THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

acceptance of those who were discriminated against and deemed inferior justrecently. Having always been the ultimate other and foreigner, the Jews cannot rejectthe new openness of the world, which includes us too. If we want to be accepted,we are forced to admit those whom we rejected only yesterday because of theirdifferent faith and deeds. Judaism today is religiously pluralistic, de facto, and the timehas come for a new spirituality, de jure.This new spirituality is an attempt to scrape off the calcified layers that we allowedto form on our faith and spirit. It would be the sincere effort to reach the emotionalcore of meaning and security in creation, humanity, and nature. The time ofmeaningless commandments, texts, and rituals is past. Too many compulsorycommandments are examples of the atherosclerosis that is constricting the ancientJewish arteries. The obsessive book of specifications as to what is permitted, andespecially prohibited, totally blocks the free exchange of ideas of faith. It hasconverted modern religiosity into an entity of robots who have lost the connectionbetween the inner meaning of their religious identity and the daily practice of theirclosed lives.The phrase “And I will dwell among them” should not remain an expression for theconfinement of God, “who fills the world,” inside a temple or a tent in the wildernessor a Jerusalem shrine. Faith, feelings, experiences, and manners of ritual should betransferred to private hands. Everyone has a different God inside him, and everyonehas the right to experience and express his or her faith in a personal way.India seems to produce the experiences that join together all contemporary Jewishinterpretations. Scores of thousands of backpackers and seekers return from the FarEast every year, bringing with them an aspect that has been absent from Judaism andits theory. They bring with them the ability to accept, contain, integrate and absorbinto their souls, and consequently our souls, the kind of diversity that has been aliento us. One can be religious and still travel on the Sabbath, be spiritual and also have acareer; I have an American iPod and yes, it plays soothing, exotic world music. Theformer and the latter are words of the living God, even though an ocean of conceptsand views separate us from each other.I look at the photos that my children send me from their travels around the world. Itry to perceive the faraway landscapes from their vantage point and to share theirexperience through the images. I think that they travel not only to distance themselvesfrom the impure experiences of an army, war, occupation, corruption and cynicism,