“He gave us the Law.
And to debate the Law even on such a terrible subject … is a kind of prayer.”
Do you know God well enough to charge him with covenant unfaithfulness? Do you dare place him on trial for the evils in the world? Can you conceive of that very interrogation being itself a form of piety?
These questions and more are explored in the under-appreciated 2008 BBC film “God on Trial”. Based on a play, the film unfolds over one night in the barracks of a Nazi concentration camp as imprisoned Jews facing their own mortality call God to account for the evils in the world. The cumulative evidence in this rabbinic trial is then presented before a three-judge panel. Is God guilty?
You be the judge.
