Assimilationists Redeﬁned the 1793–1795 in Poland; 1929)

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 knowl- edge 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, es- pecially 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

Load more