So far we have looked at only one side of the problem of emancipation: how could Jews liberated from the ghetto adjust to society? But the other side was equally important: how could society adjust to liberated Jews? The problem was gigantic because for 1,500 years Jewish society had been designed to produce intellectuals. It is true they were sacerdotal intellectuals, in the service of the god Torah. But they had all the characteristics of the intellectual: a tendency to pursue ideas at the expense of people; endlessly sharpened critical faculties; great destructive as well as creative power.
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