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Vanishing Diaspora: The Jews in Europe Since 1945. - book reviews

Journal of Social History, Winter, 1997 by Robert Weinberg

This well-written book is a somber assessment of the fate of European Jewry since the Holocaust. Post-World War II developments have come close to achieving, through vastly different and generally benign means, what the Germans set out to accomplish in the 1930s and 1940s - the elimination of Jews from Europe. Of the some four million European Jews (including the states of the former Soviet Union) who survived the war, just under half today call Europe home. Indeed, the future of European Jewry, in Wasserstein's view, is grim and ought to give rise to alarm among Jews. Demographic trends such as an extraordinary low Jewish birth-rate, intermarriage and emigration lead Wasserstein to conclude that the "dissolution of European Jewry is not situated at some point in a hypothetical future. The process is taking place before our eyes." (p. 283) In addition, the processes of acculturation, integration and assimilation are contributing to the dimunition of Jewry's presence in Europe. To be sure, pockets of vibrant Jewish communities still exist, notably among the ultra-Orthodox, but these comprise a miniscule percentage of European Jewry. Wasserstein notes that Jewish life in Europe, once the center of the Jewish world, is on the verge of disappearing, with Israel and the United States having replaced Europe as the heartland of Jewish society and civilization.

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Two factors in particular account for the declining presence of Jews in Europe since 1945. First, Israel has served as a magnet for Jews seeking refuge from both the ravages of the war and the anti-Jewish policies of many communist states. Second, by living up to their liberal premises, the polities and societies of Western Europe have witnessed the steady assimilation and integration of Jewry. In addition, Jews living under communist power underwent a similar process, though in that case the state assumed an active and at times coercive role in promoting the disappearance of Jewish culture. Life in the tolerant, open societies of Western Europe since 1945, as in the United States, has led to the dilution of Jewish identity on an individual and collective basis, thereby confirming the fear of many nineteenth-century Jewish thinkers and activists that Jewry's encounter with modernity threatens the very existence of the Jewish people. Wasserstein obviously agrees with the maxim "too much of a good thing is bad" when he muses that Jews in Western Europe have been "killed by kindness." (p. 279) To my grandmother's perennial question, "Is it good or bad for the Jews?", Wasserstein would respond that life for European Jewry since 1945 has been a mixed bag, with liberalism having, paradoxically, both positive and negative effects. As he concludes, "The Jews in the Diaspora face, as a group, a ... clouded future. For the great majority of European Jews, particularly those living in the open societies of the west, where liberal values inevitably tend to draw them into an assimilative vortex, the prospects for collective survival are dim." (p. 280)

The book generally follows a chronological format, starting with the efforts of European Jewry to recover from the devastation of the Holocaust and ending with the current state of affairs in the wake of communism's collapse and the resurgence of right-wing nationalist movements throughout Europe. Wasserstein surveys how the Cold War, the existence of Israel, the Middle East conflict, the persistence of antisemitism, and memory of the Holocaust have shaped European Jewry's attitudes, values and behavior. Because he primarily focuses on government policies toward Jews and the nature of gentile-Jewish relations, the book intentionally offers little insight into the internal communal dynamics of European Jewries and Jewish religious and intellectual trends. His useful summaries of political and ideological developments in various countries in Europe underscore the complexity of the European Jewish experience and do justice to the diversity and range of that experience. Thus, the book, in addition to serving as a wake-up call to those concerned about the vitality of Jewish culture and society in Europe, can serve as a handy reference work on the political history of European Jewry for the last half century.

Robert Weinberg Swarthmore College

Vanishing Diaspora: The Jews in Europe Since 1945. - book reviews

Journal of Social History, Winter, 1997 by Robert Weinberg

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