Reform Judaism and the Holocaust

I have a Google news feed on my blog that searches out mentions of Reform Judaism in the news and I try to make a point of looking at most of the articles that it collects. Yesterday I followed a link with the headline "People of the Cloth?" because it seemed odd. It was a column by Rabbi Naphtali Hoff in The Jewish Press online edition, which states on their "About Us" page that "For four-and-a-half decades now The Jewish Press has championed Torah values and ideals from a centrist or Modern Orthodox perspective." And I have to say it really frustrated me.

Rabbi Hoff starts off with a story about a father who wanted special allowances made for his child to have tutoring instead of attending Hebrew School. When the rabbi wouldn't give in the father proclaimed that "You know, rabbi, you people of the cloth can be so inflexible!" Which leads the rabbi into a rambling discourse that begins with the clothing of the Jews and distinguishing ourselves from other cultures and ends up blaming the Reform Jews of Gemany for the Holocaust. At one point he writes:

Historically, God has taken an active role where necessary to ensure that His chosen people not lose their distinctive identity. Often, He has even recruited gentiles to force us into a position of separateness, by imposing the threat of annihilation or restrictive legislation.

He details the reforms made in 19th century Germany, the changes in rabbinic garb, changes in liturgy, the rise of assimilation into German society, etc. Arguments I have heard before. And then came the following paragraph:

As in the past, God did not allow this trend to continue completely unchecked. In Germany, the Nazis passed the Nuremburg Laws (1935), which set out to redraw the line between German and Jew. These laws stripped Jews of German citizenship, forbade intermarriage, barred Jews from most professions, and ordered that the letter "J" be printed on their identity cards. In time, Jews would be forced to wear distinctive badges identifying them as Jews. Ultimately, most were murdered, going to their deaths as despised Jews, not as proud, assimilated Germans.

Rabbi Hoff bluntly states that Reform Judaism brought on the Holocaust. And I'm sorry, you can disagree all you want with Reform ideals and theology, but when you blame a group of Jews, who were simply figuring out how to be Jewish in a modern world, for the destruction of 6 million of their own... well, then you've just gone round a bend that I can't follow. I think it is disgusting and immoral to suggest that it wasn't a lunatic like Hitler acting on his crazed ideas that brought about the Holocaust, but rather it was God punishing the German Jews for their reforms.

I do not subscribe to the theology that God causes bad things to happen, or that God punishes with natural disasters, or that God has a hand in the actions of evil men. Maybe in a time and place long since past God was much more active in manipulating the world; obviously there is plenty of mention of it in the Torah. But, maybe that was the early Jews' way of explaining things they couldn't explain, or rationalizing why they were run into exile, or were defeated by a more powerful enemy. But, I refuse to believe that God would actively punish His people for attempting to adapt their Jewish lives to a modern world.

I will not apologize for being a Reform Jew. And I refuse to let people like Rabbi Hoff suggest that Reform is the root of all that is wrong with American Judaism.