From Mrs Geryke Young
Sir: Mr Henry Adler (Letters, May 20) overlooks the most crucial point when he compares Israel's tolerance vis-à-vis its 16 per cent Arabs with Britain's 0.6 per cent Jews (leaving the coloured immigration of the last decades out of the picture altogether). The Arabs in Israel do not encroach upon Jewish culture, upon the institutions of Jewish learning and other traditions with which Jews identify themselves. This would in any case be impossible since these derive their particular and exclusive character from Jewish subjective commitment to the world.
Arabs who enjoy Israeli citizenship and the right to partake in Israel's official life, benefit by
concepts and institutions which the Jews have taken with them from the West but which are contingent to both Jewish or Arab spiritual
needs: Arabs and Jews would still be Arabs and Jews without them.
Western importations lend themselves to this treatment because of their quasi-universal character which also means that they have become the cultural no-man's-land of mankind. Their university is however the result of the West's objective commitment to the world, mistakenly referred to as 'secular.' Because of this universality we in Britian do not normally look upon Jewish participation in our institutions and disciplines as an encroachment.' But the numerus clausus indicates that it is sensed as such, and it does remain one as long as Jews claim a separate identity.
Geryhe Young 37 Abbotsbury House, London W14
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