THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

shot back. “In the center,” he said. I replied “With you, the extremes move and sodoes the center.” “Others determine your position. If you want to be center, becomean anchor, dig into the ground, stand fast, be a man. Don’t move. Force the extremesto reposition based on your position.” It went on like this for years: him in the centerand me firmly at the pole. He was obdurate and moderating; I’m absolutist andfrenetic.How should I have understood European finesse? Where could I learnunderstatement? How can an Israeli from a yeshiva, barracks, and the corridors ofpolitical power understand existential humor that is not obscenity, male sexism or anti-Arab racism? I was not taught. I grew up deaf, not listening. I was blind, notdiscerning. I rebelled against my father and his origins and lost his wisdom andheritage. My father had opinions; hidden, shy, sad ones. They were buried under thedeluge of Israeli extremism. Our Sabra thorns protected the fruit from the pickers,and the thorns stabbed him, the fruit itself.My father connected, built bridges. Without such people, life is impossible. Inorder to keep the whole, he compromised, doing away with the noise of opinion.Leibowitz thought that he had no opinions; I took it upon myself to search for myfather and I discovered him to be the hero of my youth.For days I rummaged through Knesset protocols. I went to the state andgovernment archives. I read years of deliberations for hours in a quiet library. Then,suddenly, in all this reading I saw my father. Here he was, a giant, greater thananything I have known—“made of the stuff of legends,” as his grandson Hillel, mybeloved nephew, said.On the day Eichmann was captured, they held a meeting, and the following wassaid, according to the minutes.Ben-Gurion : Our security services searched for Adolf Eichmann for a long time,now they found him. He is in Israel and will stand trial here.Yitzhak Ben Aharon: How? What? Where?He is so shocked he continues in Yiddish, “ Wie macht men das?” How does onedo that? Then the personal confessions begin, and my father joins the discussion withhis typical rationalism.Yosef Burg: Is there a danger or a fear, I don’t know how to put it, that in the