In light of this new reality, can Zionism survive in the twenty-first century? As noted above, it is clear that Zionism no longer means the fulfillment of the Zionist dream, nor, for that matter, does it provide existential security. At most, it enables living in the Land of Israel. Can such a situation compel diaspora Jews and former Israelis alike to give up an exile that appears to provide both better security and more comfortable living conditions? The answer I hereby propose will not appeal to everyone, but it may signal a way out of this dead end.

My answer echoes some of the basic ideas that shaped the Zionist narrative and influenced the cultural model many Jewish authors have adopted, whether they regarded themselves as Zionists or not. Its basic assumption is that every person is a product or a victim of his memories. According to Carl Jung, a person’s relationship to a group of people is a result of shared memories, or the “collective unconscious.”¹³ Whether or not we adopt Jung’s terminology, we must admit that a commonality of memories does create a certain closeness between those who share them.

Both Israeli and diaspora Jews are a historical product of circumstances in which a group of people with a specific origin were persecuted because of their identity, and who at times tried to dispose of or hide this identity when they were rejected by their society. The reasons for this rejection may have been valid or invalid, but one must admit that, as Nahum Sokolow put it, “the eternal hatred of the eternal people” has always existed.

From the fall of the Temple in Jerusalem, the story of Haman and Esther in Persia, and the anti-Jewish riots in Alexandria to the Inquisition in Spain, the Khmelnytsky uprising in the Ukraine, and the pogroms of Eastern Europe, Jews have always been persecuted by various national entities. The Dreyfus affair, at the end of the nineteenth century, was just the tip of the antisemitic iceberg. That affair, along with the Kishinev riots and other violent antisemitic events that took place at the beginning of the twentieth century, would have been bad enough on its own, even had it not served as a dress rehearsal for what took place in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. The view that regards the Holocaust as an exceptional occurrence, the likes of which had never been seen before, attempts to disconnect it from the chain of historical memory and to make us forget the enduring persecution of the Jews. Likewise, the various memorials to the Holocaust, such as Yad Vashem in Jerusalem or the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., try to exorcise the antisemitic demons that have tormented us for hundreds of years.

Historically, the Jews have often had to justify their right to exist to those who controlled their surroundings. In other words, their existence as a people with a specific identity was not self-evident; it was, rather, considered a gesture of kindness granted to them by the powers that be. Nazi racism completely denied the Jews’ right to exist, bringing about their near-annihilation, but it was not unique in that regard. The very legitimacy of a Jewish presence in the world was questioned throughout Europe. Indeed, it was not only the Germans who conspired against the Jews in the 1940s, but the majority of European nations. There was no significant difference between those who incited and led the extermination of the Jews, and their French, Belgian, Polish, Lithuanian, and Ukrainian collaborators. A large number of those so-called civilized nations even hinted that the Jews got what they deserved; it was only that most of them did not possess the audacity, the cruelty, and the methodical disposition necessary to carry out the extermination themselves.

Many Jews, both before and after the Holocaust, also perceived their Jewish identity as something distasteful and sought to conceal it from others. Religious Jews, to be sure, as well as the early Zionists, did not try to hide it; among secular Jews, however, who comprised the large majority of European Jewry, only those who managed to hide their Jewishness had any chance of survival. Those who failed to do so were killed. Some of the most terrible stories to come out of the Holocaust are of Jews who survived because they did not “look Jewish.”

And here I arrive at the answer to the problem I presented at the beginning of this essay: What is the role of the Land of Israel in this narrative of persecution? What part does it play in the lives of those whose narrative begins with the fall of the First and Second Temples, and who from then until the middle of the twentieth century were the “others,” the outcasts, the scapegoats in every country around the world?

Zionism may not have created a safe haven for the persecuted, but it has provided a “backbone” for the humiliated. The State of Israel is the only place where a Jew is judged by his successes and failures, not by his origins. It is the only place where a Jew may be hated for not being religious enough, for not being patriotic enough, or for not being left-wing enough—or simply because of his personality—but not for being born into a family tainted by Jewish origins.

Some will respond that no one cares about the identity of Jews in the United States or Europe, either. But most self-aware Jews will have trouble accepting this claim. They will admit, rather, that diaspora Jews have always dealt, and will continue to deal, with questions regarding who and what they are. The State of Israel is the only country in which not only are Jews unashamed of being Jews, but, perhaps after a process of adaptation, they may live as citizens unconditionally and without fear. In defending themselves and their country, Israelis might kill or be killed, but they will never be exterminated for being born to this mother instead of that one. They will be killed only because they are the enemy of another people with a claim to the same territory.

One can say, of course, that the reasons Jews are killed are irrelevant: The only thing that matters is that the threat of annihilation hangs over their heads, even in the place where they have built a Jewish state. The answer to this claim is that death is not the measure of a human being’s life. Rather, it is the quality of life preceding one’s death that counts. It is, perhaps, the one and only thing that might explain the willingness of freedom fighters to sacrifice themselves for a higher cause. Freedom for Jews means the ability of a person who was born Jewish to wear his identity proudly and never to think of it as a mark of disgrace. This answer, of course, is nothing less than a reincarnation of the old Zionist response. It is the source of a people’s desire to live on its own territory.