Assimilation

From JudaismWiki

ASSIMILATION. Throughout Jewish history, Jews have tended to “assimilate,” adopting the language, manners, and customs of their neighbors, wherever they lived. At the same time, they continued to live a full Jewish life, producing great Jewish individuals and uniquely Jewish books. Individual Jews have left the Jewish community for other groups, but the bulk of the Jewish people has maintained its identity.

While the Jews lived in ghettos in medieval and post-medieval Europe, the ghetto walls protected them from assimilation. As the ghetto walls started to come down in the late 18th century, Jews began to discover a new world around them and soon learned that to achieve full equality they would have to conform to the general culture. A new movement, the Haskalah, or the Enlightenment, emerged, seeking to adapt to the European culture while remaining Jewish. During the French Revolution, French Jewish leaders agreed with the French liberals that the ultimate aim for Jews was to disappear completely as a national group. When Napoleon convened his Assembly of Jewish Notables, or French Sanhedrin, these Jewish leaders assured the emperor that first and last they were Frenchmen of Jewish descent.

In Germany, the Haskalah started when Moses Medelssohn translated the Bible into German. This translation introduced its Jewish readers to the German language, which opened the door to European culture. The generation that followed Mendelssohn used this culture to escape from the ghetto; in their headlong rush, large numbers were lost from Judaism altogether. Having adopted the German culture and way of life, they expected to be accepted into the “brotherhood of man.” Instead, they discovered that full citizenship and social and economic advancement were possible for Jews only after baptism—the “ticket of admission to European civilization.” Many took this step. Among those who explored this possibility was David Friedlaender of Berlin. He addressed an anonymous letter to Protestant clergymen, writing not only for himself but for a group of equally anonymous heads of Jewish families. These men were willing, the letter stated, to accept baptism if it were understood that they were rationalists for whom it was a mere formality. Would the Church be willing to accept them on this condition? Naturally, the Church was not willing, and the letter created an unhappy stir.

Yet Friedlaender’s influence reached into Poland and Russia. The early Jewish Enlightenment movement in Poland and Russia had assimilationist tendencies and leaders, some of whom called themselves “Members of the Old Testament Persuasion in the Kingdom of Poland.” In 1825, a rabbinical seminary aimed at the Polonization of Jews in Poland opened in Warsaw with the blessings of the Polish government. Its purpose, however, of whittling down Jewish tradition, becomes clear when one considers, for example, that the department of Hebrew and Bible was headed by Abraham Buchner, author of the pamphlet, The Worthlessness of the Talmud. In Russia, the Society for the Diffusion of Enlightenment was founded in 1867 in St. Petersburg. The aim of this society was most clearly expressed by its Odessa branch as “the enlightenment of the Jews through the Russian language and in the Russian spirit.”

But reaction in Germany, pogroms in Russia, and antisemitic events like the Dreyfus Affair in France disillusioned the “enlighteners.” Jews learned in the course of the 19th century that Europe was not ready to accept the Jews fully, whether or not they assimilated. This lesson was given its final and tragic validation during the Holocaust, when the official policy of the Nazi occupation of Europe was the physical extermination of all Jews, whether or not assimilated.

All of this changed in the second half of the 20th century. With the birth of Israel, and the coming of age of American Jewry, Jews are finally free to either live a full Jewish life or assimilate completely. Today, most Jews outside Israel assimilate by intermarriage and by lack of Jewish education. In the U.S., more Jews marry outside their faith than inside. The issue of assimilation has in recent years become a cause for alarm among American rabbis and community leaders.

In the remaining Jewish communities around the world, new waves of antisemitism weigh heavily on the push to assimilate. Recent historical phenomena are also seen as cause. In Russia, for example, where assimilation was promoted forcefully and religion banned under the Soviet regime, the problem is present today of preserving a lasting Jewish community.