Original sentence: There is, on the contrary, a deep and moving similarity of spirit between  Israel Baal Shem, the founder of Chassidism, and Francis of Assisi, though the former had never heard of the latter, and had never looked into the New Testament.What is perhaps more important for my thesis, the gentleness and warmth that I have found in plain Jewish homes in Manchester, New York, Warsaw, Vilna, Johannesburg, I have found also among gentile Lancashire weavers, and midwest American farmers, and French peasants -- all deriving from the same tradition
Edited sentence: There is, on the contrary, a deep and moving similarity of spirit between Israel Baal Shem, the founder of Chassidism, and Francis of Assisi, though the former had never heard of the latter, and had never looked into the New Testament.What is perhaps more important for my thesis, the gentleness and warmth that I have found in plain Jewish homes in Manchester, New York, Warsaw, Vilna, Johannesburg, I have found also among gentile Lancashire weavers, and midwest American farmers, and French peasants—all deriving from the same tradition