Jews and virtuality seem to go together quite well. It may well be that the historic injunction against graven images gave rise to vivid imaginations. Whatever, Jews have traditionally been quite adept at envisioning the future, at seeing what isn't yet there.

And of course one possible opposite has also been the case. Throughout history anti-Semites have been incredibly successful at seeing  the Jew as something that he wasn't. Paul Lendvai, in his 1971 book, Anti-Semitism Without Jews: Communist Eastern Europe, even documented what should probably be best referred to as Virtual anti-Semitism: after Jews had totally left most of the Eastern European countries, anti-Semitism there continued to flourish, proving that you don't need Jews in order to have anti-Semitism. But of course though the source may have been virtual, the anti-Semitism itself was very real.

Go to: Virtual Zionism?