The Jewish law always called for the highest morality (indeed, a kind of moral passion); for joy in God' s gifts within the limits of the law; for justice among nati6ns; and for equal treatment of stranger and friend; but some of these requirements often clashed with the structure and demands of modern life. Anti-Semitism led to fear and suspicion of the gentile; isolation, religious observance, and dietary laws led to a feeling of alienation from the gentile. These conflicts, plus the upsurge of anti-religious scientific and social thought in the modern world, and the general decline of traditional faith, led to the paradox of the modern intellectual Jew: He became a man who is often profoundly skeptical of religion, unable to observe the Sabbath and the dietary laws, usually passionately liberal, deeply attached to fellow workers and friends by bonds other than those of Judaism, and often searchingly keen in his questions about social structures and traditions. In the modern Jew, the puritan element of traditional Judaism turned in him to a passionate but not always comfortable concern with social ethics. Men like this are not very conspicuous in Malamud's fiction but knowledge of them as part of the Jewish identity helps explain such persons as Morris Bober, S. Levin, and Yakov Bok. Above all, it helps explain the tenacious identity of the nonreligious Jew.
The Jewish law always called for the highest morality (indeed, a kind of moral passion); for joy in God' s gifts within the limits of the law; for justice among nati6ns; and for equal treatment of stranger and friend; but some of these requirements often clashed with the structure and demands of modern life. Anti-Semitism led to fear and suspicion of the gentile; isolation, religious observance, and dietary laws led to a feeling of alienation from the gentile. These conflicts, plus the upsurge of anti-religious scientific and social thought in the modern world, and the general decline of traditional faith, led to the paradox of the modern intellectual Jew: He became a man who is often profoundly skeptical of religion, unable to observe the Sabbath and the dietary laws, usually passionately liberal, deeply attached to fellow workers and friends by bonds other than those of Judaism, and often searchingly keen in his questions about social structures and traditions. In the modern Jew, the puritan element of traditional Judaism turned in him to a passionate but not always comfortable concern with social ethics. Men like this are not very conspicuous in Malamud's fiction but knowledge of them as part of the Jewish identity helps explain such persons as Morris Bober, S. Levin, and Yakov Bok. Above all, it helps explain the tenacious identity of the nonreligious Jew.
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