Faith and Conflict (Paperback) | Released: 24 Apr 2011

Faith and Hostilities This book addresses four issues. First it seeks to debunk the Jewish theilogical explanations for the rise of the Holocaust and provide an alternate sociological theory explaining the Holocaust.Second the author proposes that religious and secular anti-Semitism that culminating in the HolocaustHolocaust had its roots in Christianity's search its own identity. The mechanism for acquiring its identity and its claim for the legitimacy of its ascendancy over Judaism was the dialectical method. Third the author the author examines the validity of the claim for the existance of Judeo-Christian values. The historical experiences that serve as the infrastructure for values are different for the two religions. While Judaism places primacy on the value of justice Christianity elevates the value of love above all others. This bifurcation of the principal values led to two distinct Weltanschauungen. Finally, the author proposes that it is not tolerance of diversity that will lead to a harmonious socity, rather, it will be achieved by the elevation of morals over faith. He agrees with Ludwif Feuerbach and Emile Durkheim that faith accentuates divisiveness while morals enhance social integration.
About the Author: Eugen Schoenfeld was born on November 8 1925 in Mukacevo a city of Carpathian region which at that time was a part of the Czechoslovak Republic. The city was a shtetl - a Jewish town in which two-third of its population was Jewish.. At the age of five he began his religious education attending a "cheder" a religious school. At the age of six he was enrolled into the Hebrew parochial school both in the four year elementary school and culminating with eight years of Gymnasium study that lead to a Baccalaureate degree that he received in 1943. In 1938 Mukacevo was annexed by Hungary. When in November the Hungarian armies occupied his city, now known by its Hungarian name Munkacs, the Jews became subject to the anti-Jewish that laws that have already been a part of the country's legal system. On March 1944 the Germans invaded Hungary and turned over its governance to the "Arrow Party" the Hungarian equivalent of the Nazi party who proceeded to intern Jews in Ghettos from which a few weeks later were taken to the infamous trains and being shipped to Auschwitz. Eugen Schoenfeld survived Auschwitz, Warsaw, Dachau, and Muhldorf the four concentration camps and was liberated by the 14th Armored Division of the Third Amy on May 2 1945. Seeking a life in a free country he escaped the spring of 1946 from Prague to the US held West Germany where he took a position on an immigration officer working for the United Nations. While in Germany he applied and received a scholarship from The Hillel Foundation to study in The United States. He arrived in the US in the summer of 1948 and enrolled to Washington University in St. Louis. In 1965 he completed his PhD in sociology at Southern Illinois University. In 1970 he was invited to assume the chairmanship of the department of sociology at Georgia State University from where he retired in 1995. His last eight years were devoted to lecturing and writing about his experiences in the Holocaust. His socio-autobiography "My Reconstructed Life" was published by Kennesaw State University Press. In his latest book "Faith and Conflict" Professor Schoenfeld examines the impact of Christian faith as the anti-thesis to the Jewish thesis had on the development of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust.