The Nation State of the Jewish People

by Robert Wolfe (July 2015)

But in order for Israel to remain the nation state of the Jewish people, the Jewish people also has to remain. At one time there was no doubt that Jews formed a people because a large proportion of them spoke the Yiddish language regardless of their religious beliefs or the lack thereof. Jews spoke Yiddish not only in Eastern Europe but also in the countries to which they had emigrated in the past 150 years or so. Due to the Holocaust on the one hand and assimilation on the other, this is no longer true. Yiddish is no longer the spoken language of a large number of Jews. It has been replaced by Hebrew in Israel and by the various languages, such as English, French and Russian, which Jews now speak in the Diaspora. And the less that the Jews of the world are able to communicate with one another, the less they are going to feel themselves part of one people. They may still identify as Jews but their primary identity will be as Israelis, Americans, Russians and so forth.

Unlike the Islamists, Israel does not demand religious belief as a condition of membership in the community.  Jewish religious law states that anyone born of a Jewish mother is a Jew regardless of religious belief so long as they do not convert to another religion. In practice a very considerable percentage of the Jewish people defines themselves as secular Jews or even as atheists. As the nation state of the Jewish people, the Israeli state and society necessarily reflect the diversity of the Jewish community. What unites us is a feeling of respect for Jewish tradition and this is something which non-Jews could also feel should they wish to do so. Respect for Jewish tradition is not an arbitrary stance but a legitimite response to the progressive role which the Jewish people has in fact played in world history.

In the world today the state of Israel is in the vanguard of the movement for democracy in the Middle East. It deserves support and recognition of this role and not carping criticism for defending itself against the Islamists and their allies. The alternative to democracy in the Middle East is the spread of Islamist medievalism to the rest of the world as is already happening on a large scale in Europe. The blatant anti-Semitism of the Islamists would result in the disintegration of the Jewish people into various sects in the Diaspora increasingly indistinguishable from the population in the midst of which they reside. The Jewish people needs a nation state and Israel needs a Jewish people.

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Robert Wolfe is a professional historian and scholar with 40 years experience teaching history on the college level in the United States. He made aliyah to Israel in 2001 and lives in Netanya with his wife.

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