We're just imagining it . . . or are we?

Dr. Hermann alluded to the idea of the nation as an imagined community in his presentation to our class last week. This concept is something that I've been kind of obsessed with since I initially came across it, and it's also something that the readings this week caused me to revisit. Basically, the idea of the imagined community - Benedict Anderson's term - is that nations are not inherent communities, and they are imagined because they are not based on any sort of concrete interactions. Okay. I'm going to link to wikipedia right now. I know this is not particularly scholarly, but it gives a good run-down of the concept: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagined_communities

All in all, I buy this argument. It makes sense to me. And yet, we invoke this idea of the nation as home, the nation as some sort of *real* community all the time. I even think of it when I go home to Maine for a visit; I feel that I am part of a real community. And yet, I don't know most people in that community based on state borders. The community is imagined. Ali Qleibo also draws on the idea of the nation - or at least, location - a some sort of real, concrete community. He writes, "They do not have to know me personally, nor do I need to know them on a personal level. The warm feeling of belonging as registered by the little twinkle in the eyes, the polite lifting of the hand in salute, the warm evening greeting, masa' al-kheir, still dispel the deepest feeling of loneliness from my heart."

So, I guess my question about this reading would be . . . Is this his imagination? Is this actually something about Jerusalem that offers this sense of community, of belonging? Or, rather, is it simply that it an upbringing, a way of life that causes this sense of community? For example, if he grew up there, could Tulsa, Oklahoma be Jerusalem? Is this more about believing and/or imagining that Jerusalem (or Palestine, or Israel) is a community than it is about nations/states actually *being* communities?