Jewish assimilation
[1] Professor of Modern Jewish History Todd Endelman (2015) used the following terms to describe various forms of Jewish assimilation: Monika Richarz (2012) argued the importance of distinguishing between assimilation ('radical adjustment, even to the point of absorption') and acculturation ('a less radical and more academic term which implies that people accept a new culture or part of it, but do not give up completely their own tradition').
[7] In order to prevent assimilation, Jewish laws keep an observant Jew from being close to a non-Jew, including the food prohibition Pas Yisroel and Bishul Yisrael and Kosher wine.
Although Koine Greek became the dominant language of the elite, and the succeeding Ptolemaic Kingdom and Seleucid Empire waged the Syrian Wars for control of the Levant, the Hellenistic rulers mostly did not interfere with the Hebrews' culture, religion and internal politics.
[9] After driving out the Ptolemees in 198 BCE, the Seleucid king Antiochus III the Great lowered taxes in the region and formally affirmed the Judeans' religious and political autonomy, stimulating the voluntary Hellenization of especially the upper stratum of the population, such as the clergy, the aristocracy and the merchantry.
[9] After a series of battles, the Seleucids were eventually defeated (also in part due to a Persian invasion in the east), and the Maccabees achieved de facto independence as the Hasmonean dynasty, reversing much of the Hellenization process.
[9] The priestly Hasmonean dynasty of the Maccabees and their Sadducee supporters soon fully Hellenized as well in the late 2nd and early 1st century BCE; they were opposed by the Aramaic-speaking traditionalist Pharisees.
'[3] Reasons cited for its initial success included hope for better opportunities accompanying assimilation into the non-Jewish European communities, especially among the upper classes.
"[3] As legal emancipation remained incomplete in Germany, many upper-middle class urban Jews propagated Enlightenment ideals, which they believed would allow them to improve their social standing.
"The ideologues consequently envisioned a regeneration of German Jewry that would gain it equal rights but would also lead to the formation of a new kind of Jew based on its ideal of man.
[citation needed] The propriety of assimilation, and various paths toward it were among the earliest internal debates of the emancipation era, including whether and to what extent Jews should relinquish their right to uniqueness in return for civic equality.
[17] In the late 19th century, the German Empire and Austria-Hungary even allowed Jews to change their legal status and formally register as a non-Jew.
[2][17] Scholars call this the emancipation era, beginning on 27 September 1791, when Jews in France were first granted full citizenship without any conditions by the French Revolutionary parliament.
Their active role in this intellectual discussion served as both a calculated response to anti-Semitic allegations and a way to explore common social bonds uniting Jews as the autonomous community had been in full decline.
"The political and social message of this immutable Jewish nature was clear: the 'Jewish body' was racially different and pathological, and opponents of emancipation and integration were correct in insisting that Jews were unfit to be part of a healthy modern nation-state.
[21] After World War I, antisemitism grew in Europe and America, and worsened by the Great Depression of the 1930s; many universities and professions were barred to Jews or set with a quota limit.
[21] Dutch businessman and writer Louis Fles (1872–1940) devoted much of the 1930s as a socialist and a freethinker to both opposing growing Nazi anti-Semitism on the one hand in Hitler, reformer or criminal?
"[28] In Israel, Hitbolelut is a derogatory term used mainly to refer with prejudice to Jewish inter-faith couples, who can be criticized as being anti-Zionist or anti-Israeli, particularly when one partner is Muslim or is identified as being Palestinian or Arab.
Because most European and American Jews abstained from what Gordon called "structural assimilation" ('the creation of friendships and other contacts primarily with members of the host society'), they 'acculturated', but rarely lost their sense of Jewish identity.
[29] Overall, Rozenblit concluded the 1981 collection was 'interesting', but 'a weak treatment of Jewish assimilation', citing the lack of good definitions of the phenomenon which meant scholars were talking past each other.
[34] In Paula Hyman's book The Jews of Modern France demonstrates that Jewish assimilation into French society allowed them to integrate in the community.
Beginning with the cooperation of the French state, Jews were able to maintain networks of communal institutions in the system of consistories that both promoted acculturation and reinforced Jewish feelings of solidarity.
Louis the Pious, son of Charlemagne in the Holy Roman Empire, was the first to leave detailed descriptions of the rights of Jewish merchants.
[40] In Spain and Portugal, descendants of Arabs, Moors, and Jews (moriscos and marranos), were, for a period of time banned from certain guilds, positions in the clergy and particularly from emigrating to Latin America (limpieza de sangre).
[citation needed] The Roman Catholic Church has attracted some Jews, such as Edith Stein, Israel Zolli,[41] Erich von Stroheim, and Jean-Marie Lustiger.
