Series eight of Foyle’s War is now streaming on Netflix. Episode “Trespass” is described on Wikipedia: “When a young man is assaulted in the grounds of a university, Foyle wonders if the attack is racially motivated as the victim is the wealthy son of a high-profile Jewish businessman. Tensions are also starting to run high in London with a charismatic right-wing leader, but it looks like there may be more to his prison release than meets the eye, and he is in fact being set up to take the spotlight off a dangerous espionage operation. Sam meanwhile is determined to help a young boy she meets in hospital suffering from whooping cough; the NHS is still to come on line and she sees that Adam’s constituents are in need of greater state care after the deprivations of the war.”
The Jewish rituals in this episode are far from reality. They are like a Christian guess at what a Jewish meal is like.
That makes me think about English Jews. They are the most polite Jews in the world and among the most assimilated. The more generations a Jew has lived in the West, the more likely he is to conform to western norms of ethics and courtesy. On the other hand, the more likely he is to be far from the Jewish tradition.
When Jews left the shtettle and entered the West, it must have been an “Ordeal of Civility.”
