The Holy Fire

The Holocaust sparked profound theological questions about how God could have allowed the murder of six million Jews. The Holy Fire, a collection of weekly sermons delivered by Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira in the Warsaw ghetto, provides a glimpse into how a religious leader addressed the question of Jewish suffering in the midst of starvation, persecution, and death. Unlike many post-Holocaust Hasidic rabbis, Shapira does not blame the murder of the Jews on their rejection of Jewish practice. Instead, he differentiates between suffering for individual sins and suffering to sanctify God’s name. In the latter case, the enemy attacks what God stands for and Jews suffer along with God.