At The Turn Of The Twenty-first Century,

The Problem Of Insufficient Security Was, Until Quite Recently, A Matter Of A Minority; Now It Is Becoming Very Quickly A Majority Matter. That Is A Major Change.

There Is Less Pressure On Abandoning Native Communities: What For? There Is Nothing To Be Gained By It. On One Hand, There Are Plenty Tempting Opportunities Of Experimenting With Identities - Being One Kind Of Person Today And A Different The Next Day. On The Other Hand, There Is Little Pressure To Include The Ethnic Identity Or Religious Identity Into This Mechanism, Because Now Everybody Is In A Kind Of Diaspora Today.

Throughout Early Modernity There Were Very Strong Pressures On Jews To Assimilate. Assimilating Meant Cutting Your Ties With The Community Of Origin.

In Montreal, Where I Taught In 1970, I Met Many People. The Only Ones Who Said To Me They Were Canadians, Were Jews. All The Rest Were Scotts, Irish, English, French, Swedes.

In "solid Modernity" Difference Was Tolerated As A Temporary Irritant Only, Expected To Disappear Tomorrow, When "those Aliens" Will Become Like Us. "living With Strangers" Was Therefore Not Something To Last And Did Not Call For Developing Appropriate Arts And Skills. Now, However, It Looks Like That Diasporic Context Of Our Living Will Not Go Away - It Will Be There Forever, So Learning How To Live With Strangers Day In, Day Out Without Abandoning My Own Strangeness Is High On The Agenda.