Jews believe they must defend their status in American society against “two major hostile pressures”: the threat of anti-Semitic prejudice and discrimination and the threat of the incorporation of Christian symbols, practices, and values into public life. Because of the past history of persecution and repeated attempts at annihilation, as in the Holocaust, American Jews suffer, he says, from a “permanent sense of insecurity and vulnerability.” As a result of this new spirit in American Jewry as well