THE JEWISH NATION

What binds the Jews together is not a creed but a history: a strong sense of a common origin, a shared past and a shared destiny. Even if Ashkenazim acknowledge a history set in Poland and Germany while Sephardim together look to a past set in Spain and Portugal, Ashkenazim and Sephardim look beyond to a more ancient shared experience that makes them both part of a single people. Scattered though this people is across the continents of the world, there is still a strong feeling of unity, which has been strengthened by the ‘ingathering of exiles’ in the State of Israel.

A comparison between Judaism and Christianity on this point highlights the difference. Christianity is a faith, and the story of Christianity is the story of that faith spreading from modest beginnings in the Middle East through the efforts of missionaries to illumine the hearts of many different peoples around the world, and all the Christian believers in the different countries together constitute the great faith community that is the Christian Church. The Jews are a people, and their story tells how, from equally modest beginnings in the Middle East, the people grew, mainly through natural increase, and became spread throughout the world by voluntary or imposed migration.