But the story of the Exodus was not history to me in the sense that the story of the American Revolution was.

It was more like a glorious myth, a belief in which had the effect of cutting me off from the actual world, by linking me with a world of phantoms.
Those moments of exaltation which the contemplation of the Biblical past afforded us, allowing us to call ourselves the children of princes, served but to tinge with a more poignant sense of disinheritance the long humdrum stretches of our life.

In very truth we were a people without a country.

Surrounded by mocking foes and detractors, it was difficult for me to realize the persons of my people's heroes or the events in which they moved.

Except in moments of abstraction from the world around me, I scarcely understood that Jerusalem was an actual spot on the earth, where once the Kings of the Bible, real people, like my neighbors in Polotzk, ruled in puissant majesty.