The Dilemma of Using Religion to Build Jewish Nationalism

Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the Zionist project has faced a profound structural problem related to its attempt to transform the Jewish religion into a homogeneous national identity. This endeavor fundamentally contradicts the religious specificity of Judaism and the historical and cultural criteria that distinguish nationalism as a social and political phenomenon. While nationalism is usually associated with specific elements such as language, territory, shared history, and social customs, we find that Judaism, as a religion, lacks these components if it is to serve as the basis for political nationalism.
Since its inception in the late nineteenth century, Zionism has attempted to create a Jewish nationalism based on religion, something unprecedented in modern national history. Religions, by their very nature, are universal and inclusive, not the exclusive domain of any single ethnic or national group. In this sense, Zionism's attempt to harness religion to forge a "Jewish nationalism" can only be artificial and fundamentally contradictory.
Zionism strategically employed the Jewish religion to build a modern Jewish nation, despite its fundamentally secular roots. It did so by giving religious legitimacy to the national project by using texts such as God's promise to Abraham in the Torah to justify the Jewish right to the "Land of Israel." It employed religious concepts such as "the Diaspora" and "the return to Zion" as national justifications for the establishment of Israel. It also revived Hebrew, which had been a religious/ritual language, to make it a modern national language.
In 2018, the Israeli Knesset passed the "Nation-State Law," which states that "Israel is the national home of the Jewish people" and affirms that the right to self-determination in the state is "the exclusive right of the Jewish people." However, this law poses a fundamental challenge to the notion of "national unity" for Jews, as Jews from around the world come from diverse cultural, linguistic, and ethnic backgrounds, and what actually unites them is religious affiliation or a sense of it, not necessarily national affiliation. Thus, the Nation-State Law will not be able to integrate Jews from different backgrounds into a single national identity based solely on religion. Rather, it perpetuates ethnic and religious discrimination within the state, deepening divisions rather than healing them.
If we assume, for the sake of argument, that religions can form the basis of nationalities, then logic dictates that these nationalities establish their states in the places where their religions and sanctities originated. If Muslims wanted to establish a nationality based on Islam, their natural homeland would be the Arabian Peninsula, where the Islamic religion originated and where the two holy mosques, Mecca and Medina, are located. Similarly, if Christians wanted to form a "Christian nationality," Palestine, the land of Jesus Christ, or the Vatican as the central religious seat, would be the logical location for their state. As for Buddhists, their nationalities have historically been concentrated in South and East Asia, such as Tibet, China, India, and Sri Lanka.
But the Jews, who were gathered in Palestine through organized immigration supported politically and militarily, did not originate from a single territory, nor did they share a single language or a unified popular culture. More than 77 years after the establishment of the State of Israel, a significant proportion of Israeli Jews still retain the languages, customs, traditions, music, and cuisine of the countries from which they came: Russian Jews still speak Russian and practice Russian rituals and cultural heritage; Moroccan Jews retain prominent Moroccan customs; Ethiopian Jews live in relative social and cultural isolation; and Ashkenazi Jews impose their cultural and economic hegemony over other groups, perpetuating internal divisions rather than melting them into a unified nationality.
This deep division underscores Zionism's failure to produce a modern "Israeli nationalism." Nationalism is not simply a human community embracing a single religion; it is an integrated system of shared language, culture, collective memory, and a sense of shared destiny. Therefore, despite possessing state institutions, an army, and a political system, Israel still suffers from a weak national structure, lacking a unified cultural base or a comprehensive national sentiment, which compels it to cling to religion as a coercive unifying factor.
In this context, Israeli historian Shlomo Sand is one of the most prominent figures who has exposed the falsity of this nationalist establishment. In his book, "The Invention of the Jewish People," Sand demonstrates that the so-called "Jewish people" has never been a homogeneous ethnic unit, but rather the product of religious and geographical transformations and the dispersal of the diaspora over many centuries. Sand asserts that most current Jews are descendants of peoples who converted to Judaism at various stages of history, such as the Khazars in Eastern Europe, and are not direct descendants of the ancient Jews of Palestine. Thus, the claim of a "Jewish people" returning to its "historical land" is more of a political myth than a historical fact.
The Israeli state, in light of this understanding, is not based on natural nationalism, but rather on an ideological project that attempts to create a national identity through the tools of statehood, militarism, education, and religion. Therefore, Israel's continued reliance on religion as the basis of identity places it in a state of constant internal contradiction, rendering it an exceptional and unstable case in the global context of modern nation-states.
Ultimately, religion cannot, in and of itself, constitute a political nationalism. Even if it attempted to do so, it would not succeed in creating a stable nation-state unless it was linked to its sacred site and grew around it throughout history, as has been the case with other religious nationalisms. In the case of Israel, it remains an entity that unites the diaspora on a religious basis, without successfully fusing it into a unified nationalism. This perpetuates its fragility and renders its legitimacy a constant subject of question.

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Despite possessing state institutions, an army, and a political system, Israel still suffers from a weak national structure. It lacks a unified cultural base or a comprehensive national sentiment, which forces it to cling to religion as a coercive unifying factor.