With Repentance for the Holocaust, C. K. Martin Chung has accomplished a truly remarkable feat of scholarship and theological understanding, moving through biblical and rabbinic texts with ease and then addressing complex issues of modern Jewish thought as well as Christian theology. But what is extraordinary about the book is its overall argument. The idea that there are theological resources within Judaism, unique to Judaism, that have something important to say to Germans after the Holocaust is something I have never heard articulated by anyone, Jew or Christian. I am simply amazed by the audacity and brilliance. Chung's book will spark wonderful discussions among scholars, and I can't wait to participate in them.
Susannah Heschel, Eli Black Professor of Jewish Studies, Dartmouth College, author of The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany C. K. Martin Chung considers the Jewish-German relationship after the Holocaust with a high level of ethical sensitivity and subtlety, an unwavering compassion, and a sense for the necessity of justice as well as mercy in dealing with this history. His approach calls to mind the orientation of G. E. Lessing or much more recently Emmanuel Levinas, both of whom stress, within widely divergent discourses, the priority of the ethical over the epistemological. Chung has written a history of post-Holocaust repentance that reveals what might become universally available guidelines for reconciliation processes in various global contexts.
Jeffrey S. Librett, University of Oregon, author of Orientalism and the Figure of the Jew In its attempt to model a desecularizing methodology his study draws renewed attention to received critical commonplaces surrounding German Vergangenheinbewaltigung, offering a rich bank of historical examples. The book also demonstrates how important, but also how difficult, it is to (re)admit not just the sociology of religion but also theology itself into the realm of contemporary interdisciplinarity.
The German Quarterly