THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

fossilized religious Orthodoxy, the self-appointed “authentic Judaism.” Unlike thewrathful prophecies of both the Orthodox, ultra-Orthodox, and Zionist preachers,there are and there will be alternatives.One of American Jewry’s most enlightened speakers was Rabbi JulianMorgenstern, who presided over the Hebrew Union College of New York from1922 to 1947. He was born in St. Francisville, Illinois, in 1881, the year of the worstpogroms in Russia and Ukraine, called “Storms of the Negev.” Those massacresunleashed the enormous waves of immigrants from the Pale to the shores of America,as well as the first emigrations to Israel.Not coincidentally, Morgenstern was the son of Jewish immigrants from Germany.One must ask, how did German Jews lay the foundations of American Jewishautonomy when so many of them, my father included, emigrated to the Land ofIsrael? Similarly, how did the Jews of the Pale lay the foundations of the Jewish statewhen their majority emigrated to North America? Since then the small divide betweenthe two Jewries—Israeli and American, Eastern and Western European—hasdeepened.Morgenstern was a biblical scholar of the Reform persuasion and his research is amodern critical study. In 1915 he published his controversial thesis, TheFoundations of Israel’s History. He believed that the Reform movement’s foremostduty is to reinterpret and rewrite the early history of the people of Israel. In his view,ancient Israel was one nation among other nations and civilizations of the ancientworld, not a separatist, isolationist nation, as it is today. Even in the face of fierceresistance from his colleagues in the Reform leadership, his view prevailed andbecame central to the movement. Morgenstern was both a Jew and an American; afaithful Jew who did not make opportunistic compromises to smooth his way into thebosom of the non-Jewish world, yet he defined himself as an American for allmatters. He was unwilling to isolate himself inside the Jewish ghetto of the mind. Inhis early work, Morgenstern viewed Zionism as an ideology of identity by negation.The Zionist reaction to assimilation, including the retreat to the Middle East, seemedto him an admission of defeat and acceptance of anti-Semitic values. Zionism wasescaping Judeophobia instead of repairing Judeophobic societies and the world, soas to prevent future anti-Semitism. It was treason and dereliction of duty, in violationof the universal tenets of Jewish values of identity and inclusion.