1) Tolerate the majority. Recognize that they may want freedom to express their religion. Focus on protecting minorities by special or alternate arrangement and accomodation to ensure protection of equal rights rather than by imposing and enforcing secularism in the public square. Sensitivity training should focus more on making minorities understand the majority than vice versa.

2) Don’t appear too demanding and don’t be too demanding. We have needs but we need to be reasonable. Noisy and provocative campaigns are better fund-raisers than quiet diplomacy but they come at the expense of widespread resentment and only serve to reinforce negative stereotypes.

In truth we can summarize the above and much more in one recommendation, “Let’s try and remember that we’re in golus”. We can achieve so much more through humility and cooperation than through provocation and conflict.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled erudite and informative publication.

This is extremely odd. Four times I’ve written long and (hopefully) thoughtful answers to your question. Each time, when I tried to post the answer, it got lost.

I will assume this means that I’m not really meant to answer the question as fully as I’d hoped - plus it is too close to Shabbos and too frustrating to attempt again.

Short answer: It was not at all my intention to criticize the “Torah community” or to charge it with any particular weakness. I do not feel that the Internet is an appropriate forum for such activity, nor, if I did, would I arrogate to myself the right to do it anyway. In the specific discussion, moreover, the “Torah community” above all other segments of American Jewry, has much of which to be proud. I do, however feel, that it is no weakness to acknowledge the very Torah-based idea, which was inculcated in me by the institutions of our community, that we all, as individuals and as a community, should be engaged in a constant process of personal refinement and betterment. Introspection about ways to seek improvement is holy work. Difficult as it may be to draw lines between the two ideas, I am trying in good faith to do just that - just bring my personal observations into a communal cheshbon hanefesh.

Maybe I’m fooling myself by feeling there is any real distinction - or maybe the difference lies in trying to adhere to shmiras haloshon and kovod haTorah.

More, hopefully, on the subject after Shabbos…