Sublime

Jewish history is a living testimony to the power of ideas,

However, there is already a fundamental difference from the past. In the past, a threatened Jewish community in Diaspora could hope only to sustain bearable losses and to live on by sufferance or flight. Israel has—and, through it, all Jews have—a major voice in its own fate. In the past, when Jews were destroyed, their wealth and achievement enric

A major factor in the colossal moral failures which made the Shoah possible was the nonresponse of the bystanders.

The Bible insists that the human role in redemption in no way reduces the divine intentionality and responsibility for the outcome of events. This is implicit in the meaning of covenant. In the case of the State of Israel, however, the human role in redemption is dominant and self-assertive.

One might add that the decision to create the state and take power also constitutes a commitment to end the martyrdom tradition of Jewish history. Since martyrdom means the risk of total annihilation, it is no longer acceptable.

The Jews who remained Jews, who remained faithful to the historical character of the Exodus, continued to insist that redemption could not be fully realized without social, political, and economic liberation as well as spiritual fulfillment.

Given the opposition of the majority of the Orthodox and the influence of modern culture and politics in shaping Zionism, the soul of modern Zionists was divided from the beginning.

Brenner, complex though he was, was perhaps the cultural icon of the Second Aliyah. His work, still considered brilliant, surfaced issues with which Israel continues to wrestle. He would have undoubtedly done even more than he managed in his brief life, but he was murdered by an Arab mob in the 1921 Jaffa riots.

The classic Jewish response to catastrophe is to renew life.