While the devastation and scale of World War II were enough to challenge the faith of any religious believer, the Jews in particular were faced with a reexamination of belief. Until the Holocaust, faith had been innocent: evidence of God’s presence could be seen in every birth and blessing, which were balanced in life by the usual deaths and setbacks which are God’s challenges and trials. The sudden murder of so many innocent Jewish people brought up many questions. “Where was God?” “How can we speak of God as good after the murder of so many?” Faith in humanity was equally tested. “How can we speak of human goodness and compassion after the Holocaust?”
However, the majority of Jewish survivors affirmed their faith in three simple ways: they married, they brought children into the world, and almost all Jewish survivors raised their children as Jews. Giving birth to children was an act of trust in the future when the past had been so deadly. Raising Jewish children, and most especially circumcising sons, was trusting that the world would be safe for them when, for six long years, being Jewish had been lethal.
For believing Christians, the Holocaust prompted a serious analysis of the religious sources of antisemitism. Most Jews continued to believe in the presence of God, but many changed their understanding of human responsibility for history. Not content to wait for God's deliverance, many — especially those who established a Jewish state with its own army in Israel — staked their future on their own responsibility for history.
