Vanishing Diaspora: The Jews in Europe since 1945 (review)

Abstract

Book Reviews 145 Additionally, American Protestantism is presented as a unified, undifferentiated whole. The efforts of Reform Jews "paralleled" those of Protestants, Silverstein notes repeatedly. Yet American Protestantism in the century covered in this book and beyond lacked any center. It existed as an entity only in that it was not Catholicism or Judaism. Other than that, its multi-faceted, multi-denominational character defied easy categorization. Silverstein errs in making this facile assertion which emerges as one of his organizing principles. Despite these conceptual problems and a vast number ofunsubstantiated assertions, Alternatives to Assimilation will take its place as a noteworthy contribution to the field ofAmerican Jewish history. Hasia R. Diner Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies New York University Vanishing Diaspora: The Jews in Europe since 1945, by Bernard Wasserstein. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996. 332pp. $27.95. When I fmished reading this book, I was reminded ofan episode which occurred about 30 years ago. I had agreed to write a review for TransAction (now, Society) Magazine ofa book by the French sociologist, Georges Friedmann, The End ofthe Jewish People? (Garden City: Doubleday, 1967). Briefly, the book's vexing thesis was that the Jews, as a group, were rapidly assimilating in modem Western society and that they were a disappearing people. However, almost immediately after I read the book and began writing my review, the Six-Day War broke out and was quickly over. The unanticipated outpouring of Jewish concern in the United States and Western Europe and the subsequent manifestations ofdramatic increases in Jewish identity led me to believe that Friedmann was completely incorrect, a false prophet ofdoom, and ofthe type who gave sociology a bad reputation because of its inability to predict. Consequently, I begged offwriting the review and, instead, wrote a review ofa book dealing with social policy in the United States. It was, I believe, the only time I had undertaken the task of writing a review which I did not fulfill, and the only reason for that was my conviction at the time that the author was so overwhelmingly proven to be incorrect. Ironically, some three decades later, it appears that Friedmann had exceptionally keen insight and foresight. Both on the basis ofthe evidence from European Jewry, amassed by Bernard Wasserstein, as well as my own work on American Jewry, I am led in the same direction as Friedmann. 146 SHOFAR Summer 1997 Vol. 15, No.4 Wasserstein succinctly details the impact ofantisemitism, following the devastating Holocaust, on Jews in Central and Eastern Europe. Where there had been centuries-old large Jewish centers in many of their countries, there remain, at best, small pockets of Jews in most ofthem, the majority ofthe survivors having left for Palestine. Those that remained hoped for tranquility in the aftermath of the Holocaust, but many of the Communists who gained power in those countries fueled antisemitism for their own purposes. With the fall ofCommunism and the Soviet Union, many Soviet Jews left for Israel, the antisemitism and anti-Zionism of the former Soviet Union having had the opposite ofthe intended effect and fostered a significant Zionist movement there. In slightly more than a century, the European Jewish population declined from being the overwhelming majority of the world's Jewish population-more than 85 percent-to being less than a quarter. Less than three million Jews live in all of Europe today. However, the decline of European Jewry is not solely the product of antisemitism . Especially in the Western part-notably, England and France-it is the result of assimilation. As Wasserstein puts it, "The tolerance ofthe open society rather than ethnic or religious hostility ..." appears "to pose the main threat to collective Jewish survival" (p. 267). England, for example, is experiencing a process ofpolarization in which the "ultra-orthodox right," or haredi segment, is becoming more assertive and demanding while the vast majority ofthe Jewish population is experiencing weakening Jewish identity and identification. In addition to decreasing rates of observance of Jewish religious rituals, England's Jews are having fewer children and are experiencing significant increases in intermarrage rates. The problem is so acute that the Chief Rabbi ofthe United Hebrew Congregations ofthe Commonwealth, Jonathan Sacks...