Is one's homeland the place where a person evolves into life, or is that a choice made in adulthood, as one chooses a fateful name? Perhaps it is also your memory, Father Raven,that plays tricks on me, and the land that was given to my mind's eye is not all the homeland where our ancestors lived. Am I entitled to call my island "home," even though I do not live in it permanently? Even though from sun cycle to sun cycle it becomes more of a dream? I am flooded with another person's nostalgia, captive to the visions that insist on visiting me.

A fictitious homeland. A longed-for land that never was.
If land is not property, then anywhere may be considered a homeland, and the Jewish tribe may therefore adopt the island even without a deed of ownership. The Jew is free to settle in whichever land he desires. Why, then does he insist on drawing borders for himself, when he has already managed to obtain a measure of power that I will never achieve? Perhaps that is the Jewish tribe's virtue: they have turned their foreignness into a javelin.

Nava Semel