One has to love, Sara, she says softly, one has to love, human beings are so pitiful, we can't prevent a single death, all we can do is stave it off … - Shulamith Hareven

It is a familiar sight: an intellectual so sure of his thesis or model that he pesters the powers that be to put it into practice. Accountability, however, will always fall on the person who acted on the theory, not the person who invented it. We confer upon the intellectual-by definition-the full and complete freedom to create a theory and to build an abstract model without any responsibility for the results, and this is indeed one of the most difficult problems to be pondered on in the humanities.

In the short run, the identity of victim does, indeed, pay off. Sholem Aleichem recognized this in his story "Lucky Me, I Am an Orphan." Anyone who is a victim and nothing but a victim-in the sense of "deserving" compensation and forgiveness for everything-usually milks this position for all it is worth, through the end of the generation that witnessed the tragedy. In the longer run, the perpetuation of the victim identity causes complete severance from reality, utter dependence on the past and the past alone, and distortions of all proportions and emphases to the point of warping the personality.

Perhaps he did not know about that land at all, though it was so near, right beyond the wall, only a password between the twilight and it. Most people do not know.