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nydus/The JewsPublic

This book examines the relationship between the Jewish people and the nations in which they reside. The author argues for the necessity of open discussion and the abandonment of concealment to address the political tensions surrounding this issue.

Page 107 of 263
Table of Contents

CHAPTER V THE SPECIAL CAUSES OF FRICTION

give vent to their feelings, and that while it has had, as one great consequence, the strengthening of the identity, permanence, survival of the Jewish people, it has also had, for another great consequence, their recurrent oppression following on every period of freedom.

There is one last thing to be said, which it is almost impossible to say without the danger of giving pain and therefore of confusing the problem and making the solution more difficult. But it must be said, because, if we shirk it, the problem is confused the more. It is this: While it is undoubtedly true, and will always be true, that a Jew feels himself the superior of his hosts, it is also true that his hosts feel themselves immeasurably superior to the Jew. We can only arrive at a just and peaceable solution of our difficulties by remembering that the Jew, to whom we have given special and alien status in the Commonwealth, is all the while thinking of himself as our superior. But on his side the Jew must recognize, however unpalatable to him the recognition may be, that those among whom he is living and whose inferiority he takes for granted, on their side regard him as something much less than themselves.

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