THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

Korah’s racism lacks the mechanism of self-criticism and self-accounting. TheMosaic-Jewish faith, in contrast, is the constant struggle to improve the individual, thecollective and the world. One is an untamed faith, the other one restrained. From apurely religious point of view, the simplest element of faith is always the belief inGod. He is the Supreme, the absolute source of authority and nothing is above him.His existence is not denied, and his commands are absolute. Opposite to God is man,the mortal, with all his limitations. Original Judaism created a separation between theholy domain and the laical space. All that belongs to God is sacred, and all thatbelongs to humans is earthly, temporary and subject to continuous review. “Do notmonitor a heavenly message,” says the Talmud. 7 Any attempt to extend God’s zonebeyond its boundaries, to implement it and force it on a secular institution, such as astate, is contempt for the eternal and is bound to end in a spiritual disaster. A stateand human society that do not account for their action, government actions that looklike supreme decrees, statesmanship and politics that hide behind the word ofreligious law and claim to fulfill God’s will—all these pose real and present mortaldangers. It has happened with us and with others. Korah is the biblical expression ofthe unfinished psychological process. And the sons of Korah, as the Bible says, neverdie.The conflict between constraining constitutional and legal elements and thesentimental eruptions of exclusivity and uniqueness has characterized Jewish religiouswritings since their beginning. The desire to break out without restraint is typical atany time, especially in times of crisis and Ruin, and is derived from the chosenperson’s perceived automatic holiness, his enthusiasm of belief that cannot always beleashed. Between biblical times and contemporary Jewish messianic times, manyother structures of Jewish superiority were built, as detailed below.Rabbi Yehuda Halevi, one of the great medieval philosophers and poets, lived inSpain during the First Crusade and created his works in the shadow of the titanicworld conflicts between Christianity and Islam. The struggle between the tworeligions took place also in Spain, which was conquered by both sides several times.This was the spiritual backdrop for his book The Kuzari. 8 For years, Yehuda Halevilabored on this work, which is literary and poetic, philosophical and theological. Theplot is deceptively simple, though creative: the Kuzari king’s conversion to Judaism.The book is a profound, complex analysis of Judaism. In reality, the Kuzari’s spiritualendeavors are Halevi’s attempt to break the contemporary formulas of thought and