People who see the Holocaust as the culmination of the story of the Jews of Europe demoralize those of us who, infected with European ideas, are still very much here and working with them. We were not exterminated, and Nazi antipathy for Jews and Judaism is not different than pagan Roman. In both cases, we held up a counterexample to vacuousness, and in both cases, we remain, saying, every Passover, that “in every generation they rise up to destroy us.” Resignation to anti-Semitism is not a function of the devastation of the Shoah, however real it may be, but is a predicate of the faith, and we turn to the ancestral sources as “what has stood by us and by our fathers,” providing constancy even amidst the change we and the environment both undergo, even as we are thwarted by circumstances in bringing Moshiach time and again. But for a missing piece, we would be accepted. The Hellenizing Jews went so far as to attempt to reverse the sign of circumcision. But it is for them to come to the faith, rather than for us to emulate them bodily. Our difference stands out, and there is no trying to hide from it without incurring crippling weakness. Even the reformers were told by something atavistic that here they should stop.