For the past two hundred and fifty years they and their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents tried to assimilate, integrate or ingratiate themselves in, with or by the European public.
The backlash came in many and varying forms and degrees: Dreyfuss, The Protocols, Nazism, Communism and - yes: Zionism.
The more the non-affiliated Jew has been attempting a dash across the divide, from the Jewish side to the ill-perceived Arian side, the more and the harder he felt the push in the opposite direction.
It has now reached a point where people who don't even know their Jewish DNA, are reminded about it - when they least expect it - by their neighbours, business associates or spouse... or from the most unlikely quarters: their offspring.
So far, nothing has worked; vilification, excommunication, naturalisation, extermination by the Goy or even exhortation by their well-meaning religious leaders (Heaven forbid were you to call them Rabbis!).
Now, with the sad happenings unfolding across Europe, barely seventy years after Holocaust, these ignorami still don't get it. Instead of looking inside, the way they live, what they expect from themselves and the nearly non-existent spiritual existence - they use a scapegoat (=So'ir laAzozel) one or all of the following scourges: Anti-Semitism, Islam, extremism or Nationalism.
Isn't it time to wake up and heed the cry that emanates from Sinai, day in day out: Oy lohem laBeriyoys me'Elbonah shel Torah - woe is to the people who belittle the holy Torah.
This clarion call, in the form of a Bas-Kol, is being proclaimed every day, since the time our Creator heralded an era of Torah, by which every Jew is supposed to live and die, with the knowledge that without the Torah, the world cannot exist.
By ignoring the inner call for making a fresh start, the diaspora is suffering from a double-pronged problem: On the one hand, the nations of the world cannot wait to be rid of the Israelites, having felt their presence for thousands of years. The problem was exacerbated in the past two centuries, when emancipation brought the downtrodden Jewish masses out of the Ghetto's onto the mainstream scene.
To add fuel to this conundrum, these so-called enlightened Jews, have abandoned hope of ever welcoming Moshiach - the anointed redeemer - when their non-Jewish neighbours have been waiting to see them gone since the French, industrial and communist revolutions.
Meanwhile, the ultra-Orthodox community, who as a people in exile have been praying for the Geulah in the past millennia.
With the recent killings in Paris, the paradox has come to haunt them: whilst their religious brethren have been waiting for such an opportunity since the destruction of the second Temple, these intelligentsia - who have no plans to move eastwards any time soon - are now being 'invited' by their long-time partners in crime, the Zionists, to come live in 'Israel'.
To illustrate the anomaly of the way Jewish people have been living on the edge, let's do some statistics:
How many people made Aliyah since 1948
How many people made Yeridah since 1948
How much ammunition was expended by the Arabs trying to kill
How many people escaped injury since 1948
How many people died in combat against the Arab armies
How many people died in road accidents
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