Richard L. Rubenstein, the leading Jewish voice in the theological groundswell of the 1960s known as the “Death of God” movement, who argued that the Holocaust had invalidated the idea of an omnipotent, benevolent deity who safeguards Jews as the chosen people, died on May 16 in Bridgeport, Conn. He was 97.
“To see any purpose in the death camps,” he continued, “the traditional believer is forced to regard the most demonic, anti-human explosion in all history as a meaningful expression of God’s purposes. The idea is simply too obscene for me to accept.”
While he contended that the God of traditional beliefs did not exist, Dr. Rubenstein never renounced a belief in a God and attended synagogue every Sabbath, his daughter said. He saw God as “the Lord of all creation” who left human beings to make their own moral choices, said Michael Berenbaum, a Holocaust scholar who studied with Dr. Rubenstein for his doctorate at Florida State University in Tallahassee.
“God is the ocean and we are the waves,” was a favorite metaphor of Dr. Rubenstein’s.
“That doesn’t make human life meaningless,” Professor Berenbaum said. “It gives us the opportunity to create meaning.”