Who Is Israel?

The election of Menahem Begin brings to the fore the deeply religious, even messianic, attitude toward the State of Israel held by Jews both in the State and abroad. The notion that annexation is liberation, the claim that God gave us the land and therefore it is ours—these clearly theological assertions enter the political arena. Is Zionism Judaism? If not, what is the relationship between Judaism and Zionism?

To understand the attitudes of American Jews toward the State of Israel you need a taste for ambiguity and irony. The ambiguity is in the meaning of “State” and “Israel”; the irony, in the passionate engagement with the destiny of the “holy land” on the part of people who are passionately American, deeply secular in the commonplace sense of the word, and uncommonly perplexed by the meaning of their own identity as Jews.

JN

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Jacob Neusner

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The election of Menahem Begin brings to the fore the deeply religious, even messianic, attitude toward the State of Israel held by Jews both in the State and abroad. The notion that annexation is liberation, the claim that God gave us the land and therefore it is ours—these clearly theological assertions enter the political arena. Is Zionism Judaism? If not, what is the relationship between Judaism and Zionism?

To understand the attitudes of American Jews toward the State of Israel you need a taste for ambiguity and irony. The ambiguity is in the meaning of “State” and “Israel”; the irony, in the passionate engagement with the destiny of the “holy land” on the part of people who are passionately American, deeply secular in the commonplace sense of the word, and uncommonly perplexed by the meaning of their own identity as Jews.