We are often so focused on Israel’s success and challenges, domestic and foreign, that we neglect to ask, “Do the Jews really need a state, and why?” We’ll look at writers as diverse as Jean Jacques Rousseau, George Elliot, Golda Meir, and John Lennon to uncover one of Israel’s central messages to humankind, a claim about the importance of roots and the sanctity of distinctiveness. That message, we’ll see, might just allow the Jewish people to recover a prophetic role in the world.