Love or Perish: A Holocaust Survivor’s Vision for Interfaith Peace by Harold Kasimow

Abstract

Reviewed by: Love or Perish: A Holocaust Survivor’s Vision for Interfaith Peace by Harold Kasimow Peter A. Huff Harold Kasimow,Love or Perish: A Holocaust Survivor’s Vision for Interfaith Peace. Mesa, AZ: iPub Global Connection, 2021. Pp. 175. $19.99, paper. Kasimow’s has long been an important voice in the dialogue about dialogue—especially the dialogue about engaged dialogue, the intersection of contemplation and action. This book puts on full display the sources of that distinctive voice. Shaped by the desperate silence of survival and the elected silence of disciplined meditation, as well as the challenges of global displacement and the blessings of transformative study with great souls from one of history’s most troubled ages, Kasimow speaks the language of prophecy—that is, the language of hope mixed with anguish and the sort of spiritual audacity made famous by his teacher Abraham Joshua Heschel. Now professor emeritus at Grinnell (IA) College, Kasimow is one of the world’s most articulate and trustworthy apologists for interfaith friendship. This is the book his readers have long awaited. A collection of many of Kasimow’s best previously published essays, woven together with strikingly original autobiographical material, the book takes its title from Heschel’s discerning observation about interreligious and intercultural existence in the wake of Auschwitz and Hiroshima: “The choice is to love together or to perish together” (p. 20). In many ways, this stark alternative is the crucible from which the full range of Kasimow’s works have been generated. His books on Heschel, on the adventure of the spiritual search, and especially his [End Page 129] edited volumes on John Paul II, Pope Francis, and life-changing Jewish and Christian encounters with Buddhist traditions have all set forth the urgency of a decision for empathy and mutuality. Love or Perish does the same but takes a crucial step further. Here, for the first time, Kasimow views the “cosmic choice” (p. 6) of compassionate co-existence through the lens of his experience as a Holocaust survivor. The eleven chapters cover topics such as Jewish approaches to the Holocaust, Heschel’s view of religious diversity, Muslim perceptions of Judaism and Christianity, and Jewish and Christian reflections on Buddhism—all demonstrating Kasimow’s use of theologically skillful means as he ponders the intricate relationship among seemingly contradictory perspectives and savors the wisdom of even troubling positions. Kasimow possesses a special genius for theological portraiture. In his penetrating treatments of figures such as Moses Hayyim Luzzatto, Israel Salanter, Vivekananda, Martin Luther King, Jr., Maurice Friedman, and John Paul II, he exercises an interpretive virtuosity that reveals the same interreligious artistry he attributes to his master Heschel. Arguably, Kasimow is at his best detecting signals of sanctity and sainthood despite difference. He finds spiritual heroes populating all dimensions of life—from the Baal Shem Tov and the Dalai Lama to his teachers in Japan and the U.S. and his revered father, whose desperate quests for food in the Eastern European winter nights of wartime 1942–43 kept his family alive in the bleakest of circumstances. A sober realism permeates Kasimow’s work and worldview, as does a sense of chronic unease laced with existential doubt, but nihilism and cynicism find no home in his capacious thought. The supreme value of the book is Kasimow’s remarkable gift of self-portraiture. In recent years, he has shared with an increasing number of in-person and virtual audiences around the world the harrowing tale of how his Lithuanian family resisted genocidal Antisemitism and successfully eluded the Nazis and their accomplices by hiding in a hand-dug pit under a barn for over nineteen months. Here he breaks his long literary silence and joins the ranks of Shoah witnesses in print. His unforgettable account of nearly five years of stolen childhood—in the grub or kever (Yiddish for grave), in forest hideouts, and in a displaced persons camp—now takes its honored place in the canon of Holocaust survival. Sadly, the production of the book itself does not match the exquisite quality of Kasimow’s personal and scholarly generosity or meet the highest standards of the industry. Typographical errors mar the text, and copyediting...