This
paper explains that, as a nation, Israel originally was a nomadic people who have been repeatedly dispersed and oppressed;
after the horror of the Holocaust in the twentieth century, some Jews founded a homeland in the Land of Israel, the former center of their ancestors' faith. The author points out that Judaism, like all modern religions, has struggled to meet the challenge of secularization, the idealization of science, rationalism, industrialization and materialism. This
paper includes a verbatim report of an interview with an older Jewish woman to understand more clearly what it is like to be Jewish and the structure of her beliefs.