Still, it must be understood that, as potentially dangerous and certainly disturbing as these things are, they do not represent anything like the sorts of obstacles and threats in day-to-day living that many disenfranchised and oppressed people face all the time, and which we have been all too familiar throughout most of our history. Again, this should be a cause for celebration among Jews. While anti-Semitism, in its myriad forms, has ebbed and flowed over the centuries, few indeed are the periods in our history that match the level of security and prosperity Jews have found in the United States and Western Europe today. Yet, make mention of this, and many of us become defensive, as if the thought that things are so good for Jews, relative to our history, threatens to put us off our guard, so that if danger rises again we would not be prepared to meet it and survive. It is crucial for the long-term health of the Jewish people that we strike a much better balance between recognizing how good things are for Jews where most of us are living today and with being vigilant against the return of darker times.