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Wrestling with the Angel

Toward a Jewish Understanding of the Nazi Assault on the Name

David Patterson

9781557788450
288 pages
Paragon House
Overview
This book shows that, proceeding from philosophical precedents, the Nazis undertook an assault on God, who in the Jewish tradition is known as the Name and that this assault has implications for Jewish thinking about Jewish identity in the post-Holocaust era. It shows that in the assault on the Name, there is an assault on the name—that is, on the very identity—of the Jew. The book examines the tradition of philosophical anti-Semitism that led to the Holocaust, how that Jew hatred manifested itself during the Holocaust as an assault on God and Isr'l, and what the Jewish people can do about it in the aftermath of the Holocaust.