In reading Avrum Burg's book, I can't help but get a story torn from current events out of my mind-the terror attacks in Mumbai against the Chabad center there. Chabad is an outreach educational arm of the Lubavitcher hassidic movement, which is represented both in NY (a few blocks from me in Brooklyn) and in Israel, though they believe that Israel will not gain its full contemporary --statelike, not biblical--legitimacy until the messiah arrives.
And, while the Chabad rabbi and his wife got buried with state honors in ISrael (as I believe they should have since they appear to have been targeted as Jews) another victim's family refused to be buried with any symbols of the state, according to Israeli news reports.

It is incredible that today there are numerous Jews living in Israel and taking money from the state for social welfare, using state-laid electrical grids and water, etc., but who don't believe in the rule of law of a state, rather they await a biblical kingdom. From the hassidim who refuse a state symbol at a burial to the outlaw settlers who have been running rampant in Hebron, destroying Palestinian property and attacking Palestinians, there are Israelis on the fringe who simply don't accept or want a modern Jewish state.

What Burg is arguing is that for there to be a modern Jewish state, we must make compromises--and some of those compromises are compromises with our fears, our remembrances of the past, our memories even--and we, Jews in Israel and in the U.S. -- must take a leap of faith that in fact coincides with the beliefs that most Jews hold dear regarding an enlightened human existence. This shouldn't be so controversial--and we shouldn't have to wait for the messiah to make it so....