Self-Portrait of a Holocaust Survivor

The breadth of Werner Weinberg’s scholarship was prodigious, yielding monographs on ancient Hebrew epigraphy and biblical exegesis; the syntax of Rabbinic Hebrew; medieval grammars; and numerous studies on various aspects of Modern Hebrew. Both Weinberg and Lisl, his wife, survived internment at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

This collection of essays reprinted here, a little more than three decades after it first appeared, conveys Weinberg’s ongoing struggle to put into words something that might offer understanding to post-Holocaust generations. But they are also about a survivor’s own desire for meaning and sense in a senseless world. Most essays are framed around a series of questions which constitute Weinberg’s prison, and each time he attempts to pass through its portal, he finds himself held back at the threshold.

Self-Portrait of a Holocaust Survivor fuses together Weinberg’s most personal of reflections alongside careful analysis by an erudite theologian fully versed in traditional Jewish sources and historiography. He moves between resisting and acquiescing to the implications of Bergen-Belsen, never shying away from the most painful questions about God, morality, virtue, and the individual’s potential to do good. While today there is a vast literature penned by holocaust survivors and historians, this collection grapples with the concept of survivorship from a unique perspective.