Richard Rubenstein’s After Auschwitz was the seminal work of theological reflection on the Holocaust in the 1960’s.  Imbued with the spirit of Rubenstein’s teacher Paul Tillich, it was also the book that turned my attention from philosophy and literary studies to religion after Rubenstein arrived at Florida State University from Harvard.  

After a half century of reflection on the situation of Israel, he paints a bleak picture for the prospects of a pan-Middle Eastern peace, associated with the persistent demand for jihad against the Jews among the youngest and strongest voices in the Islamic world.

...Shortly after 9/11, the late Daniel Barnard, Ambassador of France to the United Kingdom, declared at a private London gathering, that the current troubles in the world were all because of “that shitty little country Israel.”

What is seldom discussed publicly by the Western elites who see Israel’s demise as the solution to the problems of the Middle East is the likely fate of Israel’s Jews were the Muslim ever to achieve that objective. One reason for the reticence may be a pervasive amnesia concerning why so many Jews came to Israel in the first place. Starting in the eighteen-eighties, there was a direct correlation between the rise of European anti-Semitism and the decision of so many Jews to uproot themselves and migrate to Palestine.  Read on…

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Richard L. Rubenstein is President Emeritus and Distinguished Professor of Religion at the University of Bridgeport and Lawton Distinguished Professor of Religion Emeritus at Florida State University. He is the author of numerous books and articles on Jewish theology, the Holocaust and other issues including After Auschwitz: Radical Theology and Contemporary Judaism, The Cunning of History, My Brother Paul and Dissolving Alliance: The United States and the Future of Europe and Jihad and Genocide (2010).