The Corruption of Culture and Education by the Nation State: The Case of Liberal Jews' Discourse on Jewish Continuity

Allow me to conclude my remarks on the state and its probable role in the future with the assertion that, while the state is a human creation, human beings are the creation of God.¹

Nationalism is a very distinctive species of patriotism … which in fact prevails in the modern world, and nowhere else. Nationalism is a species of patriotism distinguished by a few very important features: the units which this kind of patriotism, namely nationalism, favors with its loyalty, are culturally homogeneous, based on a culture striving to be a high [literate] culture; they are large enough to sustain the hope of supporting the educational system which can keep a literate culture going; they are poorly endowed with rigid internal subgroupings; their populations are anonymous, fluid and mobile, and they are unmediated; the individual belongs to them directly, in virtue of his cultural style, and not in virtue of membership in nested sub-groups. Homogeneity, literacy, anonymity are the key traits.²