For more than 200 years, Jews in the Western world have aspired to civic and social equality. They have argued and worked for full political rights, for admission to universities, for access to the professions, and for the right to participate in all branches of commerce.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, these aspirations have in large measure been realized. Jews have taken advantage of the opportunities increasingly afforded them to participate in the political, social, economic, and intellectual life of Western open societies. They have become full and active participants in the civic and political life of their communities.

Yet, paradoxical as it may seem, enhanced participation by Jews in modern society has exposed Judaism to a historic test of survival. “The occasion for this test,” as the philosopher Leon Roth has described it, “was not primarily the religious one of confrontation with other faiths but the political one of being granted civil rights”: