THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

independent Jewish Commonwealth, the cradle of our civilization. This complicated,unhealthy connections recreated dreams of bygone grandeur that would in turnunleash the present-day nightmare with no end in sight.Ruin and resurrection, 1945 and 1948, Shoah and struggle, fear and glory, clearedthe stage for young Israel, then reappeared center stage in the 1960s. First it wasEichmann and his trial, then the IDF and its victory. The war created a bridgefounded on a military miracle; and Biblical regions were gained as compensation forthe European ruin. What Hitler and Eichmann had destroyed, the IDF and ournational spirit brought back in one flash war. A victory for an instant, against all ourenemies.Suddenly we weaklings had become saber-rattling, laurel-crowned victors, likeRoman emperors. When we were scattered and isolated throughout the world, wewere destined to be losers. Once we took our fate in our own hands, everythingchanged. We weren’t just victors, but the most powerful of all victors. Here we stoodagainst three armies— Egypt, Jordan, and Syria—representing a population of onehundred million, and we won in six symbolic days, the six days in which God createdthe world. It was our own re-creation. It was the sweetest victory, and we humiliatedour enemies. No wonder that those six days were followed by six years of nationalhubris, insensitive and irrational, that ended only with what we perceived as defeat inthe killing fields of the 1973 Yom Kippur War.In 1967 we sang the tearjerker “On the Wailing Wall.” We did not know that thesong was about us, our own hardening hearts that would turn to stone. We wereunited miraculously by the miracle of war, lead, and blood with the relic of the templethat was destroyed in blood, fire, and smoke 1,896 years earlier. We were changedbeyond recognition. In great haste we bulldozed the western area of the wall tocreate a plaza, thus destroying the Maghreb neighborhood’s homes, expelling thetenants overnight for the sake of our renewed holiness.Today, I think back to the 1960s to understand what went wrong and what got lost,and what more there is to salvage for a journey leading to a better tomorrow. Theyears between Eichmann’s dramatic capture and the depressing end of the YomKippur War became the watershed years.