Who Came to Resemble Whom?

Assimilation, then, is more complex and dialectical than one usually assumes. An attempt to make informed use of the term quickly proves problematic. To begin with, it is shaded by thick ideological dust. With the onset of the era of emancipation, assimilation still had a clearly positive meaning, and this meaning was still occasionally in use even at the end of the nineteenth century. By then, however, especially in the context of the struggle between Zionists and their opponents, the word gradually assumed a negative, even derogatory connotation. As part of the Zionist discourse, assimilation conjured up a picture of people who were ready and willing to eradicate their own self, foolishly and blindly thereafter facing a hostile world. From this point of view, assimilation was considered a dishonorable process that was to be resisted by all means. To examine the history of German Jews in a more balanced manner, even if complete objectivity continues to evade us, it is helpful to bear in mind that, in other contexts, assimilation is often enough seen as a positive affair. Within the “melting pot” ideology in the United States, for instance, it was for a long time a fundamental principle that contributed to the system's viability. Immediately after the establishment of the State of Israel, the integration of newcomers into a similar “melting pot” was likewise a primary objective, though it was, significantly, named absorption rather than assimilation.