The “Jewish personality” according to Nuland

From Maimonides by Sherwin B. Nuland (pp. 23-24):

Among Jews, especially those of an intellectual bent, there is commonly a kind of restlessness, an anticipation of uncertainty, ambiguity, imperfection and the sense that one must do something about it even though the total solution will never be found. Many have lived in relative comfort with a chronic sense of discomfort. Irritability and a persistent low-grade aggravation are in the very marrow of such people. Though the qualities rankle, they may be the source of an active response to the world, whether productive or counterproductive. As the sociologist Thorstein Veblen famously put it in his frequently quoted essay of 1919, The Intellectual Pre-eminence of Jews in Modern Europe, “They are neither a complaisant nor a contented lot, these aliens of uneasy feet.”

Out of this restless dissatisfaction there arises a skepticism, a questioning of oneself of one’s place in the predominantly Christian world and, indeed, of the givens of that world, both great and small. Many Jews have felt themselves less bound by the encompassing assumptions of the surrounding culture, in part because they could never be wholly a part of it. “The first requisite for constructive work in modern science, and indeed for any work of inquiry that shall bring enduring results, is a skeptical frame of mind,” Veblen correctly pointed out.

I’ll buy it, although I feel like this “Jewish personality” is becoming less common with increased assimilation and seeming acceptance of Jews into the Christian world here in the states...