“Already a year? Only a year?

Since Oct. 7, 2023, many of us have felt unmoored in time. I rarely know the date; sometimes I forget the month.

Disorientation is an apt response to the end of the post-Holocaust era, a seminal moment in which many of our most cherished assumptions have been upended.

The post-Holocaust era of the last eight decades was defined by optimism about the Jewish future. However improbably, we had emerged, stronger than ever, from the event intended to destroy us. For all its fluctuations, the post-Holocaust trajectory pointed forward.

Through two thousand years of exile, the Jewish people were sustained by two dreams. The first – considered so fantastic that it was relegated to messianic times – was that a dispersed and powerless people would somehow reclaim its ancient homeland. The second was that, in the long interim before the coming of the Messiah, Jews would find a welcoming haven in the diaspora.

After the Holocaust, both dreams were fulfilled. Two great centers of Jewish life emerged – a sovereign Israel and a self-confident North American Jewry, the most successful diaspora in history. Together, Israel and North America contain close to 90 percent of the world’s Jews. These two centers presided over the post-Holocaust renewal of the Jewish people – which moved from its historic nadir to the peak of its military, economic and political power.

Nothing like this had ever happened to the Jews – or perhaps to any other people. The transition from brokenness to power was so rapid and decisive that some Jews concluded this must be the messianic era.

Each community reacted to its particular circumstances with the wisdom of Jewish adaptability. For Israelis, that meant military deterrence in a region that sought to destroy them. For Jews in the diaspora, and especially in North America, that meant responding with ‘soft power’ – lobbying, philanthropy and building alliances with other minorities – in societies that embraced them.”

Read the full piece by Yossi Klein Halevi in the Times of Israel.