Department of Religious Studies

RELS-161 Homepage

Queen's University	Artsci Calendar	Religious Studies

In-Class test: 27 May 1996

Weight: 20%
Time Allowed: 2 hours

|PART A|PART B|PART C|

PART A, 30 points:
Identify, indicate the significance, or provide the context (as may be appropriate in each case) for TEN of the following in one or two sentences each:

1. "Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never."

2. "Man raises himself toward God by the questions he asks Him."

3. "Where is God now?" And I heard a voice within me answer him: "Where is He? Here He is--He is here hanging on this gallows...."

4. "The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me."

5. "Poor Akiba Drumer, if he could have gone on believing in God, if he could have seen a proof of God in this Calvary, he would not have been taken by the selection."

> 6. "How strange that the philosophy denying God came not from the survivors. Those who came out with the so-called God is dead theology, not one of them had been in Auschwitz."

7. "If I believed in God as the omnipotent author of the historical drama and Israel as His Chosen People, I had to accept Dean Gruber's conclusion that it was God's will that Hitler committed six million Jews to slaughter."

8. "No statement, theological or otherwise, should be made that would not be credible in the presence of the burning children."

9. "Trust in the world, which already collapsed in part at the first blow, but in the end, under torture, fully, will not be regained."

10. "And from this beginning confrontation there emerges what I will boldly term a 614th commandment: the authentic Jew of today is forbidden to hand Hitler yet another, posthumous victory.

11. "That is poor God crying. But never fear, my child. There will be another day and another and another, and we will all make Him smile."

12. "Between two throw-ins in a soccer game, right behind my back, three thousand people had been put to death."

PART B, 30 points:
Answer THREE of the following questions in a paragraph for each one.

1. Summarize what you understand to be the central point of Terrence Des Pres in his essay entitled "Excremental Assault."

2. Contrast the views of Richard Rubenstein and Elie Wiesel on the issue of what it means to be a Jew after Auschwitz.

3. How do David W. Weiss and Michael Berenbaum differ on the question of the Jewish understanding of the covenant after the Holocaust?

4. On what basis does Lucy S. Dawidowicz maintain that the Holocaust is unique?

PART C, 40 points:
Write an answer in essay form for ONE of the following questions.

1. In his essay, "The Dilemma of Choice in the Deathcamps," Lawrence L. Langer says "The alternatives are not difficult, they are impossible." Explain what he means by this "choiceless choice" with examples from Elie Wiesel's Night.

2. Irving Greenberg, in "Cloud of Smoke, Pillar of Fire," writes about the challenges that the Holocaust poses to Judaism and Christianity. What are those challenges and what does Greenberg think is the solution?

3. Outline as carefully as you can the changes in Elie Wiesel's religious faith as described during the course of his memoir Night. Then, indicate briefly what his present religious position (or that of the last thirty years or so) appears to be, showing its connections with his stance at the end of Night.