THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

and impatient beliefs win over many hearts, and bring with them conflict and wars.Among Jews, many anarchists are pressing for a speedy redemption. AmongChristians, especially Evangelicals, many yearn for an actual Armageddon. AmongMuslims, we all see the extremists, and some of us even understand them.When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, many believed that the chapter of world warshad finally come to a close. But soon it seemed that the chapter was just anintroduction to a book of altogether different conflicts. The array of faiths in theworld, the balance of religious ecology, and all that was stable and known forgenerations has been violated and implodes before our eyes, only to be rebuiltdifferently.I do not know enough of the others, but what I know about the Jews is sufficientto make me annoyed with my own Judaism and some of its followers, and to makeme want to work for our repair. When all the faiths and religions that endanger theworld today do their own soul searching on a collective scale, as well as on thepersonal level, the danger will diminish and even be defeated. I will start with us.Meaningful parts of Orthodox Judaism, especially those intertwined with Israelinationalism, are part of the danger to world peace. Zealots and zealotry were alwayspart of the Jewish soul, adhering to their beliefs through terrible loss and absoluteruin. We have never been short of them. I am not a Jew just for myself. My Judaismis part of my responsibility for the world, nature, creation and humanity. Yes, I am autopian Jew and I love the entire creation. When I recognize that parts of my Jewishidentity threaten the other parts of me, the human and universal ones, I am spurred toaction.The lesson of centuries of torture and millions of human sacrifices, including of myown people, on the altars of extremists and fanatics is not a lesson for exactingrevenge. Rather, in the name of those who went through it all and saw the inferno’sflames firsthand, we must prepare the ground for a better world. Judaism can spareitself the middle-age crisis of advancing from the old world to the new by leaping toits natural place as an agent of culture and as a spiritual mediator. If there is one thingthat the human community needs nowadays more than anything, it is an enormousprocess of world arbitration and international dynamics of conciliation. This is notjust between nations and peoples or organizations and companies, but between thediverse human spirits who can now communicate freely, thanks to technologicalinnovations. The erasing of boundaries, the availability of flights anywhere and