Abstract / DOI
God’s Weeping: Potential and Limits of a Consolation Formula in Jewish Theology. Judaism after the destruction of the Second Temple sought concepts of coping with the catastrophe. Narratively, this was achieved, among other things, in the figure of God suffering and weeping with the people, while, on the other hand, the preoccupation with the omnipresent Torah was supposed to cushion the loss of the Jerusalem Temple as a meeting place between the people and God. The essay will show in what form rabbinic literature attempted to activate and dovetail these forms of crisis management. During the Shoah, the image of the weeping God found its climax in the work of a Hasidic scholar, but in the end was no longer suitable for absorbing the pain and bewilderment of the author.