I am impelled to add yet another essential point. The survival of our Jewish people, and the impact that this matter has upon every Jewish individual, is not something that has as yet to be investigated and experimented with. The Jewish people is one of the oldest in the world, and in its long history as a nation it has gone through various conditions and circumstances, mostly very unfavorable, as mentioned above. If one wishes to know the secret of Jewish survival under circumstances that have obliterated larger and stronger nations, one has but to apply the same scientific method as in other cases.
In other words, it is necessary to find the common factor, or factors, in all the various periods of Jewish history, which would then have to be taken as the basis of Jewish survival. Should two or three different factors be found, there would be a question of whether all of them were indispensable to survival, or perhaps only one or two would also have been sufficient. But if only one common factor is found, then there can be no doubt that this is the only basis of the survival. This, as mentioned above, is the scientific approach, and is not a matter of belief or faith. Moreover, as in all fields of science, it does not matter whether one does or does not understand the scientific findings. Indeed, in most exact sciences the facts and actual phenomenon are first ascertained, and then a scientific explanation is sought.
Now, going back to the long history of our Jewish people over a period of some 3500 years, it will be seen that there has been only one factor that has preserved Jewish identity and survival throughout the various periods of our history. This factor was not language, nor country, nor anything else which is often associated with nationhood and nationalism, for in all these things there have been radical changes from one period to another, as anybody familiar with Jewish history knows.
