Page:You Gentiles (1924) by Maurice Samuel 1895-1972.djvu/26

You Gentiles our fundamental way of life—even as you have the surface credo of a Jewish faith imposed on your way of life. But in the end your true nature works itself into the pattern of the borrowed faith, and expresses itself undeniably. So we, borrowing from you, finally assimilate the loan and in time make it essentially ours.

Beyond all these irrelevancies which hide at times but do not change the issue lies that clear and fateful division of life—Jewish and gentile. Because I have mingled intimately with the Jewish world and with the gentile world, I know well how easily exceptions obscure the rule: but I know just as well the unsounded abyss between us. What I have learned in your midst stands in my mind sharply severed from what I have learned in the midst of my people. I listen to your life, to the brilliant chorus which goes up from lands, governments, cities, books, churches, moralities: and in my mind I can no more confuse it with the tone of Jewish life than I could confuse the roaring of a tempest with 22