This is being written on December 25 in theUS. It is a quiet time here. The normal frenetic bustle of the street has evaporated. Nostalgic music fills the airwaves. Even Jews inAmerica particularly away from the major metropolitan areas enjoy the change of pace that this day offers: a welcome respite from daily routine a jolly time of smiles and good will.

Not so for our grandparents inEurope. This was a season of fear and trembling. The peasants would emerge from their churches and inflamed by the rhetoric of their priests would set out to hunt down Jews who had allegedly killed their deity. December pogroms were quite common and Jews went into hiding to avoid the angry mobs.

An old question: How is it possible for people to worship the god who supposedly brings peace on earth and good will toward men and then go out and murder Jews? In our time how could it be that the nation that gave us Kant and Goethe and Bach and Beethoven also gave us Hitler and Goering and Eichmann? How was it possible for a people that prided itself on its kultur and its leadership in science and music to become transmogrified into beasts?

It was possible because of the phenomenon of shifting ethical landscapes. It is for example wrong to kill another human being. But obviously if he threatens my life it is not wrong to kill him. Thus I may kill a murderer or my enemy in wartime. My act does not diminish my own humanity or my ethical principles for in effect this person I have just killed is not human .

Fast forward to the 20th century.Germanyis the very model of rectitude and ethical discipline. But the Jew they claim is a threat to humanity. He is vermin and must be blotted out. To kill him is no different from killing a cockroach. One’s Kant and Bach and high ethical standards remain intact. Killing the Jew does not violate any ethical or moral principles.

However to shift the ethical norms of an entire society cannot be done overnight or by legislative fiat. It requires attitudinal changes and such phenomena require many generations to take effect. The shift in the German ethical landscape did not begin with the Nazis. The framework for it had existed for millennia a shift waiting to be effected. The Nazis simply had to bring to a flowering the evil seeds that lay dormant for millennia waiting to blossom.

Backspace. The Jews is always the pariah of mankind. For Pharaoh in Egypt Haman in Persia the Greeks and the Romans and the church fathers and the inquisitors of Spain the Jews are mortal threats “murderers of god Sanhedrin of demons darkeners of the mind” (Gregory of Nyssa 4^th century). The ground was a fertile field for the Germans and their European accomplices: since Jews are quintessentially evil to eliminate them is not only permissible but an ethical imperative. One could retain one’s ethical principles and still murder six million Jews.

In a desert the sand dunes all look alike but the dunes you see today are not the dunes you will see tomorrow. The shifting sands will move them miles away. But they look just like they always looked. So it is with one’s ethical compass. It seems like the identical principle; one simply shifts the subject matter. One is not killing another human being.

Thus you can celebrate the birthday of the prince of peace and then go out and destroy Jews. You can hold aloft high ethical principles while engaging in murderous genocide. Your conscience will not disturb you. On the contrary you will like Eichmann regret that you did not do a more thorough job .You will be in charge of gas chambers that efficiently destroy thousands of Jews per hour and at your lunch break you will join with the rest of your gang singing gemütlich holiday songs about silent nights and in church the next day you will resound the praises of holy infants so tender and mild and you will feel no qualms no contradiction. In the shifting sands of the ethical landscape you are a good person. Your killing machines are serving humanity.

One last question a bit closer to home: is it conceivable that a religious Jew who worries say about proper tefillin and a spotless esrog would justify marginal business practices by claiming that some of his clients are not frum or not Jewish and therefore need not be treated with scrupulous probity? Is this not another form of shifting ethical landscapes?

It is December 25 in the US a quiet peaceful day. But the Jewish mind wanders and is not at peace.