In the Wonderful (Probably, Possibly, Perhaps not) World of AI – BTW (By The Way), this is being written by me, Julian Anthony Resnick, and not by a Bot imitating me – the questions on the table today could be answered by asking a computer the question and allowing me to continue fading away into insignificance as a has been. As someone who believes that human intelligence is a crucial part of continuing to grapple with the important questions we face as human beings. 

So, let’s play a game. I ‘asked’ five significant Jews, all long gone, a question: Do the Jewish People need a physical homeland? Here are short excerpts from their answers. Try and work out for yourselves who these Dead Jews are. See it as your Cape Jewish Chronicle Pub Quiz for today. We will publish the answers at a later stage. 

Thinker 1: “To answer your question directly: no, I do not believe that the establishment of a physical homeland would, in any spiritual or essential sense, ‘improve’ the Jewish people. 

Let us examine this matter with the calm light of reason. I had occasion to reflect upon the history of the ancient Hebrew nation. The Hebrew state was indeed a prosperous society for a time, governed by just laws revealed through Moses. Yet, we must understand that the ancient Hebrew nation was not chosen by God before others because of its superior intellect, peace of mind, or some unique spiritual essence. Rather, their ‘election’ was a matter of temporary fortune – specifically, the social order and the fortunate political circumstances by which they came to establish and maintain a physical state for so many years. 

They are not bound to any soil, nation, or tribe. To believe that a specific group of people possesses a monopoly on God’s favour, or that their human flourishing depends upon a particular piece of earth, is to fall prey to the imaginings of the prophets rather than the clarity of reason. 

In an ideal commonwealth, there should be no distinction between Jew and Gentile, for such divisions are artificial and deluded. Human flourishing does not come from a physical homeland or a particularist state, but from a stable, reasonable political order that guarantees the freedom to think and to speak. True salvation and freedom are found when we elevate ourselves above tribal and sectarian divisions to embrace the universal laws of human nature.”  

Thinker 2: “For many years, I have wrestled deeply with what it means to be a nation and what the Jewish people truly require for their preservation and flourishing. 

If by a ‘physical homeland’ you mean a politically sovereign nation-state with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power, then my answer is no; I do not believe we need such an entity.  

However, if you mean a physical cultural and intellectual sanctuary – a safe haven – then yes, I believe such a place is of vital importance. My Zionism is ethical and cultural, not political-nationalist. 

I came to support the Zionist project for very specific, human reasons: 

First, there is a clear humanitarian necessity. When antisemitic violence erupts, persecuted Jews, particularly our brethren from Eastern Europe, must have a safe place to flee. 

Second, we require a spiritual and intellectual centre to serve as an antidote to the ‘spiritual sickness’ of assimilation in Europe. In places like Germany, I saw Jews internalising the very prejudices of their oppressors, losing their self-respect and their identity. A central outpost in Palestine allows Jews to do what they do best: to think, discover, and innovate alongside one another in an atmosphere that holds intellectual aspiration in the highest esteem. 

But this sanctuary must not be established at the expense of those who already inhabit the land. The first and most important necessity is the creation of a modus vivendi – a way of living peaceably side-by-side – with the Arab people through organised co-operation and shared governance. 

Ultimately, Palestine can never absorb the majority of the Jewish people, but it can succeed as a moral, cultural, and intellectual centre. Our survival as a people does not depend on a state, but on our shared commitment to humanity, intellect, and justice.” 

Thinker 3: “If you had asked me this in my youth, when my peers and I were first beginning to speak the modern languages of politics – of socialism, of Zionism, of citizenship – I might have given you a different answer. But from where I sit now, having spent these years listening to the hidden, dissenting currents of human desire, I find myself looking at this question of a ‘home’ with a certain analytical skepticism. 

To understand the longing for a Jewish state, we must first look at what we are trying to cure. The Jews of Europe – particularly of my parents’ generation – have lived a life of enforced, precarious cosmopolitanism, always potentially nomadic, living on sufferance in foreign states. We have been the ‘resident aliens’ of Europe, perpetually traumatised by a sociability in which we are expected to assimilate, yet are forever marked as the unassimilable outsider.  

A physical state is a narrative of perfect safety, a fantasy of a secure ‘home’ where conflict will cease and identity will finally become stable. I must ask: is such a consensus ever real, or is it a spurious form of defence? We humans are defensive creatures. We build thick walls – both in our minds and in our politics – to protect ourselves from the terrifying fluidity of memory, history, and the other. 

If the Jewish people were to establish a physical state, I worry we would merely be translating our internal conflicts into geographical borders. A state requires a new kind of acculturation, a new authority, and therefore, inevitably, new forms of repression and exclusion. Would this new state not create its own dissenting minorities? Would it not demand a conformity that effaces the very thing that has made the Jewish mind so distinct – our status as the permanent, critical outsiders, the ‘outlaws’ who do not blindly submit to the local regime? 

My own ‘inner identity’ as a Jew is not bound to a piece of earth; it is bound to a shared psychological structure, a familiarity with precariousness, and a refusal to be easily pacified. 

A physical state may offer a temporary, political satisfaction, but it cannot cure the modern grief of displacement. I suspect that even in a land of our own, we would find that the true ‘home’ we are searching for is not a territory, but a capacity to tolerate our own inner conflicts without turning them into new dogmas. 

Perhaps the question reveals our deepest fear: can we survive our losses and our historical precarity without becoming the very type of authoritative, boundary-enforcing masters who once excluded us?” 

Thinker 4: “To speak of a physical homeland is to speak of a vessel, and like any vessel, its true value lies in what it is made to hold. 

First, I knew that the ultimate “homeland” of the Jew is the Torah itself. The Torah is our water. Without it, even if we sit upon the most secure soil in the world, we are like fish gasping on dry land. The Jewish people cannot be sustained merely by borders; our true existence is bound to the divine words which are our life and the length of our days. 

Yet, do not mistake this for a rejection of the soil of Eretz Yisrael. The land is not merely a political sanctuary; it is the stage upon which the Torah is meant to be lived, and its dust is holy.  

So, do we need a physical homeland? Yes. We need it because the commandments of the Torah are designed to sanctify a real, physical society – how we treat our neighbours, how we harvest our fields, and how we govern ourselves with justice. But the land is the body, and the Torah is the soul. A body without a soul is a corpse; a soul without a body has no dwelling in this world. We must pursue the land, but only if we fill it with the waters of Torah.” 

Thinker 5: “With the gravity that the years and the weight of my office have bestowed upon me, I must answer you with an unequivocal: Yes. The Jewish people do not merely require a physical homeland as a matter of political convenience; they require it as an absolute, existential necessity. 

We are a historical group of people who clearly belong together, held together by a common foe. Wherever we go, our very success, our very presence, stirs the sleeping beast of antisemitism.  

We cannot remain in this invisible ghetto, frozen in a state of perpetual psychological dislocation, begging for tolerance from hosts who look upon our noses, our beards, and our very gait with disdain.  

My journey to this realisation was not born solely of the external horrors of the pogroms, but of a deep, internal quest for Jewish dignity and authenticity. We must have a space where we can ‘bow without servility and stand upright without defiance’.  

We need a homeland that is not merely a refuge from physical destruction, but a theatre for the realisation of our highest human ideals.  

We must build this physical home, not as a theological domain run by the clergy – for we shall keep our rabbis in their temples just as we keep our soldiers in their barracks – but as a modern, legally assured haven. Without a land of our own, we are but a ghost among the nations, an anomaly of history. With it, we shall finally step into the light of the modern world as a proud, self-determining, and authentic people.” 

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