ABSTRACT

A persistent fear worried the Jews of the early Diasporas and of Hellenistic times: the fear that a child of theirs might grow up to be an am-haaretz or, even worse, an apikoros. In either case, the danger was that such an individual would not only ignore the commandments and rituals, but that he would, in effect, have lost the sense of his past. Not only the Jew, but all moderns, and particularly the intelligentsia, have made this decision to break with the past. The author is one of the middle generation, one who has not faith but memory, and who has run some of its risks. He has found no “final” place, for he has no final answers. He was born in galut and he accepts the double burden and the double pleasure of his self-consciousness, the outward life of an American and the inward secret of the Jew.