[Our homeland, the text]

During their long Diaspora, the Jewish people carried the text of the Torah, and the commentaries on it, on their backs. It was not hard for them to make the crossing from this house to the universal European culture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Since then, however, nationalist and racist forces have impeded and partly destroyed this process. And with its nationalism, the state of Israel is itself smothering the perpetuation of Jewish culture, which can only prosper as a guest in a hospitable world.