THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

Afghanistan, most Jews live in democratic societies. In less than a century-and-a-half,the living conditions of the Jewish people have changed beyond recognition. Morethan three-quarters of the Jewish people live in two relatively new societies: the Stateof Israel and the United States. Europe had been almost completely emptied of Jewsthrough genocide and emigration. But it was not only the Shoah that was to blame.The liquidation process had begun years before the crematoria were built. ShalomAleichem documented in doleful words the mass exodus from the regions of the Paleto the United States of America. S. Y. Agnon wrote Yesteryear, the stunningfoundation of prestate Hebrew literature, on the topic of an exodus from the land ofIsrael. The Zionist pioneers, together with religious immigrants, believers, andredemption-seekers, willfully left their Diaspora and built the new world of themodern Jewish people.The State of Israel was built as a safe haven for the Jewish people, yet it is todaythe least safe place for Jews to live. Ask yourself, where is it safer to live? In holyJerusalem, the city of bombs? Or in New York, where fundamentalist evil downedthe twin towers of the World Trade Center? It seems that many more view NewYork as a safer place to live than Israel, regardless of how many atomic bombs theJewish state allegedly stores in her arsenal.An automatic Zionist answer to allay my fears would be that Israel is the safestplace for Jews because anti-Semitism lurks everywhere, even behind the politefacade of American Christianity. Or they might argue that only in the land of ourforefathers will our children and their children remain Jewish. I do not think thatanyone can truly believe such arguments. We must admit that present-day Israel andits ways contribute to the rise in hatred of Jews. The responsibility for anti-Semitismis not ours, yet the mere existence of Israel is a thorn in the side of those who do notlike us and requires more serious investigation and discussion than the shallow notionthat “the world is against us no matter what we do.” Such beliefs are suicidal,desperate, and defeatist. I do not subscribe to them.Israeli society in the Holy Land is rich with a wide range of both religious andnationalistic expression. You have the ghetto ultra-Orthodox in the inner cities ofJerusalem and Bnei Brak; Hills Youth and stone-and-wood worshippers in t he West