The birth of a nation.
The most well-known stories of the Torah take place in Egypt. 400 years of slavery, Moses and the burning bush, ten plagues, and at long last, the splitting of the Red Sea.
After this miraculous sequence of events, they begin their journey to Mount Sinai to receive the Jewish constitution, the Torah, and become "the chosen nation". The question is, weren't they already a nation? Who were slaves in Egypt if not for the Jews? So what is the big deal about becoming a nation at Sinai?
When we talk about a nation, a unit of individuals, they can be associated by a shared circumstance, connected by a shared land, and they can even be linked by a shared set of values. In any one of these instances, once you remove the connector, the structure falls apart. If they think differently, believe differently, live differently, the unit is no longer.
Jewish Nation 2.0 was different. The connection went deeper than any of that. A soul-level connection. Chosen by Hashem. Now it was a simple reality, untethered to any conditions or contingencies. Of course, there are numerous Mitzvahs, myriads of Talmudic debates, plethoras of opinions and customs, but that's what we do, what we think, not who we are. To borrow from the pledge of allegiance, one Nation under God, indivisible.
ב"ה