JUDAISM AND NATIONALITY
When I was a student I belonged to a literary society in which one of the favorite topics for debate was, whether the Jews form a nation or not, and I remember that the chief staple of the arguments of the affirmative consisted of numberless quotations from Biblical and post-Biblical literature in which the Jews were spoken of as a nation or people.
The chief staple of the arguments of the negative consisted of definitions from the standard dictionaries of the term nation, and of more extended definitions of the same term as given by writers in sociology and political economy, and after the debater was through reading them to the audience, he would turn around with a victorious, self-complacent smile to the debater on the affirmative and say, "In the light of all these authorities do you still persist in saying the Jews are a nation?" Now as I look back to those days I realize how neither side knew what it was talking about. Whether we are a nation or not does not depend upon what we were in the past, nor upon the definitions in dictionaries and scientific books. Whether we are a nation or not depends upon what we ourselves believe we are, as well as upon the way we act, and if we believe we are a nation and act as such, no amount of protests will keep us away from being such. I go a step further and say that even if we believe we are not a nation but for all practical purposes act as a nation, we are one.
The belief of any group of people in its nationality is like the belief of the individual in his own existence, in the existence of that which he speaks of as I or ego. If it strikes us as peculiar that a nation or part of a nation should become sceptical of its own existence, if it is in existence, let
us remember that there have been thinkers at all times who have seriously questioned the reality and existence of that which we speak of as the I or ego. There was a philosopher by the name of Descartes who proposed to begin philosophy from the very beginning, and he proposed to do so by doubting everything and taking nothing for granted, not even the fact that he, Descartes, was in existence. Then he continued, "I am not sure I exist, but I am sure I doubt whether I exist; I am sure of this at least, and if I am sure I doubt I am sure I .think, and if I am sure I think I am sure I exist, for if I did not exist I would not think." Later critics however have discovered that Descartes did mean this logic of his to be taken seriously. It is no reasoning whatever, although it looks like it. It is what we call reasoning in circle: the moment he said, "I doubt whether I exist," he took his own existence for granted for he said, I doubt. The truth of the matter is he was simply trying to do what the cat does when it tries to catch its own tail. His own existence he needed no reasoning process to establish; he believed it all the time he spoke or thought or wrote or ate or walked, all his actions were witnesses that cried out, "Descartes exists."
In like manner if a group of people believe or act, even though they were without believing that they are a nation to all intents and purposes, there is no further need of logical reasoning to prove they are one. Even if every Jew were to deny that the Jews form a nation, if all or the greater number of Jews were to act in a certain way towards each other which could not be explained on any other ground except nationality, which could not be explained