"It had to do with Jewish destiny. Collectively the Jewish people had looked in the mirror and said, We are are still Jews. And by that they meant more than a private declaration of faith, "religion" in the conventional sense of the word. It meant that they felt part of a people, involved in its fate, implicated in its destiny, caught up in its tragedy, exhilarated by its survival. I had felt it. So had every other Jew I knew."
The amazing thing that strikes me as I read this book is its relevance right now. And it's relevance 50 years before it was written, 200 years before that. It seems we are part of a giant meta narrative that retells the same story over and over. It's devastating that we live through this war again and again, and yet truth be told, when you look at the story backwards, from the end, we have always survived. We learn, we change, we adapt, but we remain Jews, we hold our brothers and sisters near, and our principles dear.
150 C.E. A Biblical Israelite carved the Star of David, the symbol of the Jewish people, in stone, thereby sealing the collective identity of the Jewish people to the land of Israel.
