The early and middle decades of the nineteenth century in Europe (1815-81) have long been regarded as the major period of assimilation in post-medieval Jewish history. Moreover the established historiography dealing with those years has tended to focus on the processes of accommodation and communal disintegration. However, the historical processes as analysed in this collection of essays emerge as multi- rather than uni-directional, far more variegated and complex than usually described hitherto. Contradictory trends were associated with different localities, levels of development and ideological allegiances. Traditional loyalties, new socio-ethnic structures, communal cohesion, romantic rediscoveries of the past and the political solidarity engendered by the struggle for emancipation across Europe, all served to counterbalance the homogenizing forces of modernity. Bringing together the work of fourteen leading historians, this book represents a major contribution to the revision, which has gained momentum in recent years, of the traditional historiography.

Preface; 1. Assimilation and the Jews in nineteenth-century Europe: towards a new historiography? Jonathan Frankel; 2. Jewish emancipationists in Victorian England: self-imposed limits to assimilation Israel Finestein; 3. German Jews in Victorian England: a study in drift and defection Todd M. Endelman; 4. Israelite and Jew: how did nineteenth-century French Jews understand assimilation? Phyllis Cohen Albert; 5. The social contexts of assimilation: village Jews and city Jews in Alsace Paula E. Hyman; 6. Nostalgia and 'return to the ghetto': a cultural phenomenon in Western and Central Europe Richard I. Cohen; 7. Jewry in the modern period: the role of the 'rising class' in the politicization of Jews in Europe Michael Graetz; 8. The impact of emancipation on German Jewry: a reconsideration David Sorkin; 9. Gender and Jewish history in Imperial Germany Marion A. Kaplan; 10. Jewish assimilation in Habsburg Vienna Marsha L. Rozenblit; 11. The social vision of Bohemian Jews: intellectuals and community in the 1840s Hillel Kieval; 12. The entrance of Jews into Hungarian society in Vormärz: the case of the 'casinos' Michael K. Silber; 13. Modernity without emancipation or assimilation? the case of Russian Jewry Eli Lederhendler; 14. Ahad Ha'am and the politics of assimilation Steven J. Zipperstein; Index.