8One of the most prominent phenomena in contemporary history is the endurance of the Jewish people and the existence of the State of Israel. Fewer peoples have been persecuted as the Jewish people have. Only a generation ago, when the same people who gave us Goethe, Beethoven, and the great theologians of the Reformation, also sought the total annihilation of the Jewish people by massacring six million European Jews. Although Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Muslims, inquisitors, Russian pogroms, and Nazi Germany sought the destruction of the people of Israel, it continues to exist. What makes the people of Israel different?