Today there are two seemingly mutually exclusive notions of what 'the Jews' are: either a religion or a nation/ethnicity. The widespread conception is that the Jews were formerly either a religious community in exile or a nation based on Jewish ethnicity. The latter position is commonly known as 'Zionism,' and all articulations of a political theory of Zionism are taken to be variations of that view.
Daniel Boyarin lays out the problematic aspects of this binary opposition and offers the outlines of a different—and very old—answer to the question of the identity of a diaspora nation. He aims to drive a wedge between the 'nation' and the 'state,' only very recently conjoined, and recover a robust sense of nationalism that does not involve sovereignty.
Daniel Boyarin lays out the problematic aspects of this binary opposition and offers the outlines of a different—and very old—answer to the question of the identity of a diaspora nation. He aims to drive a wedge between the 'nation' and the 'state,' only very recently conjoined, and recover a robust sense of nationalism that does not involve sovereignty.