The Jewish Question?

How Jewish is Israel? by Tony Karon in today's Ha'aretz.

If we concede A.B. Yehoshua's claim that Israel is the source of Jewish identity in today's world, we reduce Jewish identity to a conversation between anti-Semitism and a blood-and-soil nationalism that is Jewish only in the sense that anti-Semites use the term i.e., racial. But if, instead, we define "Jewish" on the basis of the universal ethical challenges at the core of Judaism, then not only is the Diaspora an essential condition of Jewishness, but Israel's own claim to a Jewish identity is open to question.

The idea that the modern State of Israel expresses some ageless desire among Jews across the Diaspora to live in a Jewish nation state is wishful thinking. Before the Holocaust, Zionism had been a minority tendency among Western Jews, and scarcely existed among those living in the Muslim world. And a half century after Israel's emergence, most of us choose freely to live, as Jews have for centuries, among the nations. That choice is becoming increasingly popular among Israeli Jews, too: 750,000 at last count - hardly surprising in an age of accelerated globalization that feeds dozens of diasporas and scorns national boundaries.

For a post on AB Yehoshua see here.