Orthodox Jewish thought in the wake of the Holocaust: Tamim Pa'alo of 1947

There was no unanimity of interpretation among scholars and thinkers of the Orthodox Jewish community with regard to the Holocaust. One of the most interesting was Hayim Israel Tsimrman's book "Tamim Pa'alo" written in Palestine shortly after the war as part of a pastoral mission to counsel Jewish survivors. His answer to the question "why did God do this to this nation?" was to put the blame on the younger generation of Jews in the 1930s, who by rejecting tradition and abandoning the old ways, betrayed their task of carrying Judaism forward