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| Source: WhyIsrael.org |
WANTED: a Tribe. I can offer a fresh prospective, fierce loyalty, and willingness to learn. Will not sacrifice independent thought, reason, or intellect. Interested tribes should contact me asap.
“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?” Pirki Avot, 1:14, Hillel
Jean-Paul Sartre (who was not Jewish) wrote in 1948 that Jewish identity "is neither national nor international, neither religious nor ethnic, nor political: it is a quasi-historical community."
Sartre further argues that the Jewish experience of antisemitism - making the Jews "outsiders" - preserves and even creates the sense of Jewish community. Conversely, that sense of specific Jewish community may be threatened by the democrat who sees only "the person" and not "the Jew".
It is interesting to wonder about the difference in Jewish tradition today, had the Jewish people not undergone such a trial by fire in their long history. Judaism is unquestionably a tribe – “a unit of sociopolitical organization consisting of a number of families, clans, or other groups who share a common ancestry and culture and among whom leadership is typically neither formalized nor permanent.” A group of people who identify with a common culture or ancestry – either spiritually or physically.
