"So
that even if to-day, through some miraculous chain of events, Palestine were to
be placed at the unconditional disposal of the Jews, and they could return to
the “Land of their Fathers” and found an independent state there: nothing,
nothing at all, would be gained as long as the causes have not disappeared
which once brought about the downfall of the state and the destruction of the
Temple, yea which made that downfall unavoidably necessary for the preservation
of Judaism and thereby Jewry. A Jewish National body with Jewish spirit would
be, and remain, dead: a Jewish State, that does not, in making the laws of the
Torah, a reality, present a picture of the realisation of the eternal laws of
justice and love of one’s neighbor based on the sound foundation of purity of
morals, would be a still-born creation, and irretrievably doomed to
dissolution, even as it was thousands of years ago. But this is just by way of
parentheses!"

R’ Mendel Hirsch, The
Pentateuch, Haftoroth (Gateshead: Judaica Press, 1989), pp. 592-3. R’ Mendel
Hirsch (1833–1900)
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