Israel is celebrating her sixtieth, a year and a half after I celebrated mine. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know and care about her. I grew up in Brooklyn among Zionist orthodox Jews; given how great the grief was after the Holocaust, and how high the elation at Israel’s founding, her name could easily have been among my first words. I grew up loving America, idolizing my uncles and my teachers who had fought in America’s wars; I was even named after my mother’s favorite cousin, who went down with his B-25 during World War II.

But if America was my mother—the water I drank, the air I breathed—Israel was my first crush, my love, my dream. I was twelve when I read Exodus—I can still picture myself lying prone on my bed flipping the pages of the floppy paperback, which had suffered from the intensity of my reading. It’s not that I owe my love of Israel to Leon Uris— my grandparents, my parents, my beloved rabbi, and many others set me up for it. But that story of Israel’s fight to be born from the ashes of the Shoah, beset by Arab enemies as hateful and numerous as the Germans (although fortunately less resourceful) took over my heart and mind. I never recovered, and I’m glad.

Israel was then just ten years old, and its survival was constantly in question. Now, at sixty, it is almost as old and creaky as I am—less idealistic than we used to be, alas, but on more solid ground. We’ve both accumulated a lot of baggage over the years, and more than a few regrets. We’ve had joys and suffered losses, we’ve seen friends come and go, we’ve changed our view of ourselves and realized that things have not turned out quite the way we hoped. Nevertheless, looking back, warts and all, we’ve had a good run. We’ve accomplished less than we dreamed but more than enough.

I’m a dyed-in-the-wool American and likely to remain so. But, to mangle the beautiful words of a twelfth-century poet, part of my heart is in the Middle East. Each time I go to Israel—eight trips so far—I think, “I belong here.” But then I don’t, really. Call me a dreamer, but I believe in America at least as much, in different ways for different reasons, and America is my place.

Israel is a homeland for a people shattered and almost destroyed by history. I am proud to be a part of that people. But America—again, warts and all—is an idea and an ideal for all humanity. As with Israel, I wish with all my heart that America lived up to its own dream of itself. But it’s the best damn idea for a country ever invented, and I am proud to be a part of that idea.

Last night at Israel’s birthday bash in Atlanta, I stood and chatted and ate and drank and sang among other people like me—longing at times for their Jewish homeland but living in their American one. There is no contradiction, but there is that pull. For Jews, including Americans, who make aliya—the ascent—the more power to them. I will be visiting as often as I can, and I hope the visits will be longer and deeper as time goes by. But I will stay down here in the practical mess of America’s melting pot, reaching constantly for the American idea.

Last evening’s highlight for me was a short speech by Reda Mansour, Israel’s extraordinary Consul General for the southeastern region. He is a gifted young man with a bright future, the author of three books of poetry in Hebrew, soon to earn a doctorate in history from Haifa University. He speaks five languages. He said that he is the third generation in his family to serve in the Israel Defense Forces and that in three years his oldest son will be the fourth.

Oh, did I mention that Reda Mansour is not Jewish? He is a Druze—a branch of Muslims something like Unitarians—who have often been persecuted, but have thrived in Israel. He has devoted his life to two causes: defending Israel and promoting tolerance. He says that Israel’s greatest accomplishment is peace, and that that accomplishment is still ahead of her. But he also says that Israel, at 60, is already a beacon of tolerance and democracy in a region fraught with hatred, tyranny, and strife.

In other words, like me and Reda, Israel too is reaching for the American idea.

Reda’s grandfather, who lived to be over a hundred, praised the Jews for their tolerance and achievements; the grandson is living out the dreams of his family and his people. In today’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Reda wrote, “Israel will prove that the victory of peace over hate is inevitable.” As my grandfather would say, fun zayner munt tzu Gottes eyer—from his mouth to God’s ear.

Today is Yom HaShoah, “Day of the Catastrophe,” which most Americans know as Holocaust Remembrance Day.  Its full name in Israel is Yom HaZikaron laShoah v’laGevura—“Day of Remembrance of the Castastrophe and the Heroism.” By any name it commemorates humanity’s blackest era, but the words are worth attention.

Shoah is a biblical word that has been used for over half a century to describe the mass murder of Jews and others by the Nazis and their associates. “Holocaust” is the common English usage, but many Jews object; it means literally “completely burnt,” and refers to the Temple sacrifices of bible times. The feeling is that this associates mass murder with a positive religious obligation, and that the connotations of human sacrifice are especially distasteful. The notion that some higher purpose was served by these millions of needless deaths—six million Jews and five million others, including Roma (Gypsies), disabled people, gay men and many who just helped Jews–is unacceptable.

We have to face the fact that “Holocaust” evokes these events for not millions but billions of English speakers. The Jewish community, other victims, and their allies have spent seven decades and untold resources educating the world, especially the young, so that few will forget, and even fewer believe the shrill voices of denial. Of these billions, how many know the biblical meaning of the word “Holocaust?”

Still, I have to respect the feelings of someone like my friend Tosia Schneider, a survivor who lost everyone and everything she loved, went through unspeakable horrors herself, and lived with the echoes in her own mind and body ever since. True, she has mastered them, and got the best revenge: a long and happy life, fine children and grandchildren, dedicated service to the Jewish community as a Hebrew teacher, and service to all as a living witness to mass murder, living proof that healing is possible, and a teacher of the principle, Never again.

So when Tosia says use “Shoah,” not “Holocaust,” I listen. She said this in probably the best brief talk on the subject I have ever heard. Imagine trying to encapsulate in twenty or twenty-five minutes all the personal losses, the pain and suffering, the sheer psychological shock that such things were possible, while summarizing the Shoah itself in all its dreadful depth and breadth.

We were in the stately sanctuary of Atlanta’s oldest Reform synagogue, called simply The Temple, famed for its support of integration. Jacob Rothschild, the rabbi then, marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. Even before that, because of what it stood for, The Temple was bombed by racist fanatics. Tosia, having seen and felt the costs of racism and then some, was naturally drawn to The Temple when she first came to Atlanta three decades ago. There she taught generations of children to read a little Hebrew.

She spoke at the service last Friday night. The cantor, Deborah Numark, filled the sanctuary with her stunning, inescapably spiritual voice, and Alvin Sugarman, the congregation’s much-loved rabbi for many years after Rothschild, attended. The interim rabbi, Donald Berlin, led a moving service that inaugurated a new prayer book. He spoke for everyone when he talked about the difficulty of finding words for these things, and about the simplicity and power of the words Tosia found.

She quoted something I had said: When someone says he’s going to kill you, believe him. Privately afterwards, she told me she had considered another of my favorites: A Jew with a gun is safer than a Jew without a gun, but had felt that it would not be proper. That is Tosia: still beautiful in her seventies, recounting the worst things ever done and missing none of their horror, yet radiating calm and decorum. A hero.

Yom HaShoah is today, commemorating the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, where a bunch of rag-tag Jews with stolen guns and Molotov cocktails resisted the German army one day longer than the French nation did. on the Hebrew calendar. But it might have been set on the date of the liberation of Auschwitz. Or the anniversary of Kristallnacht, “the night of breaking glass” in 1938, when thousands of German shops were destroyed in the biggest pogrom in centuries, a tiny taste of what would come. Or the date that the Jewish Brigade of the British Army, boys from what would soon become Israel, engaged the Wermacht for the first time in Italy and won. (One shouted in German at some soldiers in a foxhole, “Get out, you pigs, the Jews are here!”) Or the day that little man, Adolf Hitler, feeling himself an abject failure, put a gun to his head and took his own less than worthless little life.

As the great Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal—“Justice, Not Vengeance” was his motto— reminded us, every date of the year holds an event of great significance in this tragic story. Every single day could be Remembrance Day.

But the day we have chosen happens to be today, and it is at least as good (or as bad) as any other. The Day of Remembrance of the Catastrophe and the Heroism.

Stop. Hear the echoes. Remember.

This word, coming out of the mouth of Pope Benedict XVI, as he stood on the bima of the Park East Synagogue in Manhattan, brought back many memories.

Pesach—“ch” as in the Scottish “loch”—is the Jewish word for Passover, and it refers to the sacrificial lamb of the Exodus. The Hebrew slaves painted their doorposts with its blood, so God passed over (pasach) their homes while slaying the first-born Egyptians.

It is also “the paschal lamb,” which resonates rather differently for Christians; they think of the sacrifice of Jesus, the Lamb of God. Jesus, like the vast majority of Jews, attended Passover seders, and the Last Supper on the night before his death was one of them.

Was Pope Benedict thinking of this at Park East—a gorgeous architectural landmark I always make a point of walking past when I’m in New York–last Friday evening, a day before the first Seder? If so, he didn’t let on. “Dear friends, Shalom,” he began, speaking in soft, delicately German-tinted English, that of a gentle grandfather. Caught by my own fears and memories, I still heard the echoes of Hollywood-movie Nazis, and behind them Hitler’s hysterical screeching before vast, slavish crowds.

These resonances were not quite irrelevant. Benedict was born in Bavaria in 1927. Like all German boys, he joined the Hitler Youth, and was drafted at age 16 into the anti-aircraft corps as the war drew to a close. He shunned Hitler Youth meetings—a cousin of his with Down syndrome was murdered by the Nazis—and eventually deserted, but had to spend several months in an allied prisoner-of-war camp.

It’s not a record of heroic resistance, to be sure, but few of us can know what we would have done. More than sixty years later, he stood in a modern Orthodox synagogue in New York and gave the rabbi—an Austrian-born Holocaust survivor—a medieval Hebrew manuscript by a famous scholar, and received in return a silver Seder plate and a package of matzoh, which he said he would eat on Passover.

“It is with great joy that I come here, just a few hours before the celebration of your Pesach," the Pope said. And the rabbi said, “I thank God that both of us survived.”

The rabbi’s survival at least was no thanks to the Catholic Church, which stood by while six million Jews were murdered. For two millennia the Church viciously persecuted the Jews. Pope after Pope incited murder, forced conversions, ordered inquisition and torture.

But this is a new day. I was eighteen in 1965, at the time of the Second Vatican Council, which issued the edict Nostra Aetate—Our Time:

“True, the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death             of Christ; still, what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today…the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God…Furthermore, in her rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel's spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.”

This was a formal reversal of two thousand years of replacement theology: The killing of the Lamb of God would no longer be blamed on the Jews; more strongly, “the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews” signaled a new era of respect.

Benedict’s predecessor, John Paul II, became the first Pope to set foot in any Jewish house of worship when he visited Rome’s central synagogue in 1986. Jews had been there, on the banks of the Tiber, longer than Christianity had, but this was the first Pontiff who crossed town to say hello. And he said a lot more than that.

In the language of Nostra Aetate, he condemned anti-Jewish acts “at any time, by any one.” And in case you missed it: “I repeat: ‘By anyone.’”

He also went further: “The Jews are beloved of God, who has called them with an irrevocable calling…The Jewish religion is not 'extrinsic' to us, but in a certain way is 'intrinsic' to our own religion…With Judaism, therefore, we have a relationship which we do not have with any other religion. You are our dearly beloved brothers, and, in a certain way, it could be said that you are our elder brothers.'' This was not just absolution–it was a new theology.

In a final gesture in 2001, John Paul became (amazingly) the first Pope to visit Israel. He expressed his grief at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial. He touched the Kotel, the Western Wall, and like millions before and since squeezed a written prayer

between the stones. His read: "God of our fathers, you chose Abraham and his descendants to bring your name to the nations. We are deeply saddened by the behavior of those who, in the course of history, have caused these children of yours to suffer."

He also visited Christian sites, and the next year I stood in the place overlooking the Kinneret—he would call it the Sea of Galilee—where thousands heard his sermon and where, by tradition, Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.”

Pope Benedict is among them. We needn’t delude ourselves that this is a straight path. Recently the same Pope seemed to lead his church away from it, reviving a prayer that calls for the conversion of the Jews. But his words at a historic synagogue in New York seek reconciliation, and suggest that his heart was softened, not hardened, in this Passover season. Jews, and others too, can be thankful that we live in our time.

“’These obstinate Jews, who can live with ‘em? They’re a tough people.’”

I happened to hear these words on Palm Sunday, from the pulpit of St. Philip’s Church in Charleston. But before you jump to conclusions, notice the double quotes: I’m quoting the Right Reverend Mark W. Lawrence, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina; he’s quoting Pontius Pilate—in Lawrence’s brilliant ironic depiction, the infamous governor sits in a robe in an easy chair in a high-rise apartment, sipping a martini, resting from a particularly unpleasant day at the office. And which stiff-necked Jew is the complacent Pilate speaking of? Jesus. Not I, says Pilate, I didn’t crucify him.

But he wasn’t the only one washing his hands of guilt in Lawrence’s stirring sermon. Not I was its refrain. Judas says it, the High Priest says it, the crowd says it, but the apostle Peter says it too, pouring out words of regret that he ever got sucked into this hopeless mission. Then, most remarkably, the preacher in the pulpit of St. Philip’s Church says it of himself, and finally of the whole congregation. In Lawrence’s sardonic rendering, all implausibly tell themselves that if they had been there they would have acted differently. No one accepts even the smallest part of the guilt.

I was there to witness a young friend’s confirmation, as I had done with his older sister two years earlier. The interior of the sanctuary is fairly spare and elegant, with clean square lines and hardwood benches—even in the boxes in the balcony—but with a prominent high podium leaning out like a ship’s crow’s nest over the congregation. Those in the church that day were among the flower of Charleston society, and the simplicity of the décor was a choice, not a constraint. Yet these leading South Carolinians were being told by their bishop that he was not going to let them or himself off the hook; all, he implied, shared the guilt for crucifying Jesus.

Surprising, perhaps, to a Jewish observer, and certainly expressed with exceptional eloquence in the sermon. But for most Christians, this is a tenet of faith. Consider the service itself, which doesn’t change from year to year. At its heart, there is a dramatic responsive reading from Matthew, describing events leading up to the crucifixion. Parts are given to the Narrator, the Two Witnesses, the High Priest, Jesus, the Elders, a Servant Girl, Peter, Judas, and Pilate, but a critical part is given to the Congregation, which plays the role of the mob.

It is the Congregation that accuses Peter of being with Jesus, while Peter repeatedly denies it. It is the Congregation that yells “Barrabas!” when Pilate offers to release either that thief or Jesus. It is the Congregation that mocks him, saying “Hail, King of the Jews!” It is the Congregation that says, “His blood be on us and on our children!” It is the Congregation that shouts, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

Perhaps you would not have been surprised to hear four hundred or so of the finest men, women, and children of Charleston shouting, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” but I was. I was brought up to think that Christians blamed the Jews and only the Jews, and this is certainly true for some Christians. But a deeper understanding of Christianity leads to a different conclusion: We, good Christians say, are the ones who killed Jesus—not the Jews or even the Romans, but all humanity. Atonement for that sin is part of the essence of being Christian.

At least that’s how the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina sees it. The congregation solemnly took communion and filed out of the church, back into their lives. But they were subdued, having been told in no uncertain terms that they too would have killed Jesus, and I suspect that that sobering realization took them about as far as they could be from blaming the Jews.

To hear an audio version of the Rev. Lawrence’s sermon, go to this page and click the link at the bottom (Windows Media Player required).

Although American Jewish leaders are currently mourning the loss of one of their heroes–Rabbi Herb Friedman, who died last week at 89–they tend over time to be in a celebratory mood. The Jewish day school movement has been and continues to be a huge success, contributions to annual campaigns and other Jewish charities are up, and synagogue membership numbers are stable for now. There are worries about Israel as always, but a look back over its remarkable history makes the current situation seem quite good. So the leadership does have a lot to crow about.

Yet the hidden demography of Jewish American life is unsettling. The last official National Jewish Population Survey took place in 2000-2001, and the results were not pretty, especially when seen against the background of the 1990 survey–which in itself produced many warning signals. The trends in both were almost all worrying:

At the turn of the new millennium Jews were 2 percent of the American population, having declined from 5.5 million in 1990 to 5.2 million; this was a 5½ percent drop. They were also older. In 1990, their median age was 37, in 2000, 41. Those eligible for Medicare–over 65- climbed from 15 to 19 percent; under-17s slipped to 19 percent from 21.

One reason populations age is that they have fewer children, and Jewish women are certainly in this category. In 2000, 52 percent had no children by their early thirties, up from 42 in 1990; among Americans in general the figure was 27 percent. By their early 40s, after which very few women become mothers, Jews had an average of 1.8 children; demographers view 2.1 as the level needed to maintain overall numbers.

The Jewish community responded with what can only be called denial. The results were trumpeted on the official web site of the United Jewish Communities with the headline, “U.S. Jewish Population Fairly Stable Over Decade, According to Results of National Jewish Population Survey 2000-01.” Worse, the article cited “a U.S. Jewish population of 5.2 million, slightly below the 5.5 million found in 1990.”

Slightly? A five and a half percent decline in the ‘90s, following a similar decline in the ‘80s? If this were happening to contributions, no one would use the word “slightly.” Suppose it continues a few more decades? Do the math. Little wonder that professional demographers see a Jewish American population late in this century of between one and two million.

It is true that these projections, and the 2000 numbers themselves, have been challenged. The New York Times reported the survey in this way: “A Count of U.S. Jews Sees a Dip; Others Demur.” Some of the demurrals came from academics like Leonard Saxe of Brandeis who did unofficial surveys that were a fraction of the size of the NJPS. Counting Jews is admittedly not as easy as it used to be, and if you scrape the barrel a bit you may feel reassured. But in a way this is the problem; Jews are steadily being marginalized or marginalizing themselves; counting questionable cases should not be reassuring.

Even if you don’t like the NJPS methodology, it’s consistent over decades, and consistency is the name of the game in demography. More important, no one disputes the drop in the average number of children per Jewish woman, and that in the long run matters much more than disputes about the total number of Jews. Finally, consider that the net balance of transfer of Jews between the U.S. and Israel is heavily toward the U.S., which has added to the Jewish American population but subtracted from that of Israel; the same has been true of Russian Jewish immigration.

The response from Jewish community leaders: some accepted the better version just because it was better; some explicitly said that even if this is happening, it is better not to publicize it. This reminds me of what my parents and grandparents used to call a shanda far di goyim–an embarrassment in front of the Gentiles, or more exactly, a shame among the nations. But “the shanda-far-di-goyim syndrome” is a bit of a mouthful, so I call it the Ostrich Syndrome; it guarantees that the trends continue.

As of last year, the prestigious Jerusalem-based Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, an arm of the Jewish Agency for Israel, accepted the NJPS results and projected further declines in the American Jewish population. The heart of the community is beating strongly, but it is hemorrhaging at the margins.

Some Jewish leaders acknowledge this but privately say there is nothing to be done; in essence, we would just be throwing good money after irretrievable people. This is a logical stance as long as you accept the consequences: Unless there is a massive increase in birth rate, a revolution in proselytizing, a new trend in the identity of intermarried families, or a mass movement of Jews from somewhere else to here, the American Jewish community late this century will be very Jewish, very rich, and very small.

Jewish leaders can continue to crow about the strength and wealth in the core, but they are also acting like that much larger bird I used to see on the African plains. Future entries in this space will deal with suggestions for stopping or at least slowing the decline. Meanwhile, all who care about the Jewish future should be taking their heads out of the sand.

Gruff warmth, needling loyalty, modest arrogance, smiling coercion, jokey inspiration, secular religiosity, temperate passion. These seeming contradictions—not really contradictions at all—may help a little in describing Rabbi Herb Friedman to those who did not have the privilege of knowing him. When he died at home early Monday at the age of 89, the Jewish community lost a key leader and a cherished friend.

 

Herb’s last role was that of President Emeritus of the Wexner Heritage Foundation, which he co-founded with Leslie Wexner over a decade ago to provide education for young Jewish community professionals and for mid-career lay leaders in the American Jewish world. This hugely successful effort has had a very large measurable impact on Jewish life, and its less tangible effects are even greater; both will continue.

I created a Wikipedia entry on him a couple of months ago and expanded it this week after hearing of his death. As of this writing no one else has contributed to it, and I hope they will. But I don’t want to repeat those basics here, I want to say things you don’t say in an encyclopedia article. (Much of what follows comes from his fine autobiography Roots of the Future.)

After working his way through Yale and rabbinical school as a short-order cook and in a mattress factory, Herb became the assistant rabbi in a Reform temple in Denver, but his intense concern for European Jews (it was 1943) and his outspoken Zionism ran afoul of the timid community, so he joined the Army. In occupied Bavaria, as a chaplain, he roamed the countryside between Munich and the Alps rescuing traumatized Jewish refugees and protecting them from remnant Nazis still trying to murder them. He found a boy and a girl on a farm road, “filthy, clothes in tatters, holding hands, not talking. As our truck approached…they started to run, jumping off the road into a ditch, he pulling her with all his strength, which wasn’t much, across a plowed field…looking for a place to hide.” When he caught up with them, “they held hands again, as though to go together to whatever lay in store…Eating the bread I gave them, they followed me back to the truck, to be hugged and kissed by the burly soldier-driver who was crying because these kids reminded him of his own.” Multiply this story thousands of times, and you get an idea of what he did with his army service.

One night, driving through an Alpine snowstorm, he stopped at an inn and was called to the telephone; a woman’s voice, “low and inviting” asked if he was the Ninth Division chaplain who had been rescuing Jews. On whose orders, with what funds? He balked, but she asked him to meet her, “in Room 203 of the Royal-Monceau Hotel in Paris.” He arranged a leave and soon was knocking at her door.

“She was middle-aged, plain, somewhat tough-looking, and all business, with the bearing of someone who has seen much in life…She took a deep breath and asked whether I would be willing to work with “them.” When I asked who them was, she answered in just one word: ‘Haganah.’…The question did not permit equivocation…Still holding me at the threshold with a gesture, the woman crossed the salon, knocked on a door at the far end, and escorted me toward a short man with a massive shock of white hair sprouting in all directions from the sides of his large, balding head. He was wearing an old sweater, khaki trousers, and house slippers. When she told him that I would work with ‘them,’ he offered me a quick, vigorous handshake and a verbal thank-you, turned, and retired.”

So began Friedman’s association with David Ben Gurion, the Haganah and the Jewish Brigade. They would commandeer trucks, smuggle contraband across the snowy mountains, bribe officials, and save scores of thousands of refugees. At one point he found a small city hall he need for housing desperate Jews: “I strode into the mayor’s room, struck an aggressive pose, drew my Colt .45, slammed the butt hard on his desk, and informed him that this place was now requisitioned by authority of the American Army.”

But there were no orders, only bold initiative, and initiative was the story of Herb Friedman’s life in war and peace alike. He ran guns, explosives, and even Messerschmitts to Israel during its war for independence. He approached powerful American politicians to gain their support for Israel and for the exodus of Jews from the Soviet Union decades later. He radically and multiplicatively transformed fund-raising in the American Jewish community, invented missions to Israel, and trained thousands of young Jewish leaders. When billionaire philanthropist Leslie Wexner wanted to build something big, Herb helped him build a monument not out of bricks and mortar, but of human minds and souls. When Deborah Lipstadt needed two million dollars for the defense in her Holocaust-denial libel trial, he found it, rightly recognizing that it was not just Deborah on trial—the Jewish community and the Holocaust itself were as well.

Once when I was sitting next to him at dinner, he leaned his craggy head toward me with a confidential grin and said, “You scientists and doctors better come up with a cure for aging pretty soon, I don’t have much time left.” Alas, we did not, and he did not.  He leaves a great gap, but he also leaves the vision of a life worthy of great celebration.

Although he won countless battles, he would be the first to tell you that the war goes on, and will go on long into the future. For whatever combinations of reasons, the Jewish people have always been threatened and are likely to remain so. People like Herb Friedman, who recognize that the Jews are a people and a civilization, as well as adherents to a religion, have always stood up to imagine a better future and to lead the way into it. I feel like ending with the traditional Jewish formula, “May his memory be for a blessing,” except for the plain fact that it already is.

An ordinary-looking middle-aged woman leans forward toward the camera over the Ner Tamid—The Eternal Flame—at Yad Vashem, the most important Holocaust memorial in Israel and the world. Near her stands an equally nondescript middle-aged man in a yarmulke, the traditional skull cap worn by Jews in sacred places. Reverential, subdued,

the pair exemplify the unutterable shock and sympathy that seize the soul of any decent human being who stands in that place, contemplating in awe the most horrific things ever done by one group of people to another.

But these are not ordinary middle-aged people. She is Angela Merkel, the most powerful person in Europe’s most powerful country, which happens to be the same country that carried out that appalling deed six or seven decades ago. And he is Ehud Olmert, her counterpart in the little nation, less than a tenth the size of hers, that gathered the grieving remnant of the people her country had tried to destroy.

This ceremony in memory took place on March 16th, and the following day Dr. Merkel—a nuclear physicist who grew up in Communist East Germany in the ‘50s and ‘60s—became the first head of government ever to speak before the Knesset, an honor previously reserved for kings and other heads of state. This gesture by Israel’s parliament was significant.

So was the fact that she spoke in her native tongue. It’s a common courtesy to a foreign leader, but this was German, and some Holocaust survivors were disturbed. A few Knesset members boycotted the speech. “I cannot stand,” one said, “to hear German in the Knesset…my parents were murdered in that language.” Another called the Germans “the mother of all Amaleks,” a reference to a people in the Bible so evil and so determined to kill God’s chosen that the Hebrews were ordered to exterminate them all. An eye for an eye, the Torah said, and, it almost seemed to add, a genocide for a genocide.

Coming from Holocaust victims, such sentiments are understandable, but this is not where Israel’s welfare lies in the twenty-first century. Not only has the modern German nation been one of Israel’s staunchest allies, it has been a true friend, in need and in deed. Merkel’s speech was the culmination of six decades of atonement by the world’s most cultured people who had suddenly become the vilest barbarians in history. But what could she say?

She could say, "The Shoah”—the Hebrew word for Holocaust—“fills us Germans with shame. I bow before the victims. I bow before the survivors and before all those who helped them survive.” She could say, “The cooperation and friendship between Israel and Germany is part of history's miracles.” She could say, “The mass murder of six million Jews, carried out in the name of Germany, has brought indescribable suffering to the Jewish people, Europe and the entire world.”

She could also say, "Especially in this place, I emphasize: Every German government and every chancellor before me was committed to the special responsibility Germany has for Israel's security…This historic responsibility is part of my country's fundamental policy. It means that for me, as a German chancellor, Israel's security is non-negotiable.” She could roundly condemn the rocket attacks on Sderot and Ashkelon and properly call them terror attacks. She could say that a nuclear-armed Iran would have “disastrous” consequences, that it is up to Iran to prove that it has no such intentions, not to the world to prove that it does, and that the absence of such proof Germany would call for stronger sanctions.

She could and did say all those things, in the language of Goethe, Heine—that tortured and brilliant German poet and Jewish apostate–and, yes, Adolf Hitler. Growing up in the Red East, she was not subject to the Holocaust education that made three generations of German children cringe in guilt and shame from their own horrific history. She found the guilt and shame for herself, as an adult, going against the tide, even though she was not even born until nine years after the war. And as with prior apologies and reparations, most Israeli Jews accepted hers; she literally bowed before the victims, and the survivors did not turn her away.

Rabbi and Professor David Blumenthal, speaking a few years ago at an international symposium on reconciliation, pointed out that the Jewish religion, unlike Christianity, does not require forgiveness, no matter how heartfelt the apology. It is up to the victim to hear the apology and to accept it or walk away. A Holocaust victim I know, the sole survivor of a large extended family, still dreams of dropping a nuclear bomb on Berlin. Surely many of the 250,000 survivors left in Israel, the aging remnant of what was called “the seventh million,” must have similar dreams. And who can blame them?

But respect for the past and for the unspeakable pain of its victims does not demand that we turn a stony face to the future. Nothing can make up for the Holocaust, nothing at all, not now, not ever. That should go without saying. But the point is to accept real friendship and affection even–perhaps especially–when it comes from people whose parents and grandparents were the worst enemies the Jews have ever had. If we want the future to be different from the past, then to some extent we have to take the past out of the future.

Purim, which begins at sundown today, is the consummate Jews-and-others holiday. It has the usual theme of persecution by others, along with the less usual triumph. But if you read the whole Megillah—the Book of Esther–it has much else besides, and can serve as a guide.

A supremely powerful but spacey king of Persia fires his wife in a drunken stupor when she refuses to dance for him and his loopy friends. During a kingdom-wide beauty contest (all contestants spend a year beautifying themselves in the king’s palace, which must have left a lot of young men running around in circles and biting themselves) he chooses a likely babe to replace his ex. Need we wonder much about his criteria?

Anyway, his choice, the lovely Esther, turns out to be Jewish–except she doesn’t inform him of this minor fact. Should we call it a lie or just a humongous omission? Either way, she does it on the advice of her cousin and mentor Mordecai, which gives an almost rabbinical stamp of approval to a, an intermarriage and b, a concealment of Jewish faith and identity.

Meanwhile, Mordecai overhears two of the king’s own eunuchs plotting to kill him–lingering castration resentment?–and informs the king who, after confirming the fact, adds impalement to the eunuchs’ troubles.

Now the book’s real plot unfolds. Mordecai refuses to bow to the prime minister, Haman, a martinet who gets so angry he tells the king to kill the Jews. All of them. The king says, sure, why not? But “the city of Shushan was dumbfounded”–the Jews had friends in the capital.

The Jews put on sackcloth and fast for three days—today is the fast of Esther, commemorating that—and Mordecai tells Esther she must visit the king unannounced (a good way to get yourself killed) to beg for her people’s lives. Fortunately the king is still in love with her, and offers her half the kingdom.

She asks him and Haman to a feast, and then another, and eventually begs for her life, fingering Haman as the junior Hitler who wants to kill her and all her people. By this time the king has found out that Mordecai saved his life.

Haman and all his ten sons are impaled on the high stakes he has prepared for Mordecai and the Jews. The king can’t rescind his extermination proclamation but issues a new one: Not only can the Jews “assemble and fight for their lives; if any people or province attacks them, they may destroy, massacre, and exterminate its armed force, together with women and children, and plunder their possessions.”

The Jews kill seventy-five thousand persecutors, but decline the spoil; we aren’t told about the women and kids. But there is no doubt that we are celebrating a very bloody occasion with our stories and costumes and drunkenness, one that involves tremendous triumph over a very grave threat. Yet consider the multiple roles played by others.

Esther marries a Gentile king, hiding her Jewishness; this partly clandestine, probably forbidden love saves the Jews. Mordecai serves the king with complete loyalty, and is richly rewarded. Jews, facing mass murder, have Gentile sympathizers as well as enemies, which can only be because they have made alliances outside the community and done much for the good of all. Only some non-Jews attack, and they are taught a very harsh lesson. Jews defend themselves, but show restraint even as they slaughter their enemies.

The lessons for Jews today? Threats will come, but alliances with outsiders, including the most intimate relationships, can be the key to survival. Jews have earn admiration and protection by doing more for the world than the world does for them. And, with the approval of allies in high places, Jews can defend themselves well and exact a bitter price.

An insular Jewish community with no non-Jewish friends will not survive, nor will one that does not fight to defend itself. God is not mentioned in the Book of Esther; it’s about how the Jews of Persia helped themselves. In today’s dangerous world, we could do worse than follow their lead.

Jewish Americans have traditionally always been Democrats. They were part of the grand coalition of immigrants and religious minorities that supported Franklin Delano Roosevelt (90 percent went his way in his last two elections) and many dems before and after him. In some elections they cast almost as many votes for a progressive third-party candidate than for the Republican.

On the local level, they were reliable Democratic Party workers, union supporters, and sympathizers with any and all downtrodden groups. More than any other American ethnic group, they have voted “to the left of their pocketbook”—that is, they voted much more for Democratic candidates than other Americans with comparable wealth and income. Perhaps it was the Jewish sense of fairness—“Justice, justice shalt thou pursue” the Torah says—combined with the idea that Jews are safest in a world that is peaceful, democratic, and fair.

The traditional Democratic coalition has of course frayed in many ways: the Dixiecrats (appropriately) became Republican, the unions (sadly) have waned in influence, and the new groups of immigrants are not reliable Democratic voters. But the Jews have stayed with the Dems.

Or have they?

According to the Jewish Virtual Library, Jewish voters had a serious romance with Republicans during the Eisenhower years, voting 36 and 40 percent for the old warrior in two elections. World War II was vivid in Jewish minds, and Ike was their hero. Kennedy, Johnson, and Humphrey got over 80 percent of their votes–back to normal. But starting with the Nixon reelection campaign, and then in the Reagan-Bush-senior years, roughly a third of Jews were voting Republican again.

Bill Clinton brought them back to the Democratic fold. But starting in 1992 the percentages of Jews voting Republican in successive presidential elections has been 11, 16, 19, and 25. This year the huge dissatisfaction with George W. Bush—unless the economy and the war are dramatically better by October–will probably reverse the trend. But there are underlying forces that may bring more Jews into the Republican fold over the next few presidential cycles.

First, a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll during the second Lebanon war in 2006 showed that support for Israel was nearly twice as great (84 percent) among Republicans than among Democrats (43 percent). According to a 2008 Gallup poll, 71 percent of Americans have a favorable view of Israel, but the number rises to 84 for Republicans and falls to 64 for Dems.

On the question of how Americans view various religious groups, a 2006 Gallup poll found that the Jews (are you ready?) are viewed more favorably than any other religious group major or minor–58 percent have a positive view of Jews, with only 4 percent negative. But here again, the number is 70 percent for Republicans and 51 for Dems. (To be fair, Dems see all religious groups less positively, except for atheists.)

Then too, the major Jewish denominations (not surprisingly) differ in their party affiliation: Republicans make up about 23 percent of Reform Jews, 25 percent of Conservative Jews, and 42 percent of Orthodox Jews. Party affiliation aside, guess which denomination is growing fastest?

In 40 years of voting, I have never yet voted for a Republican, except perhaps in an occasional local election where a particular person’s competence and character made the difference. It is very likely I will vote Democratic this time too. But I find these numbers distressing. I am not a one issue voter, but more and more I wonder why it is that whenever I hear or see someone say what I like to hear about Israel in the media, that person usually turns out to be a Republican.

Among Christians, it is increasingly clear that the liberal Protestant churches are simply and almost officially anti-Israel, while the conservative evangelicals are intensely pro-Israel and even pro-Jewish. I haven’t quite gotten over what the Dems did to Joe Lieberman in Connecticut in ’06. And I remain extremely uneasy about Obama’s foreign policy advisors. If the left wing of the Democratic Party prevails, will it always be a reliable friend to Israel?

I guess I care too much about too many things—health care, racial equality, education, and fair play generally—to ever pull the lever (alright, touch the screen) for a Republican in a presidential election. To me, their solutions are wrong both morally and pragmatically. And I shudder to think what my parents would say if I took that momentous step. But, ever so slightly, for the first time in my life, I am wavering.

For anyone who may have read my entry posted early yesterday morning, my timing could not have been worse. I called for Israel to help the West Bank Palestinians, and even to ease movement and travel restrictions in the West Bank, about twelve hours before a lone Palestinian gunman from a town near East Jerusalem murdered eight young men, yeshiva bochers, while they were studying Torah at Mercaz Harav rabbinic college, arguably the greatest institution serving religious Zionism.

It is not clear how the gunman, who was a driver for the college, managed to get a weapon past the guards there, and there will no doubt be an investigation. Although it is also not clear that West Bank check points could have stopped him, it is obvious that this is no time to reduce travel restrictions for Palestinians anywhere. If there is a time and a season for every purpose under heaven, this is not the time for relaxing restrictions.

However, it is also not the time to suspend negotiations. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was quick to condemn the attack:

"President Mahmoud Abbas condemns the attack in Jerusalem that claimed the lives of many Israelis and he reiterated his condemnation of all attacks that target civilians, whether they are Palestinians or Israelis," said Abbas aide Saeb Erekat.

While he did not make it explicit, Abbas knows that the recent Israeli action in Gaza did not “target civilians,” although many civilians were tragically killed.

Hamas, in contrast, is thrilled with the massacre, and encouraged celebrations all over Gaza: “We bless the [Jerusalem] operation,” they officially said. “It will not be the last.” Of course, and it won’t be the last Israeli incursion into Gaza either, the difference being that Israel will target Hamas militants and terrorist leaders, not their teenage sons studying the Koran at the mosque.

But the action yesterday does have unfortunate echoes of the even larger massacre by Baruch Goldstein in a mosque in Hebron at Purim in 1994, where that Jewish doctor-soldier murdered thirty-nine worshippers at prayer. The current tendency among some extremist religious elements in Israel to try to revive this mass-murderer’s reputation is thoroughly disgusting and reprehensible. And it guarantees more of the same perpetrated against Jews.

But as Israel and its best friend the United States understand, neither Hamas terrorists nor Jewish fanatics can be allowed to derail the peace process. The future of Israel depends on that process as much as the future of the Palestinian people does.

For now, there will be continued efforts by the IDF to respond to terror, whether it comes in the form of murder in a yeshiva library in Jerusalem or rockets launched against homes in Sderot. If Hamas leaders think they can win this war, they are sadly mistaken—very sadly, for their people’s sake. The most elementary understanding of the history of the Jews and the history of Israel should tell them that such a goal is ridiculous.

But the present situation remains a historic opportunity for Israel. Hamas leaders cheer in the streets, while the real Palestinian leadership condemns the attack. Call it divide and conquer if you want, and think of it more as a political strategy than a moral imperative. But I think it is both. And there will not be a better time to isolate Hamas and Gaza and to befriend the moderate leadership in the Palestinian West Bank.

Let us grieve for the young men who were murdered, but let us as Jews encourage Israel to continue its progress toward peace with the main body of moderate Palestinians.

Shabbat shalom—and I do mean shalom.