John K. Roth, the Edward J. Sexton Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, has edited a new book, Anguished Hope: Holocaust Scholars Confront the Palestinian- Israeli Conflict, a collection of 13 Holocaust scholars both Jewish and Christian candidly addressing the challenges, risks, and possibilities embedded in the discouraging, long-lasting Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
"The challenge and task in the book was to see what insights might emerge if a group of Holocaust scholars addressed the complexities of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict," Roth says.
The book years in the making includes Roth's own contribution: Duped by Morality? Defusing Minefields in the Israeli-Palestinian Struggle. Other chapter topics include Forgetting the Holocaust: Ethical Dimensions of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and Toward a Post-Holocaust Jewish Understanding of the Jewish State and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.
"The book does not speak with one voice," Roth says. "Its format, in fact, encouraged exchange of views and even disagreement calling for each chapter writer to receive comments from other contributors and then to respond to them. We hope that this process draws out and clarifies the writers' thinking."
David Novak, the J. Richard and Dorothy Shiff Chair of Jewish Studies and professor of religion and philosophy at the University of Toronto, calls Anguished Hope a "unique contribution to the difficult task of thinking about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in moral terms.
"Since the Holocaust has become the moral barometer for judging any lethal international conflict," says Novak, "and since the Palestinian-Israeli conflict fully erupted in the wake of the Holocaust, it is right and proper that the two historical events be related by scholars concerned with both of them. The authors of Anguished Hope show quite well how reflection on the moral meaning of the Holocaust can either clarify or obfuscate the moral issues inherent in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict."
Roth has authored or edited more than 40 books, including a thoroughly revised edition of Approaches to Auschwitz: The Holocaust and Its Legacy (Westminster John Knox Press, 2003) and Ethics During and After the Holocaust: In the Shadow of Birkenau (Palgrave Macmillan 2005). In 2007-2008, Roth served as the Robert and Carolyn Frederick Distinguished Visiting Professor of Ethics at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. He was named the 1988 U.S. National Professor of the Year by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
Kristina Bergess '12