Sexual Vulnerability and a Spirituality of Suffering: Explorations in the Writing of Etty Hillesum

Abstract

Etty Hillesum was a Dutch Jew who lived in Amsterdam during World War II and suffered under the persecutions of the Nazis, ultimately dying at Auschwitz. Her journals and letters offer a provocative portrait of an independent and intellectually curious young woman who was unabashedly frank about her active sexual life. Her views on God, prayer and suffering were developed largely outside the boundaries of any defined religious tradition. These views did not simply develop in tandem with her sense of her own sexuality; spirituality and sexuality intersected in her thought in important and novel ways. This essay sketches out a compelling spirituality of compassion drawn from the complex interconnections between Hillesum's understanding of God, the reality of suffering and her growing sense of the vulnerability that authentic sexuality demanded.