Cruel persecutions and intolerance are not accidents but grow out of the very essence of religion namely its absolute claims.

All religion seems to need to prove that it's the only truth. And that's where it turns demonic. Because that's when you get religious wars and persecutions and burning heretics at the stake.

Jews survived all the defeats expulsions persecutions and pogroms the centuries in which they were regarded as a pariah people even the Holocaust itself because they never gave up the faith that one day they would be free to live as Jews without fear.