ABSTRACT
A Jew who is a non-believer and, in a way, 'dejudaked', risks offending those of his 'co-religionists' who have remained faithful to the Law. The event itself, the organizing of the slaughter of millions of defenceless beings into an industry, has afflicted people's consciences with a sort of trauma. The situation of the Jews has varied with the centuries and with civilizations. Even were the 'inculcation of contempt' to vanish, Christians and Jews would still be opposed as believers, since the latter reject the New Testament which the former see as fulfilling the promise of the Old. This strange fate in turn left its mark on Jewish communities and on the way in which Jews lived and thought. The Jews have owed their coherence and their capacity for survival both to the intransigence of their faith in a single God and to the intermittent hostility and constant opposition of the world around them.
