Assimilation and its Discontents
Publisher Description
When I realized that nobody had written a comprehensive history of Jewish assimilation, I knew that I had to try doing it myself. It was a remarkable learning experience as I researched a wide range of cultural and historical issues and discovered lots of people and events of which I’d previously known nothing. The tremendous differences between Europe and America required that they be treated differently. I also tried to make it interesting and entertaining.
It is an amazing story of how Jews dealt with the many alternatives they had in whether or not to assimilate, how to alter or maintain their religious practices, as well as what variety of assimilation they might choose: a total flight from their people; assimilation with the elite or with the “masses” (leftism); Zionism or Bundism or liberalism. Through this process a great deal can be understood not only about Jewish history but also the development of Western civilization, democratic society, and modern intellectual life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian Rubin (Revolution Until Victory) has written an insightful and provocative mix of analysis and history concerning the perpetual issue of Jewish assimilation. He concentrates on the ideas and actions of ``leading intellectual and cultural figures,'' starting when the French Revolution and the Enlightenment appeared to give Jews a way to shed identity without conversion to the dominant religion. He follows Freud and Koestler, Brandeis and Lippman, and points out the contradictions exemplified by artists like Woody Allen, who is preoccupied by the Jewish background he rejects. The author offers interesting takes on the Jewish embrace of radical causes and victimized groups. He concludes that assimilation has both damaged Jewry and produced creative and professional success for Jews in Europe and America. Some quibbles: the book's tone is detached, it ignores recent movements of Jewish renewal in America and it barely examines the question of Jewish identity in Israel, where Rubin teaches at Tel Aviv University.
