Quote by Joshua Leifer

“In the American Jewish collective consciousness, the Holocaust has functioned as the historical glue of the postwar synthesis. The Holocaust illuminated America’s exceptional goodness by contrast to European barbarism and by virtue of America’s defeat of the Nazis. It confirmed the absolute necessity of Israel as existential insurance policy. It reinforced the necessity of the open, liberal society for Jewish flourishing. Holocaust memory concretized a shared sense of victimhood, a sensitivity to the historically precarious nature of Jewish survival, and a filial duty that, for many American Jews, is often the primary reason they give for their continued Jewish identification. But this is a role the Holocaust can fulfill for only so long. While creative opportunists continue feverishly to mine the event for content, this is just another indication that the Holocaust is leaving the realm of present memory, transforming, like the Spanish Inquisition, into a matter of the distant Jewish past.”

Quote by Joshua Leifer