THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

THE CONSTANT PRESENCE OF THE SHOAH IN MY LIFE FEELS LIKE abuzz in my ear. Although none of the horrors affected me personally, I feel that thisdarkest period in human history is always present, everywhere, and its reminders aremany. Children prepare for the “Auschwitz trip.” World leaders are now celebratingsix decades since liberation. And while the Shoah’s tenth anniversary was hardlycommemorated, and the fiftieth anniversary was pathetic, suddenly, in 2005, theworld was holding extravagant ceremonies, pyrotechnics, and Hollywood-styleproductions for the sixtieth anniversary of our deaths. Not a day passes without amention of the Shoah in the only newspaper that I read, Haaretz. The topics arevaried: reparations, compensation, anti-Semitism, a new analysis, an interesting book,an insightful interview. Shoah is like the hole in the ozone layer: unseen yet present,abstract yet powerful. The more I think about it, the more I am certain that the Shoahhas become a theological pillar of the modern Jewish identity and that it is one of theJewish people’s greatest challenges in modern times.One day my daughter came home from her high school in Jerusalem. “Today,” shesaid, “we had a lesson to prepare us for ‘the trip to Poland.’” Over our family dinner,I asked her about the lesson. “The school principal said we are all Shoah survivors,”she replied. Eventually she and her friends, in what has become the custom for manyIsraeli teenagers, traveled to Poland and returned as changed Israelis. Only my