Q&A: Rabbi Amital and Abba Kovner
Rabbi Amital and Abba Kovner
Question
Hello, in one of your articles you quoted the exchange between Abba Kovner and Rabbi Amital. Of course, your approach to how the Holy One, blessed be He, runs the world is not based on Rabbi Amital. In any case, on the Har Etzion Yeshiva website the exchange appears like this:
Did the fact that you are a believing person help you cope as a survivor? After the war I was in contact with Abba Kovner, of blessed memory. Once we sat together on a television panel discussion dealing with the meaning of the Holocaust. He asked me: "Did you have problems with faith?" I answered him: "I have problems? Your problems are more serious. I believed in the Holy One, blessed be He; now I do not understand His ways. You believed in man. Do you still continue to believe in man after what you saw in the Holocaust? Truly, both of us have problems."
https://www.etzion.org.il/he/%D7%9B%D7%9C-%D7%9E%D7%94-%D7%A9%D7%90%D7%9E%D7%A8%D7%AA%D7%99-%D7%96%D7%94-%D7%9E%D7%A2%D7%98-%D7%9E%D7%9E%D7%94-%D7%A9%D7%90%D7%A0%D7%99-%D7%9E%D7%A8%D7%92%D7%99%D7%A9-%D7%90%D7%91%D7%9C-%D7%90%D7%A0%D7%99-%D7%9C%D7%90-%D7%9E%D7%A1%D7%95%D7%92%D7%9C-%D7%9C%D7%94%D7%92%D7%99%D7%93-%D7%99%D7%95%D7%AA%D7%A8
Answer
That is how I remembered having read it. In any case, I just looked a bit in the book A World Built, Destroyed, and Rebuilt, and I found on the last page:
I said to him (Rabbi Amital to Abba Kovner): I do not know whose trial is greater, yours or mine. You championed faith in man. After the Holocaust, can you still believe in man? I believe in the Holy One, blessed be He. I cannot understand Him. But man is supposed to be understandable. What do you believe in now?
And in the previous paragraph:
A friend who survived asked him: Did you remain religious? Rabbi Amital answered: And if I had not remained religious, would all the questions be understandable? Would the phenomenon be understandable?
Indeed, it is somewhat different from what I remembered. Still, I do not think I based my claim about the non-involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He, on Rabbi Amital. I brought his words as an illustration. In that sense, they are indeed such.