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Israel and the Nations in Modern Jewish Thought
K. Hruby

The Development of Modern Judaism.
When did the modern period of Judaism begin? It is generally agreed that the French Revolution should be taken as its starting.

On several occasions, the question of the Jews' civil rights had been discussed by the French people's representatives, but, each time, the matter had been postponed to a later date because serious disputes broke out among the deputies. But in its session of January 18, 1791, the constitutive assembly adopted a proposal from Deputy Dupont, holding that, from then on, Jews were to enjoy the rights of full citizenship in France.

This was the first time in history that a country with a Christian tradition had agreed, even in principle, to get rid of the barriers which had been erected between the Jews and the people in whose midst they lived, even though deeply separated from them. This event, which was to unleash an irreversible movement, practically throughout the countries of central and western Europe, seriously upset all the structures of Judaism and presented it with a situation which, until then, it had never had to face in its long history.

In fact, until that time, there was one thing which had never been disputed either from within, or outside Judaism: that the Jews were a nation apart. Moreover, the mediaeval notion of the Christian city left no room for doubt about it: anyone who was not a Christian was absolutely debarred from having a place in this city and, therefore, in any nation in which it was embodied. Through the excluding legislation to which the Jews were submitted, the gap separating them from their non-Jewish surroundings was gradually widened. Living confined to the ghetto, they had developed as if bottled up, producing their own culture and language, distinguished from non-Jews by their manners, style of dress and, in short, by a myriad of details which make up the fabric of daily life.

Of course, there were always exceptions, wherever the regime imposed on them was less • severe, more liberal, for example in Holland and, in some respects, in England, but these remained exceptional. All these factors had served to intensify a Jewish "apartheid", a very clear aware ness of making up a "corpus separatum" in relation to non-Jewish society, within the Christian order.

It is dear that the ideas of the encyclopedists and those of the "Age of Enlightenment" generally, had contributed to preparing for a change. But it must not be forgotten that the minds of those in non-Jewish situations had been too deeply scored with the idea of imposing time-honoured humiliating conditions on them to allow them to easily accept any positive alterations in the conditions of the Jews. When it came to the question of the Jews, even minds as "enlightened" as Voltaire's would lend themselves to the wildest accusations, even to the point of charging them with ritual murder.

True, even before the French Revolution, the spirit of the times had given rise in places to more liberal measures in favour of the Jews, such as the Edict of Toleration of 1782 by the Emperor Joseph II of Austria. But, as the title of the document makes quite clear, it is a question of "toleration", and not of a will, which had been prevented from putting an end to an established state of injustice.

With the 1791 resolution of the French legislative assembly, there was a complete change in the situation, and the problem to be faced from then on would be nothing more or less than that of inserting the Jews into their neighbouring society and of their acquiring a cultural identity with it.

This insertion and identification would not be achieved overnight, and the difficulties of every kind which were met in the different countries during this process are well known. But the principle as such turned out to be irreversible, except in places where governments, after a few initial gestures of good will, set themselves to an adamant refusal, such as Tsarist Russia, at that time the human reservoir of east European Judaism. Further, society as such increasingly ceased to be Christian in the sense of the Christianity of the Middle Ages, and changed into a pluralist society. In such society, culture is, broadly, the same for everyone. The only point of difference which remained among the citizens was religion, which was looked upon more and more as a purely individual affair and having no fundamental relationship to what went to make up the nation. While the established Churches retained great privileges in most countries, their influence and sway over public life was declining.

From then on, something very new took place in Judaism within the countries affected by these developments: no longer were there Jews living in Strasbourg, Vienna, Frankfurt or London, but rather French, Austrian, German and English, people whose religion was Israelite. The great process of integration had begun, and came about in virtually every country in which this possibility was open to the Jews. This is not the place to study the extent to which this process was consciously accepted within the non-Jewish milieu. The final development, which came to a head with the horrifying genocide of the Second World War in Hitler's Germany, at least seems to indicate that no such acceptance ever struck deep roots. It remains true that this complete cultural identification with their surroundings brought in its wake in certain countries, and particularly in Germany, a great wave of discontent with Judaism. Consciousness of their religious identity was no longer sufficienty strongto check a complete rejection, the more so as the whole of society had discovered advantages in the general process of secularization and laicization.

This wave of assimilation could have no effect on Jewish communities still governed by mediaeval legislation, as was the case in Moslem countries or under the Tsarist regime, where only a small group of privileged people had any access to the surrounding culture. The influence of traditional structures remained far stronger here than elsewhere.

Where integration was possible, it presented the Jewish mind with some serious questions. What was left of the old idea of the kelal Y israel, of the mutual bonds of the Jews, within a society which was undergoing total change, and evolving at an increasing pace? The vast majority of those who had "made the leap" could not remain indifferent to the mass of problems flowing from the new situation.

What, in point of fact, was the importance of the Jewish identity? For really, in the last resort, this was what was at stake for men wishing to take their place in neighbouring society as completely as possible. And how far was it possible to preserve this identity despite their desire for assimilation? What position should be taken up with regard to traditionally basic elements in the Jewish heritage, such as the people's hope of returning to Palestine, the re-establishment of national independence, the re-building of the Temple, etc? Were these ideas, which the synagogal liturgy, especially, had passed down and kept alive for two thousand years, consistent with the desire for assimilation, which necessarily involved being integrated with a culture which was foreign to Judaism and which often carried very different aspirations?

The leaders of the reform movement answered boldly that these traditional considerations and the culture of their surroundings were inconsistent, and that, therefore, the tradition had to be "adapted" to meet the new situation. But, was such a position consistent with the whole outlook of Jewish tradition? Clearly, this was a complicated issue. Even men as firmly attached to this tradition as S. R. Hirsch, founder of the Jewish neo-orthodoxy in Germany, clung, for a short while at least, to the idea of "a German citizen of the Israelite religion".

At this point, the effect of the religious tradition on the whole Jewish life becomes more easily distinguishable. Historically, Judaism had not existed and could not subsist except through its religious heritage. This is an undeniable fact. It is bound up with this heritage, but identity does not necessarily depend first and foremost on adherence to a formal body of beliefs, as is the case with Christianity. Identity can also be thought of, at certain times, as the implicit non-denial of a collection of concepts which in fact have strictly formulated expressions. This is an important remark when we speak of a society in which the religious clement, properly so called, exercised a declining control over the totality of life. For Judaism, every individual who continues to associate himself with the historical destiny of the Jewish people, preserves at the same time his religious identity.

Recent Developments.
This section brings us to the modern period of development within Judaism, which is distinguished by three high points: the appearance of the Zionist movement at the end of the last century, the genocide of 1939-45 and the creation, in 1948, of a Jewish State in Palestine.
Our attempt at analysis is directed towards ideological significance, but it is being true to the "selbstverstandnis" of the Jewish people to approach it historically. Present day Jewish positions can only be understood on the basis of historical reality, which is the reinterpretation of certain constants of Jewish life in the light of the present.

These constants take the form of a number of elements which go to make up the Jewish mind and, while they are transmitted through a specifically religious tradition, they remain pees-ent every time one tries to elucidate any truly Jewish ideas. One of these constants which we have already examined in the biblical section of this account is the link between the people and the promised land, and the hope which was never forgotten down the centuries that the people would return to the land of their forefathers. The entire tradition looks upon this need to return as a command of the Torah, present and immediate at every stage and at every level of Jewish life.

The question which now arises is precisely to know what effect this feature of the traditional outlook should have on the Jewish man of today, finding himself as he does in a universe which is in the process of secularization and obliged to radically re-think all its positions. What is more, we must lay stress on the fact that the effects of secularization and laicization are by no means the same in Judaism as they are in Christianity. The idea that religion, which is a matter for the individual conscience, could be entirely separated from other aspects of life, is totally foreign to Judaism; Zionism !is a typical example of this.

The Zionist Movement.
The historical origins of the modern Zionist movement are well known. When it began, it was a reaction against a particular situation: the awareness in the light of hostile reaction from the non-Jewish environment, that assimilation had been halted. Its founders, to a large extent indifferent to the religious tradition, always looked upon Zionism as an exclusively political movement, refusing to be identified in any way with a religious ideal, and rejecting the "messianic" interpretations, even in the widest sense of the term.

But the fact remains that the creation of a national homeland for the Jewish people, which was the main object of this movement which sought to liberate the people from the affronts they were suffering at the time, took place in Palestine, even though its main founder, Dr. Theodore Herzl, would personally have been in favour of other suggestions. The impulse for this was a result of ideological pressure from the Jews of eastern Europe, who had remained traditional both in their structures and thinking. It could not be said that this was, strictly speaking, a religious influence. It is rather a case of the self-awareness of the Jewish people as such, which had remained very much a live thing where it had escaped the movement for integration.
Moreover, the reservations held by the truly religious section of Judaism with regard to Zionism are well known; they have only been overcome with great difficulty. On the other hand, the leaders of the religious reform movement also vehemently rejected Zionism, seeing it as a seriously retrograde step in the context of the modern ideas of integration and assimilation.

Genocide and the State of Israel.
In considering the question of Jewish identity, it is essential to stress here the impact made by the years 1939 to 1945 on the whole Jewish mind.

While both within and outside Judaism, the objection was made often against Zionism that it represented a return to ideas which were obsolete and rather reviving the national mythology, the evidence had to be examined and acknowledgment made that, in one part of the world, which had been thought to be the cradle of modern ideas, a colossal return had taken place to a primitive order of myth. And this primitive myth had never been displayed with such ferocity in the history of mankind: it was a return to a policy of physical extermination.
As a result of unspeakable horrors and after a third of the Jewish people had been exterminated, the creation of a Jewish State in Palestine in 1948 was bound to appear to the Jewish mind as a new assertion of its identity, and as a proper way of expressing it. Seen in this way, a Jewish State only has meaning if its remains within the historical and existential Jewish consciousness: and requirements of an essentially spiritual order had to regulate the Jewish way of life, withinthe state just as within the diaspora. Above all, this state must be Jewish through possessing the character of a place where Jewish life is concentrated and where that life is displayed. It can never be thing but a "state like the others" (although in fact it is one), for the simple reason that the Jewish people cannot be a "people like the others", without losing its deepest significance. Any other view would deprive the Jewish people of the factor which determines its existence and provides, at the same time, the one key to its destiny.

Modern Developments in the Light of Jewish Thought.
Thinkers who have attempted to analyse the situation have based themselves on the developments which profoundly altered the conditions of living for Judaism and the Jewish people from the French Revolution on. But in fact the problem which they faced had itself changed through events which happened in the course of time, If, at the beginning, people were mainly enthusiastic for integration and assimilation, disenchantment made itself felt as it became clear that too many illusions had been created about non-Jewish acceptance of the integration of the Jews. From within, as we have seen, the major reaction came with the appearance of the Zionist movement. Then, the genocide which took place during the last war marked the virtual end of the dream of integration with the surrounding milieu, which had been obtained at the price, carried too far, of an abandonment of Jewish identity. A new stage began with the creation of the State of Israel, which was to have a profound effect on this searching. Through this new factor, the problem of the relationship between the Jewish State and the Judaism of the Diaspora enters a new phase. From now on, the difficulty over relationships between the Jews and the nations would exist at two levels: first the situation of the Jews in the countries where they lived in non-Jewish surroundings, and then the relationships of the Jewish State with other countries.

During what we call the modern era for Judaism, that is, since the end of the eighteenth century, the religious question which had shaped the relationships between Israel and the other nations for many centuries, plays only a secondary role at the heart of the problem. But it remained the cause of the difficulties for Jews within communities with a non-Jewish majority. It was this which provoked at this point reactions which showed themselves less as religious hostility, although this was still present, than as social and economic problems, and the Jews were accused of playing a "parasitic" part in economic affairs. There were also some instances of xenophobia current which, allied to certain erratic theories of this kind, went as far as racial hatred. This is the root, in the midst of "modern" times of the greatest tragedy which the Jewish people had lived through during its history, and which ended with the physical extermination of one third of its numbers. Even in the blackest periods of the Middle Ages, hatred of the Jews, from whatever motive, had never gone as far as this in its savage effects.

All these catastrophes, the struggles and the anguish, left their mark clearly on thought and reflection. When Jewish thinkers gave their attention to this mass of problems, each set about it from his own point of view. It would have been easy to quote philosophical, religious, social, economic, national, political positions and so on. But, we think it better to avoid such a fragmentation, and instead to direct our attention to opinions which prescind from Israel's practical situation in the world and her relationships with the nations, and attempt to analyse this situation in the light of a mission of Judaism which is essentially a spiritual one. We shall, therefore, listen, in turn, to the testimonies of K. Kohler, F. Rosenzweig, M. Buber, E. Aviad, M. V. Yankelevitch and A. Neher.

K. Kohler's Positions.
K. Kohler (1843-1926), a representative figure of the extreme religious reform in Judaism,formed in the school of liberal protestantism in Germany and notably influenced by idealist philosophy, was deeply convinced that emancipation brought with it for Judaism the beginning of a new epoch, which he looked upon as the coming to flower of the great prophetic visions of universal brotherhood. Kohler takes little account of the barriers set up by the Jewish tradition, to which he ascribes a purely relative value and which he declares to be positively obsolete in any features which are incompatible with modern civilization (cf. Pittsburgh Platform of 1885, the charter of American Reformed Judaism). Kohler expresses his ideas in his basic work (Grundriss einer systematischen Theologie des Judentums Leipzig, 1910).

The starting point for Kohler's reflections is man, looked at from the point of view of his insertion into society, from which he is inseparable and within which he must attain to his full development, in accordance with his vocation as a creature called to a life in the image of God.
Thus the emphasis is placed on man's efforts towards the construction of society, which must be carried out gradually, through constantly surpassing all the basic unities, such as the family, the race and the nation, to arrive at a consciousness of the common destiny of humanity. This idea of the unity of the human race was given to men by the ethical monotheism of Judaism, which heralded a "messianic" future for all mankind.

Every religious or even political system having the same goal makes a contribution towards bringing about this ultimate unity of all men, but it is Judaism alone, which, in its history and its way of life as well, constantly surpasses all limitations, and has been the leaven of this great idea in mankind's development.
The Jewish people is conscious of having a mission which, in this sense, is a world mission having, as its ultimate objective, the building of the kingdom of God in truth and justice in the spirit of the prophets. In order to be in a position to carry out this task, the Jewish people must neither merge into the mass of other peoples, nor shut itself away within a private culture of its own.

Contemporary Judaism looks upon modern developments at every level as an indication that its prophetic hopes are being progressively achieved. More than ever, it regards itself as the true Servant of the Lord, the suffering Messiah of history.

Modern Judaism seeks as complete an integration as possible with its neighbouring society with which it feels itself entirely at one. (Kohler wrote this at a time when such an integration could still be considered as possible, and before events had given it the lie). For this reason, he feels obliged to stand firmly aside from any messianic idea envisaging a national restoration of the Jewish people in Palestine. The expectation of the Jewish people is not a personal Messiah, but the arrival of messianic times, with a universal consciousness of God and love of men.
Kohler agrees with the thinking of Maimonides and Judah ha-Levi in recognizing in Christianity and, to a lesser extent, in Islam, a real role in this slowly progressing movement of humanity towards its spiritual fulfilment. Between the Church and Islam, Israel is the constant messenger of a truly universal religion, which will have achieved its object on the day when the God of Sinai has established his throne in the hearts of men.

Franz Rosenzweig (18861929).
The philosophical, theological and spiritual progress of Franz Rosenzweig is to be seen in his major work, Der Stern der Erläsung (the Star of the Redemption).

Rosenzweig's philosophical work is mainly based on a reaction against Hegel's standpoint, in which history and historical evolution are the supreme norm and yardstick of everything. Instead of this, he advocates a return to experience, to the irreducible, from which he extracts three great realities: man, God and the world. Starting with these realities, man must strive to reach a metaphysical God and a "metalogical" world.

To speak of experience is to speak, by the same token, of the constant unification of all things by life and by time. For Rosenzweig, the original fact about religion lies in this unification, achieved in time. It is the outcome of a life which is constantly lived in contact with God, man and the world. To express this enduring relationship, Rosenzweig makes use of a terminology all his own: he calls creation the link between God and the world, revelation the bond between God and man and redemption the relationship between man and the world.

The original feature of Rosenzweig's system of thought is that he employs theological concepts as well as ontological beings in his philosophy. The relationship between God and man thus becomes an interchangeable ontological relationship: it is either God for man or man for God. God and man thus live in this "for", which is the essential feature of their permanent relationship. It is by displaying his love that God reveals himself to man. And it is in the mitzvah, the divine commandment, that this relationship of love with God is permanently renewed.

Man's response to the love of God is love of his neighbour. Through it, revelation becomes redemption: thus revelation is specifically directed towards the kingdom of God, for which it prepares and which it gradually brings into existence. In this way, man is in an enduring relationship with eternity which, while it is to be realized in the future, still becomes an experience here and now, "the possibility", as Rosenzweig puts it, "of the I learning to say Thou to an It", and therefore the establishment of a universal and enduring bond between all men.

As was always the case in Jewish belief, Rosenzweig sees man as the indispensable mediator of redemption. Yet man is only really able to carry out this function in a communitarian way of life: love must rise above the level of merely individual relationships and must become a community task. In the process, Judaism and Christianity which Rosenzweig sees as complementary realities are not contingent historical phenomena, but the ontological penetration into eternity, within time. (For Rosenzweig, Islam has no part in this process; unlike Judaism and Christianity, which are "revealed" religions, he looks upon it as "founded" and, therefore, as having a purely human origin. While Judaism lives from now on as a direct participation in the "eternal life" of what is accomplished, Christianity, on the other hand, is essentially a way towards that eternity, an enduring "mission" to transform the world.

Judaism, living as it does in eternity, is established from now on in an order of holiness which is assured by a law which is intrinsically holy and freed from all hazards. In this way, it is only indirectly concerned with the events of history, which are peripheral to it.

Judaism and Christianity in their Respective:Roles.
For Rosenzweig, Judaism and Christianity are two complementary expressions of the religious attitude which is at the heart of being. Truth is only in God, and exists beyond the partial truths of Judaism and Christianity, but these must be lived in their fullness to ensure the continuation between them of an enduring state of dialogue. This dialogue is indispensable as a vital step towards perfect truth, and it is necessary that everyone, be he Jew or Christian, should remain faithful to his own way. "Conversion" of a Jew to Christianity, which compromises the dialogue situation, is therefore seen to be meaningless and Rosenzweig who, at one stage of his life, was very close to taking this step himself, finally rejected it as impossible.
Nevertheless, Rosenzweig recognized in Christianity an essential task in the spiritual development of mankind. He is perhaps the one Jewish thinker who went so far. The life of every person, Jew and Christian alike, which remains true to itself, is a witness given to God's truth. For Rosenzweig this is the "theory of messianic knowledge".

The Piece of the Jew in Surrounding Society.
As we have said, Rosenzweig saw the Jew as living out his witness on the fringe of time, so to speak. But he does not cease to be subject to the human condition, which always involves a certain entry into surrounding society. How is the Jew to achieve this? Rosenzweig does not propose any solution to this. For him the extent of Jewish entry depends, in large measure, upon the attitude of non-Jewish society. For the individual, this will always largely be "a matter for tact and perception". What is of the essence is Jewish life reflecting inwardly, preserving what is original in Judaism and its spirituality.

Rosenzweig's Contribution towards an Appreciation of the Jewish Phenomenon.
A certain philosophy of history would call in question Judaism's conviction of its own permanence. If it were to abandon this claim and deep longing, Judaism would be signing it own death warrant: that indeed would be "the end of the Jewish people". It is precisely because of this that Judaism must lead a life apart and, at least to some extent, remain removed from events, even though these may affect it profoundly.

Rosenzweig sees no "miracle of survival", as is frequently suggested, in this permanence: throughout the difficulties of history, Judaism is able to preserve its identity and self-awareness, by refusing to submit to the tyranny of events and allow itself to be moulded by them. A person regarding history as the absolute norm of every feature of life would obviously be baffled by such a strange mode of existence.

As to Rosenzweig's view of the relationships which the Jewish people should entertain with the other nations, it is, of course, impossible to know how he would have reacted to the disaster which struck European Judaism scarcely ten years after his death. Because of the lofty view of the spiritual task of Judaism which he held, Rosenzweig remained apart from the modern Zionist movement and from its desire to "normalize" living conditions for the Jewish people by returning to their land. For him, the eternal character of the Jewish people goes beyond every contingency such as a land of its own, a common language, a political structure and so on. These represent a view which has been totally overtaken by an evolution in the wake of history, and it seems clear that Juadism can, without 'betraying either its identity or its inspiration, adopt different modes of life: they are not mutually exclusive.

Martin Buber (1878-19651.
Martin Buber's thinking is not only extremely rich, but it developed during the course of a long life, and he had to add some nuances in the light of events which, profoundly affected some of his presuppositions, within his lifetime.

It would, therefore, be tantamount to a betrayal of his thought to try to analyse and present that thought on the subject of a concrete question. Our survey, therefore, has of necessity a fragmented quality and we do not claim in any way to exhaust the subject.

Israel, her existence, her mission and her role in the world are at the heart of the intellectual strivings of Buber the philosopher and theologian. In a penetrating examination of Jewish history, he declared that, as a nation Israel shares the very same condition as other peoples and races, with the difference that she is not governed by racial laws and customs, nor even by the force of destiny, but by God personally, he having chosen her for the benefit of the others (An der Wende, p. 14-15). It is because of their universal mission that Israel must be a people set apart, but at the same time specifically a nation like the others, and not just a "spiritual kingdom" like the Church. This is why Israel must cling to her universal mission in a way which is both world-wide and obvious. Only a theology of election can do justice to what it means to be a Jew, while this remains open to an anthropology applicable to all men.

Buber starts by attempting to show that the theology and anthropology concerned in the definition of Israel are rooted in the relationship between the specifically Jewish identity and the whole of humanity. Thus, that which is specifically Jewish is, at the same time, the most perfect expression of universal humanity, and not "a definition of a particular section" of humanity. In Judaism, that which is common to humanity, is seen more clearly than elsewhere (Die judische Bewegung, Vol. I, 1916, p. 213). The permanent dualism, which is so firmly stressed in the Jewish teaching and mentality, is given clearer expression than in any other culture. It is a driving force, a constant impulse leading towards the achievement of unity, not only in God but also in the world, or rather, between God and the world. It is the Jewish insight into this unity which serves as a model for the other peoples (Red en, p. 107-8).

This dualism, or disharmony, shows itself in all the great figures of the Bible, just as it does in modern Judaism, at "an unbelievably tragic deph" (Pa. Bewegung, I, p. 74). It forms the dynamic factor which drives Israel on to seek the unity and salvation of all men. In this way, Judaism becomes the very foundation of humanism. The justification of Israel's existence must be sought in the great appeal which she constantly issues, in which she becomes an example for all men by establishing a unity between the sacred and the profane, between trust in God and in his land. No other people was able to do this, and in this specifically, lies the supernatural mission of Israel.

This task, by definition supernatural, is distinguished by the fact that it was not imposed on Israel, as something coming down from Heaven. On the contrary: given the unique and exceptional character of Israel's religion, this religion remains the fulfilment of the religious history of mankind, and flows from its very centre. It remains in contact with humanity in a positive way, but also negatively. Man always speaks of God by means of images and myths. In Israel, the universal takes on a "particular meaning" (An der Wende, p. 40). It is crystallized or actualized in a religious setting which also exists among other peoples, but never with the same truly historical quality (Israel und Palastina, p. 9).

Buber was fully alive to the dangers involved in looking at things in this way: the consciousness of being chosen turns into a constant appeal to lead an exemplary life, while the theological considerations run the risk of being reduced to a pure principle of dialogue. In his first phase, he insists on Israel's kingship with humanity in its entirety, but this phase was developed during his "optimistic period", between 1914 and the onset of Nazism.

Later, he placed the emphasis almost entirely on the isolation of Israel within the world:
"The phenomenon of Israel's existence", he wrote, "is unique, and cannot be adapted to anything else whatsoever. The real name (of the people), a name which was not acquired through human generation, but which was God's gift to the father of the race, identifies the community as a community, and this cannot be conceived in terms of racial or sociological categories" (Die Sunde und die Erkenntnis, p. 156). "Zion" he says yet again, "is not simply a case of insisting in an exceptional way upon a national idea or movement, a particular factor which is added onto the universal. It is something which creates a special genus, which so surpasses the boundaries of the problem of national identity that it stretches out to the furthest reaches of human and cosmological problems, to the problem of being itself" (Israel und Palastina, II, p. 13).

For him, Zionism shows that those who have undertaken this task of colonization (in Palestine) are forming a people and, what is more, a nation which is not susceptible of any definition: a problem people, therefore. In the first place, it is a stateless people: secondly, it has no country,without that binding force which is given by a particular place or location: in the third place, there is nothing within it which would ensure its holding together, no particular direction about it. For this reason, the paradox of Zionism is a new, unique phenomenon. Nothing like it has ever been seen in the world's history; it contradicts "political laws" (Kamp/ und Israel; Reden und Schriften, 192, p. 96-7). It is true that Israel in herself is a people like any other, and Palestine is a country like any other, but the link between the two is a mystery. This is what gives Israel a true claim to this land, although it is impossible to formulate this adequately in terms of human laws.

Judaism and Christianity.
As to the relationship between Judaism and Christianity, Buber's theory of the "two forms of faith" (Zwei Glaubensweisen), which he looks upon as irreconcilably opposed, is well known. Nevertheless, the fact remains that Judaism, as it understands itself, and Christianity, as conceived and interpreted by the Catholic Church, are the two final witnesses of an absolute mission in the world, a mission which comes from God, and absolute in the sense in which it is a "scandal": that obligation which binds man to the particular and the visible, exclusively and finally. All other religions are reducible to a "philosophical faith", within which a choice can be made between certain elements while excluding others, since everything is part of the "human universal". In Judaism, as with Christianity, this is not possible: for one as for the other, the concrete idea of the "People of God" remains scandalously central.
For Buber, this could be a starting point for the Jewish—Christian dialogue.
"Israel is unique... and is not subject to any genus or category. It does not exist in history as a 'pigeon-hole' just to contain Israel... It is the only point of departure from which we other Jews can hold dialogue with Christians, because it is the only situation which offers the existential possibility of a response. Only the two of us, the Church and Israel, know what Israel really means" (Die Stunde and die Erkenntnis, p. 148).

But still, to Buber's mind, there is a contradiction, which has far more than a logical quality about it, at the heart of this dialogue: the Church looks upon Israel as rejected by God. It follows that it looks on itself as the true Israel (Ibid., pp. 148-9).

While he rejects the Christian idea of a new expression of the prophetic truth in Jesus, Buber yet recognizes that a Jew who reflects on his Judaism, will find there things which were to come in Christianity. And he regards the specifically Christian reality as something new, and not to be explained by its having sprung from Judaism. When he recognizes this new element, the Jew of necessity looks upon it as something alien. Buber does not see these different factors as coming together to form the historical structure of truth, the two extremes being promise and fulfilment. His view of the Jewish notion of prophecy involves no transcendent aspect which implies fulfilment. For him fulfilment lies in a social Utopia. Even though everything in Judaism is a preparation for this new element, still that element remains something alien to it. But Buber finds that its existence leads directly to the degradation of Judaism (in Spengler's sense, in Der Untergang des Abendlandes). The objective at which he aims is to stem the tide by returning to the authentic sources of Judaism.

Israel and the Nations.
Israel is the chosen people, chosen for the others, but set apart in such a way that she is, at the same time, inaccessible to the others. From such a viewpoint, proselytism itself becomes an existential impossibility: the very source of the communion which exists between Irsael and the nations becomes incommunicable. This is the crowning contradiction inherent in the Jewishmission, a contradiction made more glaring by the two modes of life within Judaism: the nation and the diaspora. All the time Israel is dispersed and some have seen the diaspora as a providential condition which allows Israel to work among the nations (cf. Tob 13:1-7) the people is not really itself and construes the exile as a divine punishment. Banished from its land, the people is sick and cannot recover its health (Jiid. Bewegung, 1916, 1921; Kampf and Israel, 1933). But it is clearly possible that Israel can be recalled from exile and reunited. That is one of the great messianic promises common to every stage in the history of Jewish life. But, once completely reunited within a State, the Jewish people would cease to be the leaven of the world, in the geographical sense: it would be turned in on itself, and lose contact with the rest of the world. On the other hand, all the time that Israel is free, in the spiritual sense, to move about the world, it has no point of focus which would give it the stability required for nationhood. The moment it becomes reunited, the only example it would give would be that of isolation. Israel's life is an eternal return from the diaspora to the nation. The Church's movement is in the opposite direction: by definition, it is centripetal, moving towards all the nations of all ages.

Yesha'yahu Aviad (Dr. Oscar Wolfsberg, died 1957).
In the person of Yesha'yahu Aviad, we finally come upon a representative of modern Israeli thought, certainly inspired by the traditional religion, but determined to remain open to current problems.

A native of Hamburg, Aviad took up a medical career. When he had completed his studies at Heidelberg, and became a specialist in pediatrics, he very soon emigrated to Palestine. Because he had roots in the country where the State of Israel was to be created in 1948 and which he was to serve brilliantly as a member of the diplomatic corps, Aviad naturally examined all its problems, and reflected on them from a very different standpoint to that of the Jewish philosophers in the diaspora: it would be said that he always looked from the centre outwards. The few examples of his thinking which we have selected as having a bearing on our subject are taken principally from his two last books (published in Hebrew and not yet translated): Reflections on Judaism (1957) and Thoughts on the Philosophy of History (which appeared posthumously in 1958).

The starting point for Aviad's philosophical Deflections is, at once, man and his role in history. This history is not simply a mass of more or less chance events, but the revelation of a plan of God. It is built around three great moments: creation, the revelation at Sinai and messianic times.
At the centre of the Jewish philosophy of history is its moral sense. For the Jew, the real hero is the man who is prepared to go as far as the giddush ha-sheen, even to the sacrifice of his life, for the sake of God's truth. The Jewish people, taken as a unit, is the suffering Servant of Isaiah 53; it always makes atonement for the sins of the nations.

The essential task in the world situation of today, characterized as it is by a general crisis of faith, is to reintroduce into the contemporary world a dimension of ontological faith. Contrary to what many people think, true faith is not the passive acceptance of an absolute will of God but, on the contrary, a continuing dialogue with God. Israel is pre-eminently the people in this dialogue.
Every person and, a fortiori, every people, has a memory of history. In the particular case of the Jewish people, it is not simply a very strong concern for the past, but something which demands a certain attitude to events: this collective memory leads a Jew to understand that he cannot opt out of what he is, but must assume his identity in order to remain faithful to his task and mission.
To Aviad, Zionism is a necessary implication of Jewish history. At the moment when the State of Israel was created, the Jewish people recoveredits national identity and also won the greatest victory of its history, against the dark background of the holocaust of the years 1939 to 1945. However, the realization, which is of central importance, is the pivot of a deliberately, developed and devoted Jewish life.

Israel and the Nations.
Relations between Israel and the nations are necessarily affected by the concept of the election of Israel. But this election is not something which makes her an oddity or isolates her from the rest of the world. Israel is certainly the "first-born son of the Lord" (Ex. 4:22), but that also means that all other men are, without exception, children of God. The result of this is a lasting solidarity between Israel and the other nations.

The knowledge that it was chosen never brought about in the Jewish people a desire for any sort of domination over others. The idea of election is a concept which is determinedly universalist, showing itself in a concern for the destiny of the other peoples at all times, and in the spreading of messianic thinking to everyone. The concept of election is essentially a religious one
it is only possible and tolerable if it continually inspires Israel with humility and a sense of responsability in a spirit of service.

Aviad also analyses the term "miracle", frequently applied to the creation of a Jewish State after two thousand years of exile. The word is appropriate, he says, but it is essentially bound into the course of Jewish history. Because of this history and the lessons which emerge from it, the Jewish State must, from every point of view, be an exemplary state. If it is unable to raise itself to this level and to remain there, it would be better if it did not exist at all. In the present situation, the Jewish people must first of all guard against any temptation towards chauvinism; its mission, as the Talmud says with the masters of the tradition, is to "multiply peace in the world". Thus, the State of Israel must be grounded on a very high moral foundation, in accordance with the words of the prophet (Is. 1:27): "Zion shall be redeemed by justice and those in her by ghteousness".

The Problem of Pardon.
A theme which has especially absorbed Jewish thought in the field of relations between the Jewish people and the other nations, is that of pardon, in the light of the events of 1939-45. The root of the evil which let loose an unequalled horror is quite as inexplicable as the mystery of evil itself. It is less a case of understanding and explaining what has happened, than of finding a way out of the problem: what has happened, and what was allowed to happen, is a reality, and no amount of reflection on the metaphysical and psychological factors underlying it can make us forget that we are face to face with acts carried out by men, which involve very real guilt. What was done to the Jewish people was done by men of flesh and blood, and in a sense is a burden on the conscience of mankind. True, mankind as a whole did not take part in the genocide of which the Jews were the victims; but it does bear the responsibility for its indifference to the fate of the Jewish people during the period when these events were in preparation.

Any re-establishment of contact between the Jewish people and the non-Jewish world, therefore, presupposes, on the Jewish side, a possibility, not of forgetting, for these things are now written in history and form part of it, but of forgiveness. The reflections of M.V. Yankelevitch get to the heart of this problem (cf. Introduction all Theme du Pardon, in La Conscience Juive face a l'Histoire: Le Pardon, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1965, p. 247 ff.).

The starting point for M. Yankelevitch's reflections is the picture of someone who comes to die. He writes:
"Everyone knows that he is doomed to die, that he gets closer to it every day, but there... it is possible to fear what one knows already. It is just the same with a crime inspired by a supernatural wickedness, by the unprovoked savagery of man. We come across depths which are unfathomable... and therefore, in reflecting on this crime, we can never exhaust our subject. We are rebuked for brandishing our six million dead, in the same way as the Soviets are blamed for constantly showing war films... These are depths of brutality which are measured on no human scale and which leave us helpless in the face of a grief which cannot be atoned for; in a state of despair, for in the face of this crime what can we do but freely forgive, if we can. But can we?... "Punishment literally becomes unimportant, in the same way as all great finite things tend to equal out when placed side by side with the infinite... We are accused of being resentful, but in the end resentment here means nothing but the capacity to feel a second time, deeply and intensely, to relive all those days, like a man who constantly comes back to life, capable of living the mystery... Very well, we are, through resentment, able to perpetuate the mystery... But above all we see an equation between the unforgiveable and pardon, between the evil and the act by which we forget or we forgive, and by this equation neither is stronger than the other; as the Canticle of Canticles puts it, 'love is as strong as death'...
"It seems to me that the connection between forgiveness and the evil, between love and the unpardonable are completely alike: man is constantly moving between these two poles. The act of forgiveness is stronger than the evil... or rather, as strong as the evil... It is as strong as the evil, but not stronger than the evil".

Conclusion.
We would like to conclude our survey of Jewish thought with the reflections of M. Andre Neher: he seeks to re-establish the true problem of the existence of the Jews, and therefore of their relations with the other nations, at the only levels which seem true to him, those of an essentially spiritual order (cf. L'Existence Juive, Paris, 1962; Conflits internes, p. 131 ff.).

In the paragraph entitled "L'Homme Juif", M. Neher writes, among other things (p. 136 ff.):
"With this word 'kingdom', I have the impression that we come to the critical point of our analysis of the Jew. As a Hebrew, the Jew is in exile. As an Israelite, he is in the Kingdom. But are not exile and the Kingdom contradictory, irreconcilable, notions? How can a person be, at one and the same time, in exile and in the Kingdom, at once a rover and settled? It is precisely this contradiction which makes the Jewish man a Jew...
'The Jew seeks to escape... from the di. lemma, to choose one of the two alternatives which present themselves to him in this contradictory fashion, that is to establish himself in that humanism which would allow him to live and die as other men live and die, or to take refuge in the other alternative, to shut himself up within spiritual or political ghettos, but this escape is seen to be impossible... And here we have those rediscoveries of Jewish self-awareness, of which we have sad evidence in our own times, demonstrating that the ghetto is impossible, that assimilation is impossible, that the only possibility remaining open is the need to rediscover an authentic, interior Judaism...
"The Jewish man who finds himself in this contradictory situation and accepts it, is a person who must be at the one time with men and outside humanity, in order to have a viewpoint which he could not have from within. He must be a person at once leaning towards men and turned towards God, living both in the hope of universal salvation and with a total respect for the individuality of every person andevery people. He must be a person who achieves that very difficult combination, a man of the world and an honourable man.
"These logical options plunge him into an experience in which he surpasses himself. By this fact, it becomes a human experience, possible, not merely to the Jew, but for other men too... In a way, the human condition tests itself out in the Jewish situation. A man, whoever he may be, can only come to a full awareness of his own humanity if he approaches a Jew, to discover its total complexity, all its values, and provided always that he does not remain indifferent or insensitive in the presence of the Jew, and his destiny, which is charged with meaning for the whole of humanity...".

And in the paragraph Le Juif face au chthien (p 22 ff.):
"...Judaism is not essentially a community of belief... and possesses such a range of shades of meaning in its theological assertions that none of those at the root of Christianity need appear, in the last resort, as something entirely alien to it. A Jewish messianism pressed to its furthest conclusions: Christianity offers it... Judaism is not defined by faith, but by something else: it confronts existence at every level, and it is here that it feels that there are irreconcilable differences between Christianity and itself... As a community of sanctification, Judaism expects nothing of other peoples, except that each should do its duty in imitating the priestly example which Judaism offers them; it is the chosen people... The single fact that the role of Israel is to lead other peoples, not to herself but to God, while for Christians, men cannot approach God except by way of Christianity, is enough to create an enormous gap between the two ideas, through which the whole world is being transformed.
"I am utterly convinced that these two faiths, (Jewish and Christian), as different as they are, are complementary and have a richness in their differences. Each faith seeks assurance from the other, helps it to be humble and to make its mark on the record of human effort. They can be compared to two brothers who know each other very well, each having a task of his own to fulfil. If the younger one sees theelder turn his back on him there is no need for him to feel hurt or disappointed. It is not a case of contempt, or indifference or stubbornness, but it comes from the fact that urgent tasks call him away to the side of other brothers, and he knows that they have need of him. Above all, he has his own vine to cultivate: the law of God, whose blossoming and maturing are the perfume and the nourishment of the whole world".