The nationalism I grew up with is a principled standpoint that regards the world as governed best when nations are able to chart their own independent course, cultivating their own traditions and pursuing their own interests without interference. This is opposed to imperialism, which seeks to bring peace and prosperity to the world by uniting mankind, as much as possible, under a single political regime.

Either you support, in principle, the ideal of an international government or regime that imposes its will on subject nations when its officials regard this as necessary; or you believe that nations should be free to set their own course in the absence of such an international government or regime.

Suffice it to say that the God of Israel loves those who disobey for the sake of what is right, and is capable of being pleased when a man has used his freedom to wrestle with him and to prevail, so long as the path on behalf of which he struggles ultimately proves to be the right one in God’s eyes.

The purpose of the biblical editors, in gathering together such diverse and often sharply conflicting texts, was not to construct a unitary work with an unequivocal message. It was rather to assemble a work capable of capturing and reflecting a given tradition of inquiry so readers could strive to understand the various perspectives embraced by this tradition, and in so doing build up an understanding of their own.

If the relationship between man and God were supposed to consist of man’s acceptance of a paragraph of propositions that “raises among ourselves no other questions,” there would be no sense at all in God’s promising that if man inquires and seeks, he will be told “great things” that had until now been hidden.

The fact is that man’s mind is limited, and his understanding only partial. The biblical narrative makes this point unequivocally with respect to Moses, in reporting that he could not see God’s face, but only his back. And it was no less true of the other prophets of Israel, who saw things in different ways because each of them was limited in his understanding, and to his own point of vantage.

Proverbs is in many respects a work on ethics, presenting arguments concerning the manner in which moral precepts relate to life and the good; Job investigates the reasons good individuals (and, by implication, good nations) should suffer catastrophe; Esther seeks an account of how God’s will works in political circumstances in which one sees nothing but the decisions and deeds of human actors; and so forth.

Thus, the Jewish empowerment entailed in creating a Jewish state was not merely a matter of guaranteeing external, physical security of the Jews. Ultimately, its aim is to provide an internal security of the soul, which is the indispensable precondition for the emergence of a noble, uniquely Jewish character and civilization.