THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

symbol of Zionist revival. During World War II, Hanukkah also became the holidayof American Jewry.It was not surprising, t hen, t hat even an import ant t hinker like Morgensternchanged his views drastically. From viewing Zionism, as well as German nationalism,as expressions of dangerous ethnic selfishness and as antithetical to Judaism, he wascompelled to unconditionally accept the new Israeli-Zionist reality. On the eve of theUnited States entering the war in 1941, he expressed, for the last time, the notion ofan alternative:A twentieth-century Jewish state . . . will be no more than a passingnationalistic episode, a temporary retreat into Jewish history. Despitethe pretentious Zionist claim of the benefit of rebuilding a Jewishnational home . . . The undeniable lesson of Jewish history . . . teachesthat Israel’s ability and destination are expressed only by religion andonly by Israel’s role as the carrier of the religious spiritual legacy. 1Morgenstern never renounced his dream of reviving the Jewish spirit in the UnitedStates. Nevertheless, as a religious and community leader and scholar of Jewishhistory, he sensed that the Shoah was an event too great to ignore. His view of anindependent Jewish state changed. It could be because he was convinced in his heartthat this was the right idea, or he may have succumbed to the wishes of ordinaryJews and the Zionist ideas that enraptured the American Jewish population. Fromthen on, he would look toward “that yearned-for day, the founding day of the Jewishstate.”The United Nations’ 1975 resolution that “Zionism is a form of racism and racialdiscrimination” marked the beginning of the attempt to build a New Babel. Soon afterthe resolution was voted, the Reform movement decided to join the Zionistmovement. Just as Zionism was losing its meaning in Israel, it became a definingelement of Jewish American politics, especially in the Reform community. For me it isvery clear: the American Jewry in the early days of the nineteenth and early twentiethcenturies was supposed to be something else—the universalistic pole of the Jewishexistence. Exactly like Morgenstern’s early thoughts and writing. With the Holocaust,