traders thought of themselves as Mon and felt strongly about not being of Thai descent. The main question for the future of Jews in Russia is not whether Jews will become farmers (as some tsars and Communists had hoped). In the age of universal Mercurianism (the Jewish Age), the main question is whether the Russians will learn how to become Jews. 218 The other revolutionary option, “Chava’s choice,” has proven much more successful. In the most general sense, Zionism prevailed over Communism because nationalism everywhere prevailed over socialism. Tribalism is a universal human condition, and the family is the most fundamental and conservative of all human institutions (as well as the source of most religious and political rhetoric). All human cultures are organized around the regulation of reproduction, and reproduction—whatever the regulatory regime—requires a preference for some partners over others and the favoring of one’s own children over those of others. All radical attempts to remake humankind are ultimately assaults on the family, and all of them either fail or dissimulate. For most humans most of the time, the pursuit of happiness involves pursuing the opposite sex, being fruitful, and raising children, all of which activities are forms of discrimination and inexhaustible springs of tribalism. No vision of justice-as- equality can accommodate the human family however constituted, and no human existence involving men, women, and children can abide the abolition of the distinction between kin and nonkin. Christianity, which urged human beings to love other people’s children as much as their own, managed to survive by making marriage (a pledge of exclusive loyalty to one person) a religious sacrament analogous to the central institution of all tribal societies. Communism, which was Christianity’s foolish, literal-minded younger brother, withered away after the first generation’s idealism because it failed to incorporate the family and thus proved unable to reproduce itself. In the end, it was nationalism that triumphed decisively over both because it updated the traditional (genealogical) brand of immortality by introducing the tribal way of being modern and the modern way of being tribal. Nationalism needs no doctrine because it seems so natural. Whatever Chava’s grandchildren think of her idealism and sacrifice, they have no trouble understanding her motives. Even the most disenchanted of Israelis would never ask Chava the bitterly uncomprehending questions that haunted Hodl at the end of her life: “Did you really believe that ? How could you?” Zionism prevailed over Communism because it delivered on its (relatively realistic) promises. The language of God has become a viable vernacular; a part