucial divergence between the two thinkers is that Ellis did not view the Holocaust as a unique event, unlike Fackenheim, and was heavily critical of the notion that the Holocaust should be seen that way. Ellis was explicitly opposed to “protecting our suffering as unique and incomparable to the sufferings of others”. This universalist outlook led Ellis to make frequent links between Jewish suffering and Palestinian suffering, which would be seen as unacceptable to Fackenheim, who saw these comparisons as abusing Auschwitz and labels comparisons between Israel and the Nazis as ‘obscene’. This is where the two thinkers are further separated. While Ellis was concerned with Palestinian suffering, and in general universal suffering, Fackenheim dismisses what he calls “universalistic Jews” as those “concerned with others to the point of group suicide”. Here we can see that the two thinkers were opposed to each other's fundamental beliefs. Ellis’ universalisation of the Holocaust may be easy for non-Jews to understand and empathise with, but is difficult for the majority of Jews to understand, let alone agree with. 

Where Fackenheim sees the commanding voice applying to events after Auschwitz, Ellis sees this as problematic. While he acknowledges that this is a central tenet of Holocaust theology, he is critical of this notion, arguing that it prevents Jews from healing. Ellis instead claimed that it upholds the notion that Jews have a “special status as victims”. He further elaborated by questioning if Auschwitz has become a safe place for Jews, as it allows Jews to hide from their accountability in the present by hiding in their past suffering. In contrast to Fackenheim’s “614th commandment”, Ellis instead insists on linking the Holocaust to Palestinian oppression and stated that “for if the Holocaust represents a tragic end to Jewish exile and powerlessness, the creation of Israel represents the beginning of Palestinian exile and powerlessness”. For Ellis, the State of Israel represents an almost ‘moral suicide’ for the Jewish people. He asserted that Jews, in their liberation through state power, are in danger of forgetting what it means to be oppressed and that “to forget one’s own oppression is to open the possibility of becoming the oppressor”. It is evident that Ellis saw the politicisation of the Holocaust as a tool to mobilise support for Israel and that Holocaust theologians feel responsible for defending state policies.

Ellis relied heavily upon the Jewish prophetic tradition to criticise the State of Israel and place his concerns with the Palestinians. As Ellis wrote, “the prophetic seeks justice and in doing so sides with those who are on the margins of society and power”. From this perspective, as Jews possess state power, through modern-day Israel, they can no longer be viewed through a prophetic lens as the oppressed, but rather as potential oppressors, rendering Ellis morally unable to empathise with them. Ellis was also heavily influenced by Christian liberation theology. He saw the Jewish community, now with a powerful state, as fearful of Christian liberation theology and its use of the prophets as “it speaks for those on the underside of history, the marginalised and the oppressed”. 

Alvin Rosenfeld has been heavily critical of this narrow approach and appropriation of the Jewish prophetic tradition. Rosenfeld argues that “to cite the prophetic books to condemn Israeli actions and, at the same time, to forego any realistic historical and political frameworks that might account for such actions, is to do little more than gesture promiscuously in the direction of Jewish religious thinking.” Rosenfeld suggests that Ellis’ moral and ethical critique is often divorced from the historical realities and contemporary security threats that Israel faces. While Ellis is easily able to note Palestinian suffering, such as referencing “the memories of Deir Yasin and now Jenin”, he omits the pervasive Palestinian terrorism, which Jews are the brutal victims of. This selective focus risks creating a moral asymmetry in his analysis.

Personal Grounding

Exploring the biographical context of Fackenheim and Ellis helps illuminate the roots of their respective philosophies. Starkly, Fackenheim was directly shaped by the Holocaust. He was arrested by the Nazi’s during the infamous Kristallnacht and sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. While Fackenheim eventually managed to escape Nazi Germany with his younger brother and, later, his parents, his older brother fell victim to the Holocaust. A survivor who later emigrated to Israel, Fackenheim came to embody the very concept he coined, the 614th commandment. He lived and breathed this imperative, acutely aware of the consequences of a Jewish nation without self-determination. 

Ellis, by contrast, was born in post-war America and lived his entire life there. This is not to suggest that his arguments are less valid than Fackenheim’s, but rather to recognise that his philosophy was not shaped by direct experience of the Holocaust. Unlike Fackenheim, Ellis’ work emerges from a position of generational and geographical distance, leading to a markedly different moral and theological lens. 

October 7 

Paradoxically, the tragedy of October 7 reaffirms both Fackenheim and Ellis’ arguments. If we first look at Fackenheim, the barbaric slaughter on that day echoed the genocidal intent of the Holocaust and reaffirmed that Jewish existence remains under threat. For Fackenheim, this would prove that a strong military is not only required but necessary. Further, it undoubtably confirms that the 614th commandment is not merely a moral relic, left covered in dust since the Holocaust, but rather it is a living imperative. However, cracks in his position also start to appear. Fackenheim’s argument that a strong military is what is required for Jewish safety was rattled by October 7 as Israel, possessing one of the most advanced militaries on the planet, failed to protect its citizens.

For Ellis, he would see the extreme suffering of Palestinian civilians as vindication of his argument. Israel enacting overwhelming force against a conventionally weaker opponent, resulting in high numbers of civilian casualties, would be seen as the precise reason why Jews should stand in solidarity with Palestinians. In a post-October 7 landscape, however, a glaring weakness of Ellis’ argument is that solidarity with the Palestinians has become emotionally intolerable for the majority of Israelis and Jews after the attack and its reverberating support throughout Palestinian society. Put simply, Israelis and Jews do not see a partner for peace. Ellis’ arguments would push back against this and urge resisting channelling trauma into overwhelming violence.

Post October 7 has seen a rallying of the Jewish diaspora around the Israeli state. Ultimately, the very fact that Jewish communities around the globe live and mourn in the face of a new trauma can be seen as a direct fulfilment of the Fackenheims' 614th commandment. However, as the war drags on and the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza is broadcast across the globe, that rallying is beginning to fracture, paving the way for additions of Ellis’ arguments into Fackenheims. 

In conclusion, I am more compelled by Fackenheim's arguments as he presents a more complete argument for the relationship between the Holocaust and the State of Israel. Fackenheim’s arguments, considering the Holocaust as a unique event and containing a commanding voice, resonate with religious Jews. Simultaneously, his argument that a Jewish state with a strong military is a necessity following the Holocaust also resonates with secular Jews. However, as I have demonstrated, Fackenheim’s arguments can potentially lead to the dangers Ellis warns of, namely abuses of military strength, specifically concerning the Palestinians. Thus, Fackenheim's arguments can be made more comprehensive by integrating Ellis’ ethical arguments, influenced by the prophetic tradition, meaning these can also work for religious as well as secular Jews. Where Fackenheim’s notion of a divine commandment can lead to unbridled military power, Ellis’ arguments of remembering past Jewish suffering to ensure Jews do not become oppressors are crucial. Detaching this ethical dimension from Ellis’ argument, which universalises the Holocaust, and integrating it into Fackenheim’s argument also makes it more palatable to Jewish audiences, as the Holocaust is no longer abstracted and turned against Jews themselves.