Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

October 6, 2025

Reviving an Old Term Can Help Jews Understand the Spiritual Bonds That Tie Them to One Another

The Congregation of Israel.

What exactly is it that holds the Jews—scattered over the four corners of the earth, citizens of different countries, with a vast spectrum of religious beliefs, and often deeply divided against one another—together as a single group? That question has itself been a contested one for Jews at least since the dawn of modernity, even as sometimes-hostile Gentiles want to force the Jews into the pigeonholes of “nation,” “religion,” or “ethnicity”—or deny their collective bonds altogether.

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