srael. The nationalists expect the Jewish nation
to awaken from a sleep of eighteen hundred years to new greatness in its
ancient home, not as a religious, but as a political body, and in
renouncing all allegiance to the priestly mission of Israel and its
ancestral faith they are as remote from genuine Orthodoxy as from Reform
Judaism. They assert that the soul of the Jewish people requires a
national body rooted in its ancient soil in order that it may fulfill its
appointed task among the nations; they even go so far as to declare all
the achievements brought about by the assimilation of the culture of the
surrounding nations to be a deterioration of the genuine character of the
Jewish nation. The fact is that, as in nature there is nowhere a
resurrection of the dead but an ever renewed regeneration of life, so is
the history of the Jew and of Judaism a continuous process of regeneration
manifested at every great turning-point of history, when the ideas and
cultural elements of a new civilization exert their powerful influence on
life and thought. There never was, nor will be an exclusively Jewish
culture. It is the wondrous power of assimilation of the Jew which ever
created and fashioned his culture anew. That which constitutes the
peculiarity of the Jew and his life force is his religion fostered through
the ages, preserved amidst the most antagonistic influences and hostile
environments, and ever rejuvenated by its unique universalistic spirit
when revived by contact with kindred movements. To maintain and propagate
this, his religion in all lands and amidst all civilizations, is the task
assigned to him by Providence, until God's Kingdom has been established
all over the globe.

Chapter LV. Israel and the Heathen Nations

1. As there is but one Creator and Ruler of the universe, so there is
before Him but one humanity. All the nations are under His guidance, while
Israel, His chosen people, points to the kingdom of God which is to
embrace them all. Israel was called the "first-born son" of God(1247) at
the very moment of his election, implying that all the sons of men are His
children. All of them are links in the divine plan of salvation. In the
same sense God spoke through Isaiah: "Blessed be Egypt, My people, and
Assyria the work of My hands, and Israel Mine inheritance."(1248) As the
first page of Scripture assigns a common origin to them all in the first
man, so, the prophets tell us, at the end of ti