THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

As the Zionist movement aspired to create a new structure that would enable theJewish people as a collective to join the family of nations, the Reform movement tookit upon itself to create a standard for Jewish individuals to integrate as equals in non-Jewish societies. The revival of nineteenth-century scholarly Judaism—resembling themost important Diaspora, the Babylon Revival centuries earlier—started in Germanyand the Austro-Hungarian Empire and continued unabated in the United States. Formany years it opposed Zionism and the idea of a Jewish state. Few remember thatthe majority of the Jewish people opposed the creation of a Jewish state well intoWorld War II. This opposition came from all sorts of Jews, Reform, ultra-Orthodox,communists, Bundists (members of the Jewish Labor Union, the Bund) and plainordinary Jews. They opposed the Zionist minority and feared the consequences of anational and political revival. Each group had its own ethical and spiritual reasons, butall were united by the fear—which eventually materialized—that a Jewish politicalentity would create intolerant nationalistic sentiments that would drastically alter thehistorical character of the Jewish people.All this was to change in a few years. American Jewry adopted the overt andcovert messages of the Zionist movement and sought models for synthesis of nationalseparatism and integration into the all-American society. In those days, the newlyborn socialist-secular political movement Yishuv renewed and reinvented the minorholiday of Hanukkah, turning it into a celebration of heroism and triumph. We all sangloudly, “Hear o, in those days in this time, Maccabee is the savior and redeemer . . .In every generation he will rise, the hero rescuer of the people . . .”God was no longer the hero of the holiday; rather it was the Maccabee, the warhero. The Israeli myth designers freighted the nearly forgotten holiday with newsymbols galore. A sacred date and a religious holiday commemorating therededication of the Temple and its salvation from the Hellenists became a nationalholiday.Hanukkah was altered unrecognizably and loaded wit h excess baggage. Anemphasis was put on the military victory by the few, weak, and under-equipped overthe many, well armed, and experienced. We were told of the Hasmonean state’sstatus and acumen in the ancient world, about the reclaiming of land, expanding ofboundaries, the expelling of foreign invaders. Hanukkah, in short, had become the