THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

My father was also struck with Shoah blindness. He knew the colorful componentsof the world in general and of the post-Shoah Jewish world in particular, but he didnot see well. He was a fantastic observer, but the big picture was even moretremendous than his vision. A thick wall separated him from the real meaning of Israelthat he had built and maintained. I almost never heard his positions on Israel from himdirectly. He did speak out on current affairs, endlessly—in his party’s newspaperHatzofe, from the Yiddish radio pulpit, or in the small Italian synagogue that weattended on Shabbat—but we almost never discussed existential matters. I had tosearch elsewhere for his positions. I had to go back to other places and other times,dig in the ashes, and dust my own memory in order to find my father of old, toconnect with him and to bring his thinking to today.He dismissed with a forgiving smile the messianic fanatics of Gush Emunim, thehardcore settler movement, who were growing like wild grass within his own party.He withheld his criticism. He knew that they were ruining his dream, but he did notconfront them, as if waiting for the nuisance to go away by itself. What he did notrealize was that they were here to stay and he was to go away. They lived in thepolitical present, and he was stuck with the historical clock. His timepiece stood stillwhen Hitler jammed its mechanism, but their clock changed Israeli history in anirreversible way. Perhaps he liked their values and only disagreed with their actions. Itmay have been one thing or its opposite; one could never know because for himeverything was Talmudic and there was always more than meets the eye. At the sametime, everything was German with him, meaning that everything was planned ahead oftime. Did he see and keep quiet, or did he simply not see? I do not know.My father was part of Israel’s leadership and yet did not express his opinions, but mymother did, casually, as an aside. We stood on our porch, under the gaze of Jesus’mother from the Terra Santa monastery across the street. Down the street busessmoked and ambulances wailed. It was 1982, the first war in Lebanon. My dad wasminister of the interior, a member of Prime Minister Menahem Begin’s cabinet. I wasan activist with the war protest movement. My father contained the conflict,absorbing it and not revealing his true feelings—an emotional feat, considering that he