Exiles is the raison d'etre of Israel, the primary purpose to which all other aims have to be subservient. This line is taught in Israeli schools, propounded in political speeches, written in the press. It is the essence of the existing regime.
Yet nothing could be further from what young Israelis believe in. Theirs is a different outlook, an Israeli nationalism pure and simple, sometimes moderate and sometimes extreme, but a nationalism very similar to any other one, bound up with the fortunes of the State of Israel, its territory, its language, its culture and its army.
The two different sets of ideals can co-exist only because the gap between them seldom becomes obvious. Yet it is real and has a profound, if hidden, influence on the dayto-day conduct of affairs.
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Let's take, for example, the question of religion.
Few people are as non-religious, even anti-religious, as the great majority of Israelis, but in few countries has organized religion such a stranglehold on life. While Jews in America are the most extreme defenders of the principle of the separation of church and state, this idea is considered heresy in Israel, for a very elementary reason: The Declaration of Independence, promulgated on May 14, 1948, proclaims Israel to be a Jewish state, and this is embedded in the legal structure of Israel. The Law of Return gives every Jew the automatic right to come and settle in Israel. A second law confers Israeli citizenship upon every Jewish immigrant the minute he enters the country, unless he undergoes a specific procedure waiving his right; if he happens to be married to a Christian, this right is not conferred on his spouse, who must acquire citizenship by the normal process of naturalization.
Yet what is a Jew? Who is a Jew? No clear-cut legal definition exists. Nor can there exist any definition but a religious one. Throughout the ages, Jews were a religious community. In fact, the courts of Israel have decided that a person ceases to be a Jew if he adopts another re¬