Making Sanctuary for the Divine: Exploring Melissa Raphael’s Holocaust Theology

Christopher Pramuk

doi:10.6017/scjr.v12i1.10144

Abstract

This article details the author’s experience introducing Melissa Raphael’s 2003 book, The Female Face of God in Auschwitz: A Jewish Feminist Theology of the Holocaust, to predominantly Christian undergraduate and graduate theology students, and makes the case that her work deserves greater attention in Catholic and Christian theological circles. In provocative ways that elude systematic categorization, Raphael’s sensitive retrieval and theological interpretation of death-camp narratives builds a bridge between the Jewish and Christian memory of God that comes to bear especially on the theodicy question as intensified in the suffering of women, children, and the planet Earth. The mystical and theopoetical character of Raphael's method finds deep, if unsettling, resonance in students from widely diverse backgrounds.

Highlights

The first time I learned of Melissa Raphael’s book, The Female Face of God in Auschwitz,[1] was six or seven years ago when a reviewer of my book on Wisdom-Sophia and the divine feminine in the writings of Thomas Merton drew some parallels between what I was attempting theologically in that book, from a Christian perspective, and Raphael’s work, from a Jewish.[2]
I read the book and was astonished by its depth, courage, and imaginative scope; it is one of the finest works of constructive theology I have read in the last decade
As one of my students observed during a class discussion, the way Raphael does theology is something like a musician interpreting a score on the page: she attends to the notes but to the silences “between the notes” of women’s memoirs from the camps, and she helps us, her readers, do the same

Summary

Introduction

The first time I learned of Melissa Raphael’s book, The Female Face of God in Auschwitz,[1] was six or seven years ago when a reviewer of my book on Wisdom-Sophia and the divine feminine in the writings of Thomas Merton drew some parallels between what I was attempting theologically in that book, from a Christian perspective, and Raphael’s work, from a Jewish.[2].

Results

Conclusion