While the Hebrew Bible’s vision of the Jews’ ideal future involves them settled securely in the Land of Israel, Joshua Berman notes that the text nowhere describes the land itself as “holy.” Berman argues that having a distinct territory gives a people a sense of “belonging and being part of a family and part of a culture,” one especially pronounced when people have the shared experience of fighting, and even losing their loved ones, in defense of their homeland. Drawing on both the Tanakh and contemporary Israeli society, he explains why this is so.
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