The history of the people of Israel is not merely a rise and a fall. It is a process, a purification, a sieve through many filters, a blazing furnace that refines raw gold again and again, until only the purest gold remains.
This is why today we can fulfill a mitzvah in a world so foreign to mitzvot. To fill our lives with that which filled our ancestors and to raise children in that way. Children who go against the grain of the culture around us so that they are inherently Jewish at heart.
It is not with our own power, our own minds. It is a hidden memory, the indestructible force that survived as our heritage.