By contrast, one of the strengths of Chabad is that their people talk about how Judaism can enrich your life, particularly your family life. You're absolutely right, Ruth, that Chabad accepts people as they are, but at the same time they call a spade a spade in the sense of explaining what Jewish tradition does teach — and how following those teachings leads to a better life.

DJ: Some surveys seem to suggest that many American Jews, when asked to define  the most important aspect of their Jewish identity, tend to say either Israel or the Holocaust. You mentioned, Ruth, that Israel was active, dynamic, and robust in being able to defend itself. The Holocaust, it seems, is the opposite: it is the image of the victim. How does this play out in contemporary Jewish culture? One of the things about Israel that seems to be changing is that so many Israelis are apologising almost for existing. That is clearly reflected in Europe, where some of the organisations that seem the most dedicated to fighting Israel and its interests include Jewish members. But here, is it different? The role of the Holocaust in education is obviously crucial, but has it been done well?

RW: We've both given this a lot of thought. My feeling is that it's been a big mistake and a fatal one in many respects. Jews have always been in mourning. The word Khurban, which is the word for the destruction of the first and second Temples in Jerusalem, is the same word Yiddish uses for the destruction of Jewry during the Holocaust. Jews are good at lamentation. Losing one third of one's people absolutely required a commemorative coming to terms with grief. However, this was not the story that American Jewry or world Jewry should have chosen to tell the rest of the world, because in the 1940s Jews accomplished, I would say, arguably the greatest human miracle in history. Within the same decade as this tremendous humiliation of the Holocaust, Jews reclaimed their homeland after two millennia. How it was done was astonishing, the ingathering of exiles and all the rest of it. 

So, if one were to erect a museum, let us say in Washington D.C., you could have people coming who don't know anything about the Jews. You need to tell the story like the Passover story: we were slaves in the land of Egypt. You tell the Holocaust story in one-third of this exhibit and then you show how Jews came out of this and how Jews built their country and how strong this is. You show how American Jewry is so strong and how world Jewry united for the construction of the State of Israel and how Russian Jews who had been kept down finally were freed and helped to free themselves and so forth. You tell the story of a robust people. 

Unfortunately, I think that the reason that Jews found the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, constructed under the aegis of Jimmy Carter, so compelling was because it is very Christological. In other words, it seems to suggest that there is something redemptive about the story of the Jews being massacred. This is so odd because I don't think Jews ever felt that. Instead, Judaism believes that the law is your redemption. So if you're asking about the Holocaust in particular, the story should be transformed to give a sense of a responsible people taking charge of its own fate. 

JW: I would respectfully disagree with both assumptions in your question, Daniel. You're absolutely correct that in the past, meaning from the Sixties through perhaps to some time in the Nineties, two key Jewish educational emphases were the Holocaust and Israel. But that is yesterday's news. I have no doubt that if you asked American Jews today what they would regard as central features of their Jewish identity the answer would be quite different. Instead, you would hear some variation on what comes under the rubric of tikkun olam — repairing the world.