Holocaust
T here is a skip 50 ELS of the key word שואה, holocaust, that occurs within a set of relevant verses. The skip of the ELS is also relevant. The skip 50 ELS parallels the fifty levels of impurity. The fiftieth level of impurity is the level that holds that God is not the God who created the universe -- space and time, that holds that God is not the God of the Torah, that God is not the God who redeemed the Israelites from Eqypt and who gave the Torah on Mount Sinai.
At no time in history had any part of the Jewish community adopted such ideas that God is not the God of the Torah, that God is not the God who redeemed the Israelites from Egypt, that the crossing of the Reed sea was a myth etc. At no time in history had such an "enlightenment" in secular studies and philosophies infected the Jewish people as in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. In particular, it was in Germany that the greatest number of Jews were swayed by the enlightenment, only to be followed by the greatest number of conversions outside of Judaism. The enlightenment brought a widespread cultural adaptation. Those Jews who participated in the enlightenment began in varying degrees to participate in the cultural practices of the surrounding gentile population. Connected with this was the birth of the Reform movement, whose founding rabbis rejected the continuing observance of those aspects of Jewish law which they classified as ritual, as opposed to moral. This enlightenment became the foreign gods of many in the European Jewish community.
Now listen to what the Torah says.
The Torah speaks these verses when Hashem appears to Moses and tells him what the Israelites will do and what He will do. This history has played itself out more than at one time and more than at one place.
(I am willing to judge myself and situations I have been in. But I am not willing to form judgment of others. Doing so strikes me as being insensitive and perhaps even morally wrong. Therefore, I am not willing to volunteer the cause of the holocaust being the enlightenment and Jewish Reform movement.
Furthermore, I cannot comprehend how such continued horrific atrocities, such cruelty, barbaric brutality, and extermination of a people is some aspect of God's judgment. Of course it must be. If the holocaust is not the result of God's judgment, then God is not God. And that is totally not acceptable. My question is why wasn't judgment brought to Hitler and the Germans soon after they started the concentration camps? RMH)