T 1290.pdf - Pondicherry University DSpace Portal

einforced and enhanced this primordial self-consciousness andonly the integration into the modern gentile world which beganin the late Eighteenth century has presented Jews with aslgnlficant challenge to the assumptlon that they are meant toremaln a "people apart".The Jews had adopted a nation, which due to a puritanlegacy, deriving from the Hebrew Bible, had traditionallyregarded Itself as a chosen bountrful land. The Jews havediscovered that the Americans saw themselves as a peopledestlned to bulid a "city on a hlll" after traversing a greatwilderness. They found it dellcate to lnslst on one's essentialdifference from t?e soclety they eagerly wlshed to join. Thesolution was to arrlve at a balance between exclusivity andpartlclpatlon, continuous wlth Jewish tradition and acceptableto Amerlca. Thls .ed to a re-rnterpretatlon of the idea whichhad served both Jewish and Amerlcan seif-deflnltron for ages.It glves both a sense of belng at the centre of thlngs, engagedln useful work whlch the Lord will watch and bless.For the Amerlcan-Jewlsh wrlters, from the cities, townsand shtetls of Russla-Poland, arrlvlng at a time of nationalreform and psychjc crisls, of prlmary importance were theproblems of adlustment to the new culture and reconcil~ation oftheir old country culture with that of the New World.Scrambling for a dollar, everyone working, they endured so that