ABSTRACT
In a lecture in 1969, Gershom Scholem confessed he had not previously spoken on the relationships between Israel and the Diaspora, partly because of the difficulty of saying anything new, and partly because of his own contradictory thoughts about it. Indeed, the relationships, troubled, complicated, and historically unique, is more likely to raise questions, which can be presented with clarity, than to lead to clear or definitive answers. Can there be a dialectical process between a community that has miraculously survived and remains, with its complicated religious, ethnic, and national characteristics, scattered through the world, and a part of that community that now comprises the majority of the population in a sovereign state?
