Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
than seventeen centuries Jews constituted a separate people with their own non-state govern-
ing institutions, unique language, special customs, distinct ideas, and different culture, not to
mention such things as clothing and art. Words like “Hebrew” and “Israelite”
—
used more
commonly than the word “Jews” well into modern times
—
refl ected that national identity and
peoplehood, which extended beyond religion alone.
Religion, then, was only one marker of Jewish identity, and even that was national in nature.
There was thus no contradiction between a religious and a national identity. In the ancient
world, well into modern times, and in many places even today, a distinctive religion has been
one of the main hallmarks of the nation-state. This is especially true in the contemporary
Middle East, where Israel is more typical than different in this respect.
Throughout history, what marked Jews as having a particularly strong national identity was
that they rejected the gods and religious customs of even those, like the Romans and later the
Christians and Muslims, who ruled over them. In many other cases, people accepted the reli-
gion, language, and identity of rulers or neighbors and disappeared from history. The lasting
religio-national identity of Jews proved stronger than that of virtually any other group.
This survival was due neither to mere stubbornness nor to restrictions placed on them by
oppression. Rather, the Jews acted more like a modern nation, albeit having lost their control
over or presence in a specifi c territory. Indeed, the religious prohibition on Jews diluting their
customs or integrating those from other peoples in antiquity was what led to the Jewish re-
volts against the Greeks
—
which successfully reestablished a Jewish state
—
and Romans, which
failed, leading to the destruction of that state and the exile of the Jewish people from the Land
of Israel.
After the shifting of the centers of Jewish life from Israel to the Diaspora
—
to communities
in exile, away from the historical homeland in the Middle East
—
Jews continued to function as
much like a nation as possible, even though the cost of distinctiveness was discrimination and
even periodic murder at the hands of their neighbors. Over the centuries, in the framework of
rabbinic leadership, Jews maintained their own community government, laws, calendar, lan-
guage, and philosophical outlook, as may be seen in the great rabbinic texts and in particular
foods, customs, and clothing.
Yet this was not just a local affair. Individual communities, even when separated by large
distances and living under very different conditions, maintained international connections
throughout the long medieval period and into modern times. Indeed, this was the reason Jews
were able to be so successful in maintaining long-range commerce, relatively (though not
completely) identical customs, and a unifi ed intellectual dialogue.
All Jews, even the least educated and poorest living in the most isolated hamlets, were aware
of their origin in the Biblical Land of Israel; many also maintained ties with the small number
of Jews continuing to live there and believed they were destined to return there with the com-
ing of the Messiah.
Zionism updated all of these existing ideas in the spirit of self-conscious, contemporary
nationalism. It proposed an answer to the “Jewish question,” that is, how should Jews, includ-
ing those whose lives were no longer encompassed by religious observance, meet the modern
world's challenges and opportunities? The response was neither assimilation nor a purely re-
ligious existence but a national existence: creating a Jewish state in the historical homeland.
