unimpeachably proud and universally recognized biblical heroes were easily available in the dominant and still vibrant Jewish tradition? Having started out as normal, Yiddish nationalism proved too odd to succeed as a movement. In the all-important realms of politics and mythmaking, it could not compete with Hebrew nationalism and global socialism. Most Jews who were ideologically attached to Yiddish (the “language of the Jewish masses”) were socialists, and the languages of socialism in Europe—the Bund’s efforts notwithstanding— were German and Russian. In the end, it was the Hebrew-based nationalism that triumphed and, in alliance with Zionism, became the third great Jewish prophecy. Strikingly and defiantly “abnormal” in its premises, it looked forward to a full and final normality complete with a nation-state and warrior dignity. It was nationalism in reverse: the idea was not to sanctify popular speech but to profane the language of God, not to convert your home into a Promised Land but to convert the Promised Land into a home. The effort to turn the Jews into a normal nation looked like no other nationalism in the world. It was a Mercurian nationalism that proposed a literal and ostensibly secular reading of the myth of exile; a nationalism that punished God for having punished his people. Eternal urbanites were to turn themselves into peasants, and local peasants were to be seen as foreign invaders. Zionism was the most radical and revolutionary of all nationalisms. It was more religious in its secularism than any other movement— except for socialism, which was its main ally and competitor. But Jews were not only the heroes of the most eccentric of nationalisms; they were also the villains of the most brutally consistent of them all. Nazism was a messianic movement that endowed nationalism with an elaborate terrestrial eschatology. To put it differently, Nazism challenged modern salvation religions by using nationhood as the agent of perdition and redemption. It did what none of the other modern (i.e., antimodern) salvation religions had been able to do: it defined evil clearly, consistently, and scientifically. It shaped a perfect theodicy for the Age of Nationalism. It created the devil in its own image. The question of the origins of evil is fundamental to any promise of redemption. Yet all modern religions except Nazism resembled Christianity in being either silent or confused on the subject. Marxism offered an obscure story of original sin through the alienation of labor and made it difficult to understand what role individual believers could play in the scheme of revolutionary predestination. Moreover, the Soviet experience seemed to show that Marxism