Throughout early modernity there were very strong pressures on Jews to assimilate. Assimilating meant cutting your ties with the community of origin.

If Christ would have left Christian ethics codified on the table, then he wouldn't produce moral beings choosing between good and evil, but conformists fulfilling orders. I think the same can be said about the Bible.

With globalization and with a lot of power evaporating from the nation-states, the late-19th century established hierarchies of importance, or 'pecking orders' of cultures, presenting assimilation as an advancement or promotion, dissolved.

Once we realize that the strangers are here forever and won't go away, then, like husband and wife in the old-style marriage, we would try to find a way of living together peacefully and with mutual benefit. The sooner we understand that in a globalized world the diasporic nature of cohabitation is never likely to end, that it will always be with us, I believe such modus vivendi will be found.

What is happening now is that the number of people who are not strong enough or do not feel strong enough to decide to live without the security provided by the community or the state, is going up.

Why are people so concerned with relativism? If you look back in history, millions of people were killed because of someone's dogmatic views, but I do not remember anybody being killed due to the tolerance of difference, to relativism; ethically relativism does not seem to be such an awful thing, really.

In Celan's words a Jew is "a man with a little book under the shoulder." We are the keepers of tradition.