Page 20 - Issue 20

years. It may well be that what they have created
will be relatively short-lived as the world changes.
However, just as the child needs to go through
adolescence in order to attain adulthood, so most
nations want a period of statehood before being
prepared to abandon it. So, it appears that each
nation has the urge for political autonomy, for a
period of collective self-assertion in order to
'complete' its collective identity. Even if other
forces are vitiating that autonomy, no-one wants to
deny to themselves what has been granted to
others.

At any rate, each national grouping believes that it
should not be the first to abandon its claim to
statehood. Nations, like individuals, are defined as
much by what they are not as by what they are. If
all the world consists of nation-states, there is no
point in any small nation attempting to leapfrog
historical processes. If the nations of the world are
formed into states which are forming into small
regional federations which are forming into
continental federations and so on, better to
become part of the process than to stand aside
and be lost, forgotten or simply trampled upon.

Jewish Response

So it is with the Jews. The political, cultural and
economic reasons which encourage the formation
of nation-states apply to them as much as to other
nations. Despite appearances, the Jews sustain all
the characteristics of a nation and see themselves
as one. Dispersion has not denied them a sense of