THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

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Chinese tyranny.The sum total points to an impressive, significant progress of democracy in placeswhere it was meager just one political generation ago. This reality defies our owntendency to paint the world in somber tones, feeling it is sliding downhill and history isin retreat. We point out laboriously how the income gaps between the rich and poorwiden in our midst and among nations throughout the globalizing world. We turn onthe TV in the evening news and hear the usual fare of murder, rape, pedophilia,disasters, and conflicts. Nevertheless this is a good world. Emmanuel Todd, a Frenchdemographist, economist and anthropologist, argues in his book After the Empire:World history is much more encouraging than what television newsbroadcasts . . . Humanity is in the process of liberation frombackwardness . . . illiteracy, high bir t h rate and high mor ta lit y. . . Ifwe keep remembering this, we will be more optimistic and could evenbe impressed with man’s ascension to a decisive stage in hisdevelopment. 9For many years we were vagabonds, migrants, living here and there, but at the sametime really nowhere, disconnected and lacking feelings of loyalty and stability. Wewere the usual suspects, cosmopolitans sentenced to exile, while others dwelledconfidently in their lands and experienced the eternal stability that is based on theirplace in the world, where they and their parents before them were born andestablished their commonwealths. Nomads always posed threats on the land and itsresidents. Abel, the shepherd, threatened his brother Cain, the farmer, and was slain.The Egyptians distrusted the Hebrew tribes that migrated to their land during faminesand feared, “lest they will increase and if a war breaks out, they will join our enemiesand will fight us and will ascend from the land” 10 The nomadic Bedouins were alwaysexpelled by the farming fallah. The Native Americans seemed intimidating to thewhite settlers in the forts, and the fate of the Gypsies in Europe is known. Jews, likeGypsies, were always perceived as distant, dark, and threatening. These days,however, all this is changing. The world has gone global. Everyone can move freely,change residences, switch careers. Everyone can travel and watch geography, travel,
and discovery channels on television. Suddenly the whole world is mobile, foreignersare everywhere, and they are all somewhat Jewish, restless wanderers. Many havemultiple passports. The Jews no longer pose a threat. Only those who have notbecome wanderers still feel threatened by us. The political outcome is that manyWestern countries attract immigrants who come from economically or constitutionallyweaker countriesIsrael is the country that leads the world in the ratio of newcomers to its nativepopulation; the United States is second. Therefore, a visitor to Israel would not knowhow to define it. Is it Western, as a quick look at the Tel Aviv skyline may hint, or is ita living museum restoration of the Eastern European Jewry of Poland, Galicia, andthe other communities during the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, asreflected in the streets of the ultra-Orthodox communities in Bnei Brak, Jerusalem,Immanuel, Elad, and some neighborhoods in Ashdod and Arad?Israel could also be a remote branch of contemporary Iran, as it seems when youlisten to some former chief rabbis talk. Or is it a cowboy country, reminiscent of theWestern United States during the Gold Rush, judging by the look of plaid-clad, gunslinging,bearded pioneers walking the streets of its towns? It could also be Brazil, ifyou jog on Tel Aviv’s lovely beaches. Or it could be an economic powerhouse,number three in Nasdaqlisted securities. Looking deeper, Israel could also be avoodoo society, judging by the prevalence of curses and amulets, holy water, bans,and excommunications.In short, Israel is one big culturally and spiritually chaotic place, second to none inthe world. It is home to at least four peoples: Jews, Palestinians, non-Jewish Sovietimmigrants and hundreds of thousands of Asian migrant workers, “the Labormovement.” This human mix can be a good basis for bridges of dialogue to serve asmodels for the rest of the world. The decision whether to be torn apart and sink intoourselves like a black hole, or to recognize the diversity, be inspired by it, andbecome a beacon to the new humanity, a light to many immigrant societies, is in ourhands. These inner qualities have always been with us, but never before were we asorganized as we are now.Judaism has always lived an unresolved tension between absolute universalism andhigh-walled isolationism. The will and the natural tendency to dwell in isolation wereundermined through history by individuals who broke out and changed the world—Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, Sigmund Freud, Heinrich Heine, Moses Mendelssohn,
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THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER; WE MUSTRISE
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THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER; WE MUST RISE
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In loving memory of my late parents
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Notes 243Index 247
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none of this could have happened.An
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word “former” is attached to yo
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This is how I explain the fierce pu
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eternal renewal of the world. But n
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CHAPTER 1
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I WAS BORN IN JANUARY 1955 IN GERMA
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When I finished writing my first bo
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I had heard her say that more than
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of my late father. We traveled far
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CHAPTER 2THE HOLOCAUST, EVER-PRESEN
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youngest son, Noam, did not join th
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Bank; New Age and Buddhist experime
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CHAPTER 3
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WHERE TO BEGIN? HOW DO YOU START CL
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ight, and Eban, if the 1967 boundar
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CHAPTER 4
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MY NEIGHBOR RAMI’S PARENTS CAME F
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When he woke up, he continued the c
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power. The local leadership of Ben
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How could it be that everything “
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As the Zionist movement aspired to
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everything changed dramatically and
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“Masada will not fall again” be
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So, three traumatized communities c
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CHAPTER 5
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WHAT COLOR WAS THE HOLOCAUST? PROBA
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seemed to side with me and my frien
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into ploughshares and wait patientl
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When my initial courtship of Yael c
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only during the long incubation per
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liked to compare the Palestinian Na
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Fanon is an expert witness worth li
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prevention.” How targeted could i
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themselves to speak words that shou
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followed the war? If not, how did h
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war, therefore they should not know
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CHAPTER 6LESSONS FROM THE HOLOCAUST
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“nationhood,” including its int
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in anger over the Dreyfus Affair, b
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1943, upon hearing of the Warsaw gh
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is compared to the Shoah, dwarfed b
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ad fortune, to express anger, to re
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e the cause of constant political f
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use the refugee problem to denounce
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Almost everywhere the Shoah serves
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with the moral parity among the chi
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CHAPTER 7
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THE HIGH POINT OF MY SEVENTH GRADE
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at least, before the Warsaw ghetto
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than a million Jews who had walked
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ebels and the disciples of the yout
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exterminated. A group of Jewish you
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grenade. Natan Rapoport, the sculpt
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we will not respond. We will sacrif
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against Us.” It is self-evident,
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of now we got lost. We need to retu
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CHAPTER 8
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BECAUSE OF ADOLF EICHMANN, I CAN’
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discussion about garbage technology
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gap between my father’s world and
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independent Jewish Commonwealth, th
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Eichmann harmony at the right pitch
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the victors at Nuremberg presented,
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the highest order. Without people l
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The landlady did not lie, and never
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of whom only one was a non-Jew, a g
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The Grunwald trial had become the K
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Canaanite left, and the yearling of
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to shape a new Israeli generation t
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trial . . . he would use expression
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light to humanity. But they continu
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suspended daily, and not just to ev
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minister who came from “there,”
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CHAPTER 9
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“WHO REMEMBERS THE ARMENIAN HOLOC
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. . . an ideologue with firm belief
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Today we are armed to the teeth, be
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and Romanians. We would have shut o
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It turned out that the Dalai Lama,
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War II, an estimated half a million
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An empire without colonies launched
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So familiar and yet so far removed
Page 178 and 179: was the first governor of southwest
Page 180 and 181: mention other states, the Jewish wo
Page 182 and 183: square and deserted the universal h
Page 184 and 185: peoples’ holocausts. In a world i
Page 186 and 187: we raise our guests and force-feed
Page 188 and 189: CHAPTER 10
Page 190 and 191: JUDAISM IS A CIVILIZATION THAT IS T
Page 192 and 193: the Jewish Pantheon, namely in the
Page 194 and 195: dogma are the most dangerously viol
Page 196 and 197: His words express no condolences an
Page 198 and 199: most meaningful clash to take place
Page 200 and 201: Korah’s racism lacks the mechanis
Page 202 and 203: aka HaRambam. All of them belong to
Page 204 and 205: lecture, a professor stood up.“I
Page 206 and 207: The revolution that did not happen
Page 208 and 209: the deceitful war in Lebanon, for t
Page 210 and 211: and not in Le Monde, in French? His
Page 212 and 213: a new prayer book, a Siddur, in whi
Page 214 and 215: CHAPTER 11MAKE GOD SMILE AGAIN
Page 216 and 217: Does it really matter who is guilty
Page 218 and 219: Divine intervention did not come to
Page 220 and 221: enemy-brethren? My Shoah question i
Page 222 and 223: wept, and kept watch; but when the
Page 224 and 225: acceptance of those who were discri
Page 226 and 227: and impatient beliefs win over many
Page 230 and 231: —Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, Sigmund
Page 232 and 233: and outlooks. It was not just a dif
Page 234 and 235: CHAPTER 12
Page 236 and 237: HOW MANY TIMES SHOULD A MAN DIE? H
Page 238 and 239: Israelis made a motion. So I starte
Page 240 and 241: innovation that included my sister
Page 242 and 243: heard this melody at any other home
Page 244 and 245: nations that do not know you and on
Page 246 and 247: I never made secret of my opinion t
Page 248 and 249: admissible. I am sorry, but this do
Page 250 and 251: prime minister with Germany’s pre
Page 252 and 253: only synagogue where the cantor Mei
Page 254 and 255: 3. An official press release by Net
Page 256 and 257: 6. Yehuda Elkana, “In Defense of
Page 258 and 259: INDEXAbraham, 107, 158, 178, 184, 2
Page 260 and 261: British Mandate of Palestine, 99-10
Page 262 and 263: faith, 206-9, 211, 213, 240Finkielk
Page 264 and 265: 198, 203-16, 226, 231-3, 239; color
Page 266 and 267: Jonas, Hans, 205-6Jordan, 67, 82-3,
Page 268 and 269: Namibia, 161-5, 174Napoleon III, 52
Page 270 and 271: Rwanda, 86, 144, 151-2, 155, 158, 1
Page 272 and 273: Ukraine, 29, 32, 36, 74United Natio
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THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

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