What Will I Answer?

By Moshe Feiglin

Each of us has a holocaust hiding in the closet.

For the religious, it is that G-d turned His back on them.

For the assimilated, it is that enlightenment refused to conceal the fact that they were Jews.

We all stand bare, on the edge of the unresolved pit.

Everyone and his holocaust.

From the edge of that pit we crawled and a state was established. We thought it would answer our questions.

The religious thought that the Mashiach was just around the corner.

The secular thought that the state would make us normal. It would bring peace and we would become just like the rest of the world.

But nothing is solved today.

It is only the cattle cars, always waiting patiently, that unite us.

Yad Vashem has become our Holy Temple; the Temple of Existence.

The Defense Minister is its High Priest.

IDF officers are its Priests and Levites.

I try not to use German products, my foot will not touch German ground and I grow a beard only to exact revenge for that Jew.

But what will I answer the Aryan grandson who feels no remorse for the deeds of his grandfather?

After all, now I am the criminal. I am the last of the colonialists.

And I know that it is the same anti-Semitism flowing through the veins of the young people.

But what will I answer them? What?

Existence at the edge of the unresolved pit, existence that hides questions in the closet, existence that flees a message, existence bereft of destiny, existence for the sake of existence

Has stripped me of justice.

Suddenly I woke up, dressed in an SS uniform.

And in Europe they point at me,

They throw mud at me,

I am the new Nazi.

And I try to flee,

What will I answer? What will I answer?

The Priests and Levites point at the soldier from Hebron – the “Eastern Jew”,

It’s because of him, just because of him.

The angel of death has awakened over me

And pushes me back to the pit.