Instead of combating anti-Semitism, Zionism cultivates it. An essential dogma of this new creed is that anti-Semitism is immutable and permanent. Zionists claim that we are still in 1938, and that a new Holocaust is in the offi ng. Every passing year becomes a year of broken glass. So we must rally around the State of Israel, which alone can save us. A fear-based religion allows Jewish leaders in the Diaspora to retain power over their flock.

To free themselves from such blackmail, to break out of the vicious Auschwitz-Israel circle, Jews have only to disconnect from Zionism and take up their historic vocation: explaining Torah to the nations. But first, they will have to understand it themselves.

Haim Ben-Asher is a historian.