Well, you're a nation de jure if you say you're one and everyone else says you're one, no? The world is full of invented nations. Relatedly, as Napoleon (I think) once said, "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy."
--- Colin Brace <cb at lim.nl> wrote:
> Fascinating piece, Johanna; thanks for posting it.
> It begs the
> question though: if the original Zionists didn't
> define themselves in
> religious terms, by their religions practices, what
> then formed the
> ideological basis for their project? How else could
> one define a Jew
> except by religion? They had no common language at
> the time, nor a
> distinctive racial identity, not even a over-arching
> culture (cf, the
> synagogues in 17th century Amsterdam; separate ones
> for Sephardic and
> Ashenazi Jews) And these avowed "atheists"
> established a nation whose
> citizenship is defined by one's mother having been
> "Jewish"?
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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