In A Tale of Love and Darkness, Israeli novelist and essayist Amos Oz highlights a typical Jewish dilemma, despair and desperation for survival. In Jerusalem, he writes, “people always walked rather like mourners at a funeral, or latecomers at a concert”. He explains, “First they put down the tip of their shoe and tested the ground. Then, once they had lowered their foot they were in no hurry to move it: we had waited two thousand years to gain a foothold in Jerusalem, and were unwilling to give it up. If we picked up our foot someone else might come...