ABSTRACT
This chapter would examine important questions regarding the status of the Israeli Homeland through the lenses of one of its most important intellectuals, Menachem Brinker. Would the homeland have a secular character in which the part of the religious in the affairs of state would be limited, as in the Haskalah slogan: “Be religious at home and an Israeli citizen outside”? Or would the Jewish “added value” determine everything and create an equation between nationality and religion, between the earthly homeland and theological or even messianic conceptions? These debates on the character of the future moledet were already present in the thinking of Ahad Ha-Am, Berdichevsky, Brenner and many other writers and poets of the culture of the Hebrew revival cannot be ignored. The philosopher, literary critic and intellectual Menahem Brinker has undertaken their up-to-date elucidation.
