HISTORY THEN AND NOW
257
and the transmission of the Jewish historical legacy is not a major prob–
lem. There are problems relating to what kind of a Jewish nation Israel is
or should be, what kind of culture and identity it should espouse-prob–
lems which arouse strong passions in Israel itself. But its collective
continuity, as long as it can survive as an independent state, is not in dan–
ger. Nevertheless we have seen disturbing signs of sectarianism, fanaticism,
and divisiveness in Israel during the past year, beginning with the assassi–
nation of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a religious zealot. We have a
form of extremist Zionism today in Israel that neither Herzl, Weizmann
nor any of the leaders who immediately followed them could have envi–
sioned, which would no doubt have alarmed and distressed them. We have
seen the implacable hostili ty of a sizeable part of the Arab and Muslim
world for over fifty years as well as the volatile, violent, and unpredictable
nature of Middle Eastern Arab politics. The dangerous cocktail of abso–
lutism, terrorism and religious fundamentalism relates
to
what Walter
Laqueur was saying earlier, as if some of the worst nightmares in 1900 were
coming true in our own time---particularly the real possibility of nuclear
terrorism initiated by a handful of fanatical people. In the Middle Eastern
context where you have deep-seated national, religious, and political-terri–
torial conflict and where terror has long been an established political
weapon, the danger of irreparable damage is great. The biggest question
mark facing Israel at the dawn of the twenty-first century, wruch therefore
has a bearing on the Jewish people as a whole, is whether or not the forces
of economic and technology will ul timately prevail over those of ideolo–
gy
and religious fanaticism. We have seen that in the short run, the idea of
a new Middle East is utopian. We are still living in the nasty, brutish old
Middle East, though there is a glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel.
Given the perspective of one hundred years, the Jewish people, despite
the trauma of the Holocaust, have indeed come a long way. They have been
empowered.
They are an integral part of the advanced world. In 1996, in
Israel as well as America, the Jews are a force to be reckoned wi th, for good
and for bad.
I will leave you with a few questions to which I have no definitive
answer because I do not claim to be a prophet. It is not the job of the his–
torian to be the prophet except when looking backward-and even that
temptation should be resisted. The questions are: is there a single Jewish
people today, or are Israel and the diaspora moving in divergent and per–
haps even opposite directions? Are the Jews already in the process oflosing
their ethnic and cultural distinctiveness? Can Judaism maintain itself in the
twenty-first century as a unique religious civilization? Will Israel continue
to be a Zionist state or are the signals of post-Zionism already a herald of
what is to come? Will there be any kind of a viable secular Jewish culture
outside of the enclaves of orthodoxy, which are growing proportionately
