As Montefiore explains, this distinctive duality, a unique convergence of universal and particular, has allowed various forms of Jewish identity to take hold in a secular age. These identities have either traded off the universality, by re-defining Judaism in post-Enlightenment subjectivist terms as "essentially" engaged in upholding a set of universal ethical norms, à la Kant, without the need for onerous ancient rules and restrictions; or they have traded off the particularity, and of the sociological concept of Jews as a people, a culture or a nation. Either way, Montefiore recognises these secularising forms of life, each with its distinctive version of Jewish identity, as somewhat unstable, and dependent, as he puts it, "on the continuing existence of a core group committed to the practice of at least some version of Judaism as a religion." At the same time, he re-affirms the obligations of the religiously committed "to be prepared to recognise the freedom of non-practising Jews to take their own stand in respect of all such obligations without thereby risking the loss of their Jewish identity".

This in essence is Montefiore's solution to the dilemmas arising from conflicts between forms of life, and may be summed up in the phrase, "live and let live." Secularists need to acknowledge how far their own attachment to the doctrine that values are subjective and separable from facts is itself dogmatic and unprovable; and the religious community needs to ensure that "it has room within its structures for the concept of an individual subject capable, and in the last resort, uniquely responsible for determining its own core identity as the person that he or she essentially is."