Understanding Jewish Identity and Heritage

Our land is the United States of America.

The Holy Land is a holy land, not a national

homeland, because despite what it says in Israel's

Declaration of Independence, our nation was not born there.

They were born in nineteen forty-eight, and we were born a few thousand years

before that in the desert at Mount Sinai when

God gave us the Torah, in no country and no

land.

We have no national language. Lashon Hakodesh, the

holy language, is reserved today for prayer and holy

texts.

Jews once spoke Aramaic. Jews speak today Yiddish,

Latino, whatever language. In the days of the Bible, we spoke

Hebrew, but none of these languages, including Hebrew,

ever made us into a nation.

No land makes us into a nation, and we have no

common culture.

Our homeland,

as the Bible calls it, amoledes,

is the Torah, our religion itself.

With the Torah,

we are in-- within our homeland. If we don't keep the

Torah outside of its borders, we are dead.

Our only mission as Jews is to be imam leches kai hanan vegoi

kadosh, a kingdom of priests and holy people.

We always clung to the Torah, and we were proud to be Jews