The Ashkenazi Revolution

172Chapter 10Ashkenaz and Sefarad in the State of IsraelThe gathering of exiles in the State of Israel, that is to say, the bringing ofthe various Jewish peoples, is an event without precedent in Jewish worldhistory. One cannot compare the modern gathering of exiles with thereturn to Zion at the beginning of the Second Temple. Then they returnedafter a relatively short absence from the Land of Israel, and mostimportantly: The vast majority of them returned from one land, fromBabylon. The return to Zion can be included under a general phenomenonwhose name is migration, but under no circumstances can this apply to thegathering of exiles taking place in the State of Israel. For over the courseof 2500 years that separate us from the return to Zion, Jewish history hasexperienced a great expansion. The various Jewish peoples establishedcivilizations on almost every continent. At the same time, these peoplesstrengthened their attachment to the dimension of time, as their attachmentto the dimension of space decreased. These peoples turned intocharacteristically semi-divine peoples that moved within the plane of timeand established cultures that conquered the dimension of time withoutrequiring any dominion over the dimension of space. This rule-over-time,of the Jewish peoples, was what allowed them to wait until the momentwhen they were able to conquer anew the space of the Land of Israel.Before the Holocaust, the Ashkenazi People constituted around 94 percentof the population of the Confederacy of Jewish Peoples, while the dozenother peoples added up to only 6 percent. Today, the Ashkenazi Peopleadds up to 85 percent of Jews overall, and other peoples are 15 percent.This startling disproportion divides the Confederacy of Jewish Peoples intotwo regions: The ascending region of the Ashkenazi People and thedescending region of non-Ashkenazi Peoples. Insofar as this divisionraises the question, where is the ascending region and where is thedepressed region, it also provides the answer.