Theirs is the reverse path of 19th and early 20th century Jewish patriotic assimilation. The wealth of the multiple identities they incarnate today should be tapped in a creative and future oriented manner. Jews constitute an infinitely small portion of the total pan-European population. Yet their visibility inside each country as opinion leaders and makers, as intellectuals, artists, writers and leading professionals, continues to remain traditionally disproportionate to their numbers. Or they have chosen to present themselves as spokesmen for Jewish or Israeli causes, giving the impression in the process that their national or European belonging was secondary.
Reality is far more complex.
European Jews live their lives on several levels at once, launching themselves in their countries' major national debates from multiple perspectives. For a European Jewish review can only be quintessentially a European review. Today they are in a position to become instead active propounders of an open and pluralist Europe. They have lived in its shadow for more than two centuries and are now, after the Shoah, slowly forging answers which can be pertinent to all other Europe and today, be they historic members of the continent or recent arrivals. There are not enough Jews around to make the idea sound commercially 'valid', but the problems dear to our hearts and minds are the key ones of our epoch.