Assimilationists Redeﬁned the 1793–1795 in Poland; 1929)

Home , Bundism, Daniel Neufeld, Szymon Askenazy

der the title R×kopisy Napoleona. 1793– contempt and abuse. Because historians Like German and French Jews, East Eu- 1795 w Polsce (Napoleonic Manuscripts: who write about Jewish modernization ropean assimilationists redefined the 1793–1795 in Poland; 1929). In addition, rarely use the term with precision, often character of Jewish collective existence. Askenazy wrote the chapters on Russia failing to distinguish between assimila- To create space for their ideological inte- and Poland in the early nineteenth cen- tion as a complex of processes and assimi- gration, they declared that Jews were no tury for second edition of the Cambridge lation as a cultural and political program, longer a separate nation but an organic Modern History (1934). He was also a pas- and because assimilation as an ideologi- part of the larger nation in whose midst sionate chess player. His political career cal project survived the destruction of they lived. Religion alone marked their may have begun when he played against East European Jewry during World War II difference from their neighbors. In 1919, Józef PiËsudski in the Sans Souci café in and continues to haunt the writing of for example, the Association of Poles of Lwów in 1912. He died in Warsaw. Jewish history, it is critical to keep in Mosaic Faith expressed its opposition to mind the difference between these two the Minorities Treaty, with its guarantee • Jozef Dutkiewicz, Szymon Askenazy i jego szkola (Warsaw, 1958); Emil Kipa, “Szymon usages. This article traces the history of of national rights to minorities in the suc- Askenazy,” in Studia i szkice historyczne, groups advocating and promoting assimi- cessor states, on the ground that Polish pp. 183–197 (WrocËaw, 1959); Piotr Wróbel, lation rather than the history of assim- Jews were of Polish rather than Jewish na- “Szymon Askenazy,” in Nation and History: Pol- ilatory practices. That said, assimilation tionality. Assimilationists everywhere in ish Historians from the Enlightenment to the Sec- as a program rested on and evolved from Eastern Europe envisioned a liberal, West- ond World War, ed. Peter Brock, John D. Stan- the prior acculturation and secularization ern-style solution (emancipation and in- ley, and Piotr Wróbel (Toronto, 2006). of those who championed it as the solu- tegration) to the Jewish Question. To —Antony Polonsky tion to the plight of the Jews. achieve that goal, they urged the mass of Small assimilationist movements flour- Jews, whose customs and habits they ASSIMILATION. Although widely used ished in most major East European cities viewed as backward and fossilized, to in both scholarly writing and public life, from the last decades of the nineteenth eliminate their cultural and social distinc- the term assimilation, without modifica- century until World War II. While they tiveness, which, in their view, bred hostil- tion or qualification, lacks critical rigor. differed in size, influence, and ideological ity toward all Jews. In Russia and Poland Conceptually, it can encompass—and is emphasis, they were similar in terms of before World War I, they sponsored pro- often confused and conflated with—four their social composition, their under- grams to promote the disappearance of analytically distinct changes in Jewish be- standing of the character of Jews and the Jewish distinctiveness. These included havior and status in the nineteenth and problems they faced, and their recom- erection of Western-style synagogues, pro- twentieth centuries: acculturation (the mendations regarding the fate and future vision of vocational training, creation of acquisition of the cultural and social hab- of Jews in their respective countries. In a class of Jewish agriculturalists, and pro- its of the dominant non-Jewish group), Eastern Europe, assimilation as an ideo- motion of secular education and knowl- integration (the entry of Jews into non- logical program took root in the last de- edge of non-Jewish languages. Jewish social circles and spheres of activ- cades of the nineteenth century in upper- Assimilationists were wildly optimistic, ity), emancipation (the acquisition of middle-class, highly acculturated, urban at best, and woefully deluded, at worst, rights and privileges enjoyed by non- families, whose language, dress, deport- about the future. The integration and ac- Jewish citizens/subjects of similar socio- ment, habits, and tastes were similar to ceptance they envisioned depended not economic rank), and secularization (the those of non-Jews of the same socioeco- only on the transformation of the Jewish rejection of religious beliefs and the obli- nomic background. They promoted as- masses but equally on the transformation gations and practices that flow from these similation as a program because they of the societies in which they lived. beliefs). In Eastern Europe, as in Western themselves were unsuccessful in win- Specifically, their solution to the Jewish Europe, these processes, while obviously ning the respect and acceptance of non- Question required the triumph of liberal influencing each other, operated in the Jews, despite their own upward mobility individualism and religious tolerance, the end independently of each other. Thus, and cultural adaptation. Government of- emergence of political and social systems in most East European states, Jewish ac- ficials, landowners, military men, aristo- that would support these values, and the culturation and secularization were well crats, men of letters, and other pillars of demise of corporate, organic notions of in advance of legal emancipation and so- the old order continued to scorn and de- collective identity—none of which, it is cial integration. spise them and refused to admit them to now clear, was likely in Eastern Europe Moreover, because the term assimilation social intimacy or improve their legal sta- (with the possible exception of interwar is also used to describe a political program tus. The rise of modern political antisemi- Czechoslovakia). Symptomatic of their for Jewish social and cultural transforma- tism at the end of the century made their optimism was their attitude to antisemi- tion, largely championed by urban, up- position even more difficult. Frustrated tism, whose threat to Jewish security and per-middle-class Jews, it was from early and angered by the disparity between prosperity they minimized or even ig- on as much prescriptive as descriptive. their cultural and economic achieve- nored. In their view, Jewish tribalism, as For assimilationists, those who champi- ments on the one hand and their low so- much as gentile ignorance, created anti- oned it as a solution to the stigmatization cial and political status on the other, they semitism; as it weakened, they claimed, and marginalization of Jews, it was both championed assimilation as the solution antisemitism would fade. desirable and necessary. For the Orthodox to both their own immediate predica- The reverse side of this attitude was and nationalist camps, on the other ment and the plight of Jews more gener- their emphatic insistence on the undying hand, it was a disastrous, dishonorable, ally, seeking to encourage other Jews to and undivided loyalty of Jews to the na- S despised project, with the term one of follow the path of assimilation. tions in whose midst they lived. Miksa R L

ASSIMILATION 81 in Russia, where conscription weighed so heavily on the Jewish masses during the reign of Nicholas I (1825–1855), the assimilationist leadership in Saint Peters- burg devoted much time and effort to erecting a public memorial to Jewish sol- diers who had fallen in the defense of Sebastopol during the Crimean War (1854–1856). Except in tsarist Russia, what most clearly distinguished assimilationists from other acculturated Jews was their ideological identification with a larger, non-Jewish nationality. Assimilationists professed in good faith that they were Hungarians, Czechs, Poles, and so on. While knowledge of non-Jewish languages and other markers of acculturation became increas- ingly common outside assimilationist circles between the 1880s and the 1930s, no parallel, large-scale shift in self-identification accompanied these changes. The mass of Jews in Eastern and East Central Europe continued to think of themselves as a separate national group; they did not believe that the acquisition of non-Jewish languages, manners, habits, and taste, especially in the 1920s and 1930s, trans- formed them into East Europeans of the Mosaic faith. The rise of Zionism at the end of the nineteenth century represented a new challenge to assimilationist groups. Whereas previously they had viewed the social separatism and religious tradition- alism of the masses as brakes on assimilation, they now faced a political opponent that simultaneously embraced modernity and celebrated Jewish national distinctiveness. Zionist activity, even when lim- ited in scope and impact, forced assimilationists to sharpen their own ideological stance and harp even more on their patriotism. In fin-de-siècle Budapest, for example, where Zionism made few inroads, assimilationist spokespersons lashed out at the new movement as incompatible Postcard depicting a family on its way to a synagogue. The grandfather is bearded and tradition- with the patriotism of Magyars of the Mo- ally dressed, while the next generation wears modern clothes and the man is beardless. (Publisher saic faith. Márton Schweiger, president unknown, printed in Germany.) (YIVO) of the Neolog (Reform) community, declared: “Every endeavor of Hungarian Jewry is diametrically opposed to the Szabolcsi (1857–1915), editor of the Bu- could be equally shrill. In 1885, for exam- trends of Zionism. It does not dream of a dapest assimilationist weekly Egyenlëség ple, when Izaak Cylków (1841–1908), Jewish kingdom but wants to merge with (Equality), told Theodor Herzl in 1903 rabbi of the Great Synagogue in Warsaw, Magyardom while maintaining intact its that Hungarian Jews neither wanted to be devoted a sermon to Moses Mendelssohn, ancestral religion.” Sámuel Kohn, chief nor could be anything but Hungarians. extreme assimilationists protested, since, rabbi of the Neolog congregation in Pest, The love of the Hungarian fatherland in their view, Mendelssohn, like Otto considered Zionism “sheer folly, a danger- broke through in them, even when not von Bismarck, was a Pole-hating German. ous craze,” predicting it would attract few summoned, because it was part of their In 1891, when Cylków memorialized followers in Hungary, since it aimed to blood and had struck deep roots in their the German Jewish historian Heinrich make a nation out of a religious denomi- S hearts. Polish assimilationist patriotism Graetz, similar protests were made. Even nation. R L

82 ASSIMILATION Nationalist and religious opponents of The ties cultivated by the Gintsburgs Odessa—new communities in which the assimilation, as well as some historians of and other Saint Petersburg bankers and influence of traditional Judaism was the late twentieth century, frequently railroad contractors were virtually the weak. branded it mere opportunism, a case of only means through which Russian Jews The central organizational embodi- convenience triumphing over convic- could hope to reach and possibly influ- ment of assimilationism was the OPE, tion. While it is undoubtedly true that ence tsarist ministers and bureaucrats. funded and controlled by the city’s Jewish assimilation harmonized with and com- Their wealth also allowed them to spon- notables, most notably the Gintsburg plemented upward mobility and so- sor organizations and institutions dedi- family. Overcoming government opposi- cial ambition, it cannot be dismissed as cated to promoting acculturation and up- tion, provincial branches were estab- simply an unprincipled ploy. Jews who ward mobility among the Jewish masses, lished in Odessa in 1867 and in Riga in championed assimilation as a program such as the Society for the Promotion of 1898. Its founders viewed the organiza- were not rank opportunists; they contin- Culture among the Jews of Russia (known tion as the central political voice of Rus- ued to identify as Jews and took part in by its Russian acronym OPE), established sian Jewry, with the tasks of mediating communal life. They opposed total ab- in Saint Petersburg in 1863, and to offer between the government and the Jewish sorption and endorsed Jewish continuity patronage to reform-minded writers and people and presenting the best possible in the lands where they lived; they were intellectuals by employing them as secre- image of Judaism and Jewish life to the emotionally and ideologically unable to taries and tutors. non-Jewish world. Its principal internal renounce their Jewishness or abandon Russia mission was to Russify the Jewish masses. their fellow Jews. By contrast, rank oppor- The assimilation program in Russia was To this end, it subsidized Russian-lan- tunists either took no part in communal an outgrowth of the thinking of the guage Jewish newspapers, tried (but life, leaving Jews to their own fate, or left Haskalah (Enlightenment). While one failed) to publish a Russian translation of Judaism altogether by converting to current of the Haskalah—that which em- the Hebrew Bible, distributed textbooks Christianity or, where legally possible, phasized the revitalization of the Hebrew to Jewish schools, funded elementary formally withdrawing from the commu- language and the modernization of Jew- schools for girls, and supported Jews nity. That said, however, assimilation ish cultural life—flowed toward national- studying in Russian universities and failed to hold the loyalty of later genera- ism, another—that which emphasized other institutions of higher education tions. The grandchildren of the founders the broadening of Jewish cultural hori- (two-thirds to three-quarters of its an- and earliest supporters of assimilation zons—moved in a very different direc- nual expenditures went to student finan- lost interest in Jewish concerns or even tion, urging acculturation to Russian cial aid). The other major assimilationist converted to Christianity. In Warsaw, for ways as the solution to the plight of that body was the Society for Handicraft and example, the founders of the impressive country’s Jews. The most enthusiastic Agricultural Work among the Jews of Rus- Western-style Great Synagogue, which supporters of assimilation were bankers, sia (ORT), established in 1880, to correct opened in 1878, left few Jewish heirs. At merchants, industrialists, and intellectu- the “abnormal” economic structure of the end of the nineteenth century, the als living in Russia’s urban centers—espe- Jewish society. Its work focused on sup- Christian descendants of its founders cially Saint Petersburg, Moscow, and port for vocational education and cooper- were already placing notices in Izraelita, the assimilationist newspaper, offering to sell the front-row synagogue seats of their Moyshe Tolpin (seated, right) and his family, Ostróg (now Ostroh, Ukr.), 1906. Tolpin was ancestors, which they had inherited but a teacher in one of the government schools established by tsarist edict in 1844 to combat the obviously did not need. influence of traditional Jewish education and to promote assimilation. Photograph by Rekord. Although the number of assimilation- (YIVO) ists in Eastern and East Central Europe was never great (except in Budapest) rela- tive to those whose primary identity remained Jewish, their influence was strong, far outstripping their numerical strength. In Warsaw, Lwów, and other Polish cities, for example, assimilationists dominated communal councils until the interwar period, while in tsarist Russia the banker Baron Evzel’ Gintsburg (1812– 1878) functioned as shtadlan (behind-the- scene intercessor) and de facto head of Russian Jewry, as did his son Baron Hor- ace Gintsburg (1833–1909) after him. The source of assimilationist influence was their wealth—before World War I assimilation was largely a program of the haute bourgeoisie of finance and industry—and their access to government officials, S which they owed to their involvement in R state-sponsored economic undertakings. L

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MS3 ative marketing schemes and credit socie- claring the assimilationists’ faith in the uprising against Russia of 1863 until the ties. triumph of liberalism and enlightenment end of World War I; and the Great Syna- Russian-language Jewish newspapers, bankrupt. New radical ideologies—Zion- gogue in TËomackie Street. The Rabbinic even though difficult to launch and sus- ism and Bundism preeminently—took School, founded in 1826 by Antoni tain, provided a critical forum for the ar- hold in the following decades but, con- Eisenbaum (1791–1852), educated several ticulation of assimilationist views. In trary to popular belief, their emergence thousand young men from wealthy mer- their pages, reformers and modernizers did not mark the disappearance of the chant, banking, and professional families debated the character of cultural rap- assimilationist camp. While the notables until its closure in 1862. The school’s prochement, bewailed the shortcomings no longer looked to the autocracy to ef- classes, except those in religious subjects, of the Jewish masses, and refuted the fect reform, they, along with increasing were conducted in Polish and the atmo- prejudiced views of Christian society. The numbers of university-educated Jews sphere was imbued with Polish patrio- first periodical was the weekly Razsvet (lawyers, engineers, journalists), contin- tism. The school’s synagogue, which in- (Dawn), which appeared in Odessa in ued to advocate the modernization of the troduced a few modest innovations, 1860 under the editorial direction of Osip Jewish masses and sought the eventual including a male choir and Polish ser- Rabinovich (1817–1869) and Joachim triumph of Western liberalism in Russia. mon, also attracted worshipers from Tarnopol (1810–1900). It closed after a In the decade before World War I, Jewish assimilationist circles. year, largely due to problems with the lawyers and other activists in Russia’s cit- The Great Synagogue, which opened in government censor. Its successor, Sion, ies who retained their faith in a liberal, 1878, replaced several earlier ones that also lasted only a year. In 1869, the assimilationist solution found a political served the wealthy. Neither it nor its pre- Odessa branch of the OPE launched Den home in the Constitutional Democratic decessors were Western-style Reform con- (Day), but it ceased publication when dis- Party (Kadets). With the overthrow of the gregations with a universalized, abbre- illusionment set in following the Odessa tsarist regime in 1917 and the subsequent viated, denationalized liturgy. Rather, pogrom of 1871. That same year, Alek- emergence of the Soviet system, assimila- because they were committed to the re- sander Zederbaum (1816–1893), pub- tion as an ideological program vanished, generation and modernization of the Jew- lisher of the Yiddish Kol mevaser (Voice of since, in theory, Jews were no longer the ish masses, they avoided introducing li- the Messenger) and the Hebrew Ha-Melits objects of discriminatory measures. turgical reforms that departed from (The Advocate), launched Vestnik russkikh Poland Jewish law. However, the formality and evreev (Russian Jewish Herald) in Saint Pe- The assimilation movement in Poland grandeur of the Great Synagogue, along tersburg, but it too had a short life, clos- emerged in Warsaw in the mid-nine- with the elegant dress and decorous de- ing in 1873. Two further Russian Jewish teenth century among the descendants of meanor of its worshipers, led traditional weeklies appeared in Saint Petersburg to- Jewish financiers and army purveyors, Warsaw Jews, who called it di daytshe shul ward the end of Alexander II’s reign—in largely but not exclusively from Prussia, (the German synagogue), to view it as a 1879, Razsvet (not to be confused with Saxony, and Moravia, who settled there complete abomination that in the end the earlier Odessa Razsvet), whose outlook after Prussia occupied the city in 1795. would destroy Judaism and drive Jews shifted from moderately assimilationist Through their contacts with foreign into the arms of Christianity. While it to nationalist before its closure in 1882, banking and merchant houses, they re- is unlikely that the Great Synagogue and Russkii evrei (The Russian Jew), which mained in touch with the transforma- “caused” indifferent Jews to convert, it is was firmly in the assimilationist camp tions in Jewish life taking place in the true that very few of the founders’ chil- and lasted until 1884. West. They wore European dress (the men dren followed them in worshiping there. Ideologically, the assimilationist pro- were clean-shaven), gave their children a Assimilationist Jews opened synagogues gram in Russia differed from those in Po- secular education, and discarded or atten- as well in Lwów (Lemberg) in 1844 and land and Hungary in one major respect: it uated old customs. In their petitions to Kraków in 1862. The former deviated did not define Jewishness solely in reli- obtain municipal citizenship and civil from Orthodoxy more than the Warsaw gious terms. Russian advocates of assimi- rights (for themselves and their families, and Kraków congregations and was close lation never claimed to be Russians of the but not for Warsaw Jewry as a whole), to Hungarian Neolog Judaism in practice. Mosaic faith nor did they ever renounce they disassociated themselves from the The chief vehicle for the articulation of the national dimension of Jewish life. mass of traditional Jews, emphasizing the assimilationist program in Warsaw This was due to the multinational charac- their own sartorial and linguistic accul- was a series of Polish-language Jewish ter of the tsarist empire, which, unlike turation, enlightenment, and service to weeklies. The first was Eisenbaum’s the nation-states of the West, included the state. Contributing to this assimila- Dostrzegacz NadwiÓlaáski / Der Beobakhter diverse peoples and nations. In fact, the tory behavior was the need to feel com- an der Vayksel (Observer on the Vistula), overwhelming majority of the tsar’s fortable when mixing in offices, salons, which was published in both Polish and Jews—those in the Pale of Settlement— and drawing rooms, with government of- in German rendered in Hebrew letters in did not live in the midst of Russians. ficials, the dispensers of civil privileges 1823–1824 (an attempt to reach Jews Their neighbors were mostly Lithuanians, and economic monopolies. who were unable to read Polish). In 1861, Ukrainians, and Belorussians. The institutional strongholds of the as- the writer Daniel Neufeld (1814–1874) The pogroms and May Laws of 1881– similationists in nineteenth-century War- founded a new Polish-language weekly, 1882 weakened the authority of the saw were the SkoËa Rabinów (rabbinic Jutrzenka (Dawn). Following the failure of assimilationist notables in Saint Peters- school), a modern secondary school that, the 1863 uprising, the Russian authori- burg, as did their refusal to support mass despite its name, did not train rabbis; the ties closed it and sent Neufeld to Siberia. emigration. University students and in- communal board, which the assimila- The most enduring of the weeklies was S tellectuals derided their gradualism, de- tionists controlled from the failed Polish Izraelita, which was launched in 1866 and R L

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MS3 continued to appear until 1913. Edited communal worker Hilary Nussbaum saw its influence in communal affairs for three decades by the writer Szmul (1820–1895), edited and published the plummet. In the 1920s, the Association of Hirsz Peltyn (1831–1896), Izraelita often assimilationist monthly Rozwaga (Reflec- Poles of the Mosaic Faith became dor- took positions more radical than those tion, 1915–1916). Its editorial line repre- mant, and assimilationists lost their seats held by the first generation of Warsaw sented a turning point in the assimi- on communal boards, even those for- assimilationists, the families who con- lationist position in Poland. It started not merly under their control. Following in- trolled the Great Synagogue. It agitated, with the question—What is good for the dependence in 1924, a group of young for example, for the introduction of sub- Jews?—but with the question—What is assimilationists attempted to revive the stantive, ideologically based, German- good for Poland? Seeking to placate Pol- movement with the creation of the style reforms, and Peltyn himself took the ish nationalists who feared that the ab- ZwiÙzek Akademickiej MËodzieÛy Zjed- lead in an unsuccessful attempt to estab- sorption of Jews would damage the Polish noczeniowej (Association of Academic lish a Reform synagogue in 1880 in the nation and Polish culture, it argued that Youth for Unity; known by its Polish ini- belief that only radical changes would the opposite was true, that the absorption tials as ZAMZ or simply as Unity). It soon stem the growth of drift and defection of 2 million Jews would benefit Poland became dormant as well, but resurfaced among the young. With the upswing in and not alter its essential character. The in 1928, its optimism revitalized by Józef political antisemitism in the 1880s, the goal, it suggested, was the total immer- PiËsudski’s coup in 1926 and the short- newspaper faced the dilemma of how to sion of Jews. Soon after Poland gained term improvement in the situation of the reconcile its advocacy of rapprochement independence, Nussbaum himself con- Jews it ushered in. with the spread of Polish hostility to Jews. verted, as did the last editor of Izraelita, Hungary The answer it gave was that the Polish- Józef Wassercug-Wasowski (1885–1947). In Hungary, assimilation as a program ness of Jews in Poland was an essential, In the interwar period, the social enjoyed broader support than elsewhere nonnegotiable condition, independent makeup of the assimilationist camp in Eastern Europe. In Budapest, in partic- of what Poles thought. The edition of 2 changed. Professionals and university ular, it represented the outlook of the April 1882 proclaimed defiantly: “What- graduates (doctors, lawyers, engineers, overwhelming majority of Jews. In this ever happens let it come, let volcanoes economists, writers, scientists, journal- sense, the urban Jews of Hungary more erupt here and there out of the womb of ists, and officials in banks, industrial en- closely resembled the Jews of Germany this earth, let the scum of this nation in terprises, and public institutions) re- than the Jews of Poland and Russia. moments of madness act with hostility placed industrialists and entrepreneurs. Assimilationist Jews in Hungary not only against us—we have no right in such mo- This change reflected both the spread of spoke Magyar but also viewed themselves ments to be disloyal to this land, to this higher education among the Jewish pop- (and were even viewed by others) as nation, and to ourselves!” ulation and the defection of the descen- Magyars—of the Mosaic faith. From the During World War I, Henryk Nussbaum dants of the old plutocratic elite. While late nineteenth century, more than 90 (1849–1937), a successful physician, pro- many of the new assimilationists were in- percent of Budapest Jews were associated fessor at the University of Warsaw, and volved in one way or another in Jewish with Neolog Judaism, the Hungarian vari- son of the assimilationist historian and society, they were distant from religious ety of Reform Judaism, which defined practice, attending synagogue only on Jewishness as a religious identity alone. the High Holidays. Their language, cul- The obverse of this was the absence of Polish Jewish patriots Leon Hertz, a Jew who ture, and thought were entirely Polish. support for Zionism, which attracted a fought in the Polish national uprising against At the same time, they were sensitive to smaller percentage of the Jewish popula- Russia in 1863, with his nephew, Henryk the claim of Polish nationalists, embold- tion than elsewhere in East Central and Barciáski, an actor, director, and officer in the ened by the country’s newly won inde- Eastern Europe. Only in provincial towns, Polish Legion, Warsaw, 1916. (YIVO) pendence, that Jews were aliens, not where Magyarization was less prevalent Poles. In May 1919, assimilationist activ- than in Budapest, was Zionism attractive ists gathered in Warsaw to create the to more than a handful of Jews. Buda- Zjednoczenie Polaków Wyznania MojÛe- pest native Max Nordau, Theodor Herzl’s szowego Wszystkich Ziem Polskich (As- lieutenant in the early years of Zionism, sociation of Poles of the Mosaic Faith of characterized Hungary as the land of All the Polish Lands). As was true of their ideological assimilation par excellence, nineteenth-century predecessors, they unequaled by France or Germany. As- blamed Jewish cultural distinctiveness for similationists who wished to give visible Polish antagonism. They were particu- expression to their devotion to Hungary larly troubled by the gains made by the Magyarized the German-sounding family Zionist movement in the years imme- names that were characteristic of Hungar- diately after the war, both on the in- ian Jewry. From 1891 to 1918, almost ternational diplomatic scene and in the 40,000 Jews, mostly men, changed their Jewish street. They condemned Zionism names, which means that by the end of and, indeed, any effort or measure to World War I, there were about 160,000 treat the Jews as a distinctive national Jews (16% of the total) with newly ac- group, including the Minorities Treaty of quired Hungarian names (this estimate 1919. takes into account the wives and children S The assimilationist movement gained of those who changed their names). R few adherents in the interwar period and Three specific historical developments L

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MS3 explain the strength of assimilationist remained unchallenged, reacted to coun- Academic Jews), was founded by univer- ideology in Hungary: the integration of terrevolutionary terror, educational and sity students in Prague in 1876. In 1883, its chief communities (Budapest above professional quotas, anti-Jewish boycotts, leading members of the association cre- all) into the German Jewish cultural orbit and antisemitic agitation in two ways. ated Or Tomid (Eternal Light), a society to of Central Europe in the first half of the Most, especially the communal leaders, promote use of the Czech language in nineteenth century; the unofficial alli- continued to think of themselves as Hun- public celebrations and religious ceremo- ance between the Hungarian nobility and garians of the Mosaic faith, denounced nies in which German was then being the Jewish middle class before World War Zionism as a reckless folly, and mini- used (for example, in sermons, lectures, I; and the expansion of the Jewish com- mized the scope of antisemitism. More and announcements). It sponsored an mercial, industrial, and professional mid- than ever they asserted their loyalty—a ambitious publication program, issuing a dle class, beginning in the last decades of few became shrill chauvinists. Czech–Hebrew prayer book in 1884 as the nineteenth century. Initially, Hungar- Smaller but significant numbers, the well as numerous textbooks for religious ian Jewish acculturation took the form of most secularized and deracinated, aban- instruction. Germanization. As subjects of the Habs- doned the assimilationist dream of being The Národní Jednota òeskoÝidovská burg Empire, Jews were receptive to En- Jewish and Magyar simultaneously and (Czech-Jewish Union), founded in 1893, lightenment currents in nearby Vienna, chose baptism, becoming nominal Chris- was more explicitly political, challenging where German, as throughout the em- tians. Whereas the numbers of Jews who institutions that supported the hold of pire, was the language of the cultural converted between 1900 and 1914 oscil- German language and culture in Jewish elite, the propertied classes, and the im- lated between 440 and 540 a year, these society. In particular, it made great efforts perial bureaucracy. With the birth of numbers soared between the end of to close German Jewish elementary Hungarian nationalism, the crushing World War I and the end of World War II, schools in rural areas. Its fortnightly of the 1848 Revolution, and, especially, a period when the Jewish population was newspaper OeskoÝidovské listy (Czech Jew- the 1867 Ausgleich (Compromise), which half the size it was before Hungary’s terri- ish Press), published between 1894 and granted Hungary autonomy within the torial losses. During the last five months 1907, also contributed to the transforma- empire, the cultural and ideological ori- of 1919, more than 7,000 Jews were bap- tion of the national orientation of the entation of Hungarian Jews shifted from tized in Budapest alone. While the rate of Jewish community. The single most im- Vienna to Budapest (although knowledge conversion dropped in the 1920s, it again portant organ of Czech Jewish assimila- and use of German as well persisted until rose dramatically during the six years of tionism in the twentieth century was Hungary fell under Soviet control after acute antisemitism before the German Rozvoj (Development), which started as a World War II). occupation (1938–1943) to almost 28,000 fortnightly in 1904, became a weekly in The Hungarian political elite welcomed during that time in the country as a 1907 when OeskoÝidovské listy closed, and and encouraged this development be- whole. continued to appear until 1939. By the cause it saw the value of Jews, like other Bohemia and Moravia first decades of the twentieth century, the non-Magyars who were willing to re- As in Hungary, ideological assimilation acculturation of Bohemian and Moravian nounce their national origins, as Mag- in the Czech lands at first embraced Ger- Jewry to Czech was well advanced, al- yarizers in the vast Hungarian kingdom, man, the medium of high culture and though many Jews in Prague and Brno especially in the borderlands, where Hun- imperial administration in the Habsburg still clung to the German language and garians were a minority. Moreover, the so- territories, as well as the language of educated their children in German cioeconomic structure of Hungarian soci- the then-dominant ethnic Germans of schools. ety, with its gentry–peasant split, created Prague. In the 1840s, the rise of the Czech When Czechoslovakia became inde- space for the emergence of a prosperous national movement created a dilemma pendent following World War I, Jews Jewish middle class of professionals and for assimilationists who identified with with a Western outlook no longer had to businessmen. This suited Hungarian lead- the German-speaking minority: in an eth- decide between competing national iden- ers, who favored economic moderniza- nically divided society, with whom were tities. At the same time, because the new tion, despite their noble background. Jews to identify? While some students republic was officially a multinational And, as so often happened, the attain- and intellectuals promoted Czech nation- state (Czechs, Germans, Slovaks, Hungar- ment of middle-class status in turn en- alism, the hostility of the Czech move- ians, and Rusyns), it did not coerce non- couraged acculturation and then national ment toward Jewish rapprochement was Czech citizens to transform themselves identification with the dominant ma- an obstruction at the time to the emer- into Czechs. Thus, interwar Czechoslova- jority. gence of identification with the Czech kian Jewry lacked ideological assimila- The dissolution of the Habsburg Em- nation. Modernizing Jews continued to tionist groups who defined themselves as pire, the emergence of a fully inde- embrace German culture and language. Czechs of the Jewish faith in the manner pendent but much truncated Hungarian In the 1870s and 1880s, the migration of Polish and Hungarian assimilationists. state, and the short-lived Communist of Czech-speaking Jews from the country- Elsewhere in Eastern Europe government of Béla Kun, who was Jewish, side to the cities of Bohemia and Moravia The number of Jews elsewhere in East- as were many of his fellow revolutionar- created the social and demographic foun- ern Europe who identified with the non- ies, pushed interwar Hungarian politics dation for the emergence of a Czech-ori- Jews in whose midst they lived was tiny. in an extreme rightward direction and ented assimilationist movement. The first Assimilation as a project was absent in weakened the alliance between Jews and organization to challenge the Habsburg- the Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian their former noble patrons, ultimately German orientation of Bohemian and Jewish communities. Only in Walachia in with disastrous consequences. Assimila- Moravian Jewry, the Spolek OeskRch Romania, especially in Bucharest, were S tionists, whose control of the community Akademikï-Üidï (Association of Czech there small numbers of assimilationists R L

86 ASSIMILATION in the first few decades of the twentieth of Poland in the 1860s,” East European Jewish location was at 13 TËomackie Street, an century, and even they, despite their ac- Affairs 34.2 (2004): 21–40. address associated with the Jewish secular culturation, refrained from advocating a —Todd M. Endelman cultural movement. The premises func- Romanian national identity (with the ex- tioned as a social meeting place not only ception of a handful of intellectuals). The ASSOCIATION OF JEWISH WRIT- for members, but also for actors, artists, Uniunea Evreilor Pçmânteni (Organiza- ERS AND JOURNALISTS IN WARSAW teachers, guests from abroad, and others tion of Native-Born Jews), established (1916–1939; Yid., Fareyn fun Yidishe who were interested in Jewish secular cul- in 1910, and its postwar successor, the Literatn un Zhurnalistn in Varshe; Pol., ture. In addition, the association offered a Uniunea Evreilor Români (Union of Ro- ZwiÙzek Literatów i Dziennikarzy Úydow- large variety of literary and other activi- manian Jews), fought antisemitic mea- skich w Warszawie), a trade union, advo- ties, both for its members and for the gen- sures, championed emancipation, and cacy group, and social meeting venue for eral public. promoted Romanianization, but never re- writers. In March 1916—less then a year In the early 1920s, young modernistic duced Jewishness to a religious identity after Y. L. Peretz’s death—60 Jewish writ- Yiddish poets, writers, and artists settled alone. In Czernowitz (Chernivtsi), in ers and journalists gathered at Hazomir in Warsaw (for example, Melech Ravitch, Bucovina, which was part of the Habs- Hall in Warsaw to establish a trade union. Uri Tsevi Greenberg, Perets Markish, and burg Empire before it was attached to Ro- The first chair of the group was the Yid- I. J. Singer) and used the association’s po- mania, the Jewish upper middle class had dish writer Yankev Dinezon and its initial dium to express their new, revolutionary been German-speaking but there was no substantial German population with which it could identify. (Bottom) Membership card from 1932 belonging to Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer, from the [The principal figures, organizations, and Association of Jewish Writers and Journalists in Warsaw, with (top) Singer’s press card as a reporter periodicals mentioned are the subjects of in- for Undzer ekspres from the same period. (YIVO) dependent entries. For discussion of assimilation in the postwar period, see entries on particular countries.]

• Mikhail Beizer, The Jews of St. Petersburg: Ex- cursions through a Noble Past, trans. Michael Sherbourne, ed. Martin Gilbert (Philadelphia, 1989); Julian J. Bussgang, “The Progressive Synagogue in Lwów,” Polin 11 (1998): 127– 153; Alina CaËa, “The Question of the Assimi- lation of the Jews in the Polish Kingdom, 1864–1897: An Interpretive Essay,” Polin 1 (1986): 130–150; Miri Freilich, “Irgun ha- mitbolelim ‘Zdenoczenie’ (IÕud) be-Polin, 1915–1933,” Gal-Ed 14 (1995): 91–107; Christoph Gassenschmidt, Jewish Liberal Poli- tics in Tsarist Russia, 1900–1914: The Modern- ization of Russian Jewry (New York, 1995); Al- exander Guterman, “The Congregation of the Great Synagogue in Warsaw: Its Changing So- cial Composition and Ideological Afﬁlia- tions,” Polin 11 (1998): 112–126; Celia S. Heller, On the Edge of Destruction: Jews of Po- land between the Two World Wars (New York, 1977); Aleksander Hertz, The Jews in Polish Culture, trans. Richard Lourie (Evanston, Ill., 1988); Stefan Kieniewicz, “Assimilated Jews in Nineteenth-Century Warsaw,” in The Jews in Warsaw: A History, ed. WËadysËaw Barto- szewski and Antony Polonsky, pp. 171–180 (Oxford, 1991); Ezra Mendelsohn, The Jews of East Central Europe between the World Wars (Bloomington, Ind., 1983); Benjamin Nathans, Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia (Berkeley, 2002); Mi- chael Stanislawski, For Whom Do I Toil?: Judah Leib Gordon and the Crisis of Russian Jewry (New York, 1988); Bela Vago, ed., Jewish As- similation in Modern Times (Boulder, 1981); Theodore R. Weeks, “The Best of Both Worlds: Creating the Úyd-Polak,” East European Jewish Affairs 34.2 (2004): 1–20; Marcin Wodziáski, S “Language, Ideology, and the Beginnings of R the Integrationist Movement in the Kingdom L

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