In the short run, the identity of victim does, indeed, pay off. Sholem Aleichem recognized this in his story "Lucky Me, I Am an Orphan." Anyone who i… - Shulamith Hareven

At some point we will have to decide whether Hebrew in the next thirty or three hundred years will serve merely as a channel of immediate and basic communication, as a language at the top of a pyramid, without any pyramid beneath it, a claustrophobic language not much different from Esperanto, or whether it will embody an entire non-Western culture that we know is worth preserving. Since language shapes us more than we shape it, this decision will be essentially about our own identity. It seems more and more certain that this will be a matter of a conscious decision.

Do you know, in the month before the Jewish Terror Groups were arrested and indicted, I printed an article, "Messiah or Knesset [Parliament]," that predicted the existence of such organizations? Shulamit Aloni read it aloud at the Knesset. "If a writer could predict this," she asked, "why couldn't the authorities?" Anyway, such is the present dilemma in this country-Messiah or Knesset? The Knesset does not-cannot-prevent the coming of the Messiah, if and when this were to come to pass, but the messianic principle now rampant in some Israeli circles absolutely negates the Knesset: that is to say, the law, democracy, and ultimately our statehood. In this I consider myself a follower of the Sages who have taught that even the divine voice does not take precedence over the ruling of a duly-appointed high court. The supremacy of the law is surely one of the greatest tenets of Judaism.

Ido chatters gaily as a sparrow.