What Truly United the Jewish People After 2,000 Years of Exile

Let us look at the many Jewish communities that gathered in the Land of Israel after two thousand years of exile, and we will discover that there was virtually no cultural similarity by which they could be identified as one people.

Outwardly, they looked different from one another in facial features and skin color. They arrived speaking different languages, with different accents and modes of expression. Their foods were entirely different. Their cultures varied greatly, as did their songs, their manners, and their social norms. What one community considered a source of pride, another might see as disrespectful or even shameful. Their clothing differed widely in style and color. In every visible way, they appeared unrelated.

A non Jew observing this gathering of exiles would not have been able to distinguish who among them was Jewish and who was not. The cultural distance was simply too great, almost like the distance between heaven and earth.

What United Such Different People?

What, then, caused communities so radically different from one another to unite in one land? What remained in common after two thousand years of exile, with communities scattered across continents? What did a Jew from Russia share with a Jew from Africa? What connected a Jew from France with a Jew from the Arab world? What linked a Jew from America with a Jew from Asia?

How could people so different climb into one boat together and feel such deep responsibility and shared destiny toward brothers they had never met?

The answer is only, the holy Torah. There is no other explanation, nor could there ever be.

The Torah as the Only Common Denominator

The Torah is the single element shared by all Jewish communities across the world. The same Written Torah and the same Oral Torah. The same tradition of Mishnah, Talmud, and halachah. The same mitzvot, the same tefillin, the same tzitzit. The same Shabbat, the same sukkah, the same four species, the same Passover Seder.

One God united countless Jews who sanctified His Name with the declaration, “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.” This shared purpose is the reason we sit in the Land of Israel. Without the Torah, the Jewish people would have lost not only their land, but their peoplehood, their very identity.

Faith in the Torah and loyalty to it was the sole common denominator among all Jewish communities. It alone reunited our people after thousands of years of exile.

Why We Still Know Who We Are

The only reason you and I know that we are Jewish today, after thousands of years, is because our ancestors faithfully preserved the Torah. Behind each one of us stands a long chain of Torah observant Jews. Had even one link in that chain abandoned Torah observance, the entire lineage would have collapsed.

Every Jew who assimilated or converted out over the generations ensured that all of his descendants would live today as non Jews, unaware that their ancestors were once Jewish.

This means that every one of us is the descendant of an extraordinary chain of Jews who guarded Torah and mitzvot with devotion. We owe immense gratitude to the dozens of generations before us. Without even one of them, we would not know today that we are Jewish. From them we must learn to continue this legacy and not sever ourselves from the living root that sustains our people.

Observe that antisemites do not distinguish between Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews, between light skinned and dark skinned Jews. This is no coincidence. Even they sense that the bond uniting us runs deeper than appearance or culture. It lies at our root. We are the chosen people, distinct from every other nation in the world.

Shared Responsibility and a Shared Destiny

May we too succeed in awakening those who are asleep, reminding them of the common ground upon which we all stand. We feel a deep obligation to help every Jewish man and woman, to guide our distant brothers back home, back to the Judaism of our ancestors.

Our mission is a shared one. We must never forget that we are all in the same boat and bound by a single destiny, as our sages taught: “It does not say each man for his brother, but each man for the sin of his brother, teaching that all of Israel are responsible for one another” (Sanhedrin 27b).

May it be God’s will that we remember our spiritual role, and that our entire people return together to uphold the Torah faithfully, as one.