God On Trial

A very passionate, powerful, moving, tragic but beautiful story in the face of tremendous adversity because of who they are - their race.

1. The prisoners reasoned out how did they get there?
2. They questioned, what kind of God who made a covenant with their forefathers?
3. Did He betrayed and broke the contract with them? The covenant

This is a glimpse of the charges, rebuttals, scholarly reasoning and even mockery of the sovereignty of God. The other side of the story is the realization of the fallacy and depravity of man as they put God literally on trial.

Setting

The year is 1944, in Auschwitz prison, one year before the end of the Second World War. A day before half of them will be herded into the gas chamber.

The Prisoners

They are rabbis and scholars, men of science and men of commerce, working class and peasants - all Jewish

The Court

Rabbinical - where the Torah itself is the law

The Charge

God is in breach of contract and has failed to fulfill his promise - The Covenant

The Judges

Baumgarten - a professor in criminal law in Berlin, acts as the Head of the Court
Schmidt - a religious scholar - a Rabbi, acts as the Father of the Court
Mordecai - the Dayan (questioner), act as a Prosecutor

The Witnesses

Kuhn - father of Mordecai - in God's defense
Idek - brilliant scholar - tremendous knowledge on the Torah
Block Altester - the prisoner in charge of the inmates
Lieble - a father of three sons
Ezra - a good Jew
Jacques - a scientist - Physicist, argues God is an illusion
Akiba - the mystical Rabbi of Zamkevitz

The Arguments

God is sovereign and powerful
God breach of contract is habitual
Purification - punishment is part of the covenant
Suffering - part of God's plan - To test the Faith
Free Will - Man's choice, to think, to decide and to reason

The Quotes

What is the charge? are you blind, murder! collaboration murder!
If we take happiness from God's hand, must we not take sorrows too?
No enemy should be able to outwit him, no wicked man overcome him - I should crush his enemies before him, strikes his opponents dead!
God said for all people, we would be his own - he's chosen - a priestly nation
Bad things had happened before, read the Torah, read your history, we are Jews we suffered
The point is, to be a good Jew, the point is to keep faith - we are being tested!
In law, the punishment has to be proportionate to the crime
Before we go blaming God, we should ask ourselves and it's not God who violates the covenant but ourselves
They became socialists or Zionists , capitalists or anarchists. God knows what. Forgetting everything of the precious Scriptures
We must keep order here - you are Jews - if nothing else we must respect the law
The Torah - in our poverty it clothed and housed us - it is our palace and we lived in its splendor
I didn't say I'm a good man, I try but I don't know if I'm a good man and if you are a bad man
The questions is? Why did he chose to punish this good man here and not for instance - Hitler
Imagine, God is a surgeon and he has to remove a gangrene in the leg or an arm to cure the whole body. It's a violent act - its painful but it is also loving
When a man sacrifice, then something it must be the best - the most beautiful!
And where are the Romans now? They are dust!
And the Torah? still living, still flowering still illuminating the world
We can hate the knife but loves the surgeon
God give man freewill and he chooses evil with it
The war will end, Hitler will die and the people and the Torah will survive
If he love the Jews so much, why did he make anything else?
Why did he not fill the whole universe with Jews instead of stars
Then came the Jews, with great idea - there is only one God - amazing!
Then came the Christians - better idea!
Yes, there is only one God that did not only love Jews but others as well
What happened to the covenant? He made a covenant to someone else