THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

influence in that decade.In the 1960s, superpowers engaged in war games, including Vietnam and the coldwar. Politicians and statesmen tried to stabilize regions of influence according to theirideologies. The rules of the game, as well as manners and conduct, also changed inthe West. Anything went in the 1960s, a complete inversion was suddenly possible.These were the years in which students turned the academic establishment upsidedown and in which human rights, women’s rights, and other rights were finallyrecognized. Race barriers were removed, and American Jews achieved full equalstatus, sidestepping overt and covert forms of discrimination, and became the mostinfluential minority in the nation. The world, it seemed, understood and applied thelessons of the Shoah and negotiated its way to the opposite pole, the pole of love.But in these turbulent years, when the world progressed from rigidity andconservatism to creativity and liberalism, Israel moved in the opposite direction. Israeland significant parts of world Jewry regressed to the fundamentals, which we wishedto abandon when we entered the modern age. As the other nations of the worldabandoned their dark sides, we confined ourselves in a prison of our own. As theybroke their shackles, we locked ourselves behind bars. The West was our main pointof reference; we wanted to be part of it, but when it expanded its consciousness, weconsolidated our own. Jewishness won over Israeliness, the Jewish paranoia wonover the newly acquired Israeli confidence. Severing us from the newly acquiredconnection to the new era of universalism and love that shone on the horizon. Onlytime will tell if we missed the opportunity of our life, since the tide has turned sincethen, and the West, led by the United States, is huddling once again in conservatismand xenophobia, fleeing terror and scaling down rights and liberties.In the 1960s, Europe came to accept that war was not an option anymore. NikitaKhrushchev was de-Stalinizing the Soviet Union and the European states werepondering the idea of an eventual alliance. Across the Atlantic, Martin Luther King Jr.was fulfilling his dream of equality for all, and mass protests helped bring to an end tothe Vietnam War. While all this was happening, Israel was somewhere else. Westarted the decade with the Eichmann trial, continued with the Six-Day War, andended it belatedly in the autumn of 1973 with the Yom Kippur War. The Eichmanntrial connected the new Israel to the recent past, which for fifteen years hadsuppressed any mention of that dark time. The Six-Day War connected us to adistant past, the historic Land of Israel, the biblical homeland, and the glory of the