Israel Today brings you an exclusive interview with Shmuel Trigano, one of the Jewish world’s most profound thinkers, to shed light on these and other existential questions here in Part 2 of the series (see Part 1).

In your new book, The Jewish State: Beyond Normality, you speak a lot about “Eternal Israel” (1 Samuel 15:29). What does it mean for you?

Trigano: “Eternal Israel refers to the “people of Israel” which I distinguish as a form of Jewish collective from the “Israeli nation.” By “eternal Israel, I am naming a symbol of a legitimacy that flows from history. This is an objective reality whether or not one is a believer in God or the Bible. I am differentiating between them because in the “people of Israel” you have Jews from other nationalities, and in the Israeli nation you have non-Jewish citizens. Zionism’s plan, besides, was to normalize the Jews, to dissociate them from this biblical heritage in order to become “like...