I am thinking of people who are their religion. I am thinking of what Mary Antin wrote:
History shows that in all countries where Jews have equal rights with the rest of the people, they lose their fear of secular science, and learn how to take their ancient religion with them from century to awakening century, dropping nothing by the way but what their growing spirit has outgrown. In countries where progress is to be bought only at the price of apostasy, they shut themselves up in their synagogues, and raise the wall of extreme separateness between themselves and their Gentile neighbors. There is never a Jewish community without its scholars, but where Jews may not be both intellectuals and Jews, they prefer to remain Jews. (From page 111 of Mary Antin’s autobiography, The Promised Land, Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1911)
For a brief biography of Mary Antin, click here.
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