THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

So, three traumatized communities constitute the majority of the Jewish people today:American Jews, Ashkenazi Israelis, and Middle Eastern Israelis. The threecommunities are still Shoah-shocked, and they do not seek to mitigate the Shoah’sburdensome weight. I still do not know what the role of the former Soviet Jewry willbe in all this. It is too early to know whether they will fully assimilate into generalsociety or create a niche for themselves. Until then, I compare the education and riseof Israel with the education of children, my own.After t he teenage rebellion comes reconciliat ion, accept ance, and even a partialadoption of the parents’ ways of life; in the middle of our lives we find ourselvesmuch more similar to our parents than we could ever have predicted. So it is withZionism, the young rebellious daughter that declared itself independent from MotherJudaism. Authors, intellectuals, pioneers, and builders rebelled against the rabbis, theirbenefactors, and those they perceived to be part of Jewish religious degeneration. Ifthe course of events had continued undisturbed, familial reconciliation would havecome and Judaism and Zionism would have synthesized. Except that the Shoahhappened in the fifth decade of Zionism, destroying history. Its shadow refuses todepart. The Shoah destroyed the Eastern European Jews, became the main argumentfor the Jewish state, accelerated its founding, and now it nourishes Israel’s existence.The establishment of the third Jewish commonwealth indirectly encouragedSephardic Jews to leave their centuries-old communities and come to Zion. On topof these obstacles, the Shoah prevents Israel from naturally reaching maturity,postponing the reconciliation of Judaism and Zionism. The overt result is that Israeland the Jewish people remain fully connected to the sick, malignant parts of theEuropean experience. We are reliving with morbid intensity the most horrible twelveyears of our history at the expense of Europe’s Jewish millennia, the stunning tencenturies of mutual influences that changed their lives and ours. Instead, we sanctifyour security doctrine, often expressed vengefully and belligerently. We haveembarrassing politics that lack vision and resemble small-town wheeling and dealinginstead of national leadership that grasps the burden of responsibility. We need torepair all this and more if we want a healthy, normal, and rational state. It is time for asobering dialogue on the essence of this state and its ailments. How can it be cured?Each year, two weeks after Sukkot, when we read the part of the Torah that tells