Despite the significant (and not always subtle) differences that exist among and between various

Over the course of history, the Jewish culture has endured many cultural hardships. When Nationalism began to rise in Europe, the treatment of Jews became harsh. Amos Elon describes this transition for Jews in his novel The Pity of it All. “For all their irony and skepticism, the Jews of Germany never ceased in their effort to merge German and Jewish identity...their overriding desire was to be complete Germans.” (Elon, 8). The major concerns in Jewish history throughout the ages have been assimilation and acculturation. Acculturation and assimilation are two very important concepts that describe the cultural effects on both minorities and majorities. While these concepts are very similar, there are slight differences between

Since the beginning of the Judaism, the Jewish people have been subject to hardships and discrimination. They have not been allowed to have a stabile place of worship and have also faced persecution and atrocities that most of us can not even imagine. Three events that have had a big impact on the Jewish faith were the building and destruction of the First Great Temple, the Second Great Temple and the events of the Holocaust. In this paper, I will discuss these three events and also explain and give examples as to why I feel that the Jewish people have always been discriminated against and not allowed the freedom of worship.

“Jews were initially the subject of primarily religious intolerance: they were despised for the arrogance of their monotheism, vilified as Christ’s murderers, and identified with the devil. Later during the eighteenth and most of the nineteenth century, with the rise of capitalism, they would experience a social form of prejudice… a mixture of resentment and jealousy over the seeming ability of Jews to make good on the scarce opportunities offered them by capitalism and liberal society. It was indeed only in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century… that Jews would experience the new political expression of Judeophobia commonly known as anti-Semitism.”

Antin presents an expansive summary of Jewish history that concentrates on the old world and new world for immigrants worldwide,, instead of Jewish ethnisities in Russia or Poltzk. Jewish Immigrants’ History illustrates how religion can effect one’s fate. The ill-fated wars between religions and cultures are mainly to blame for the isolation and extermination of war amongst the

As one of the most developed and sophisticated societies of the time, countless academics have had trouble unraveling how the systematic slaughter of millions of defenseless Jewish individuals could have possibly taken place at the hands of Germany. While Jews had been uniquely stigmatized within the European social hierarchy until the late nineteenth century as they were regarded as unmanageable, evil-intentioned, and indolent, Germany was widely known as a more tolerant and progressive society particularly because it granted citizenship to Jews as early as 1812. As well, it is widely known that Jews enjoyed a period of comparative peace, harmony, and the flowering of Jewish religious life which is commonly referred to as the golden age within France, Britain, as well as Germany, where they were able to successfully integrate into the wider societies. With that being said, many scholars have had difficulties comprehending precisely why

Most Jewish people are classified as Ashkenazic or Sephardic depending on ethnic backgrounds from the regions they, or their ancestors came from. There are major differences between these ethnic groups, and they did not try to create a single community that brought the Sephardic and Ashkenazic together as one people. On the contrary, they further divided into a variety of cultural and linguistic groups. (Behar 2013:6). These differences add to the list of barriers that divide the Sephardim from the Ashkenazim. Overall, they never seemed to get along with each other, and this made it difficult for Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews to accommodate amongst one another, especially when they were

Jew…” This classification was the first stake that drove a division between the general German population and the Jewish people.

In this section, the reader can also meet with a discussion of to be or not to be a Jew. This is due to persecutions in other countries. As a result, the Jews began to deny their identity and to identify with the American society. There is outlined the problem of Antisemitism and of anti-Judaism referring to the Jewish society. The last aspect, described in this chapter, is the problem of the intermarriage. The author of the diploma project presents statistics which show the scale of the problem. Through marriage of the Jew with the non-Jew, the border between societies blurs out as well as the Jewish identity disappears. As a consequence, the Jewish community is exposed for the extinction, and for the destruction of the Jewish cultural and religious heritage.

Latin America is characterized by the “multiple and complex interaction of culture.” It comprises of ethnic and national identities emerging from displacement and migration. The Jewish diaspora is one of the many ethnic groups in Latin America. Jews, a small proportion of total inhabitants in each Latin American nation, has an important cultural rople to play in spreading the network of Judaism throughout the region, thereby challenging the ‘homogeneity or coherence of nation-state’ (Vieira 2001).

For many grueling years, the Christian church dominated European law prior to the era of the Enlightenment. However, in December of 1789, it was brought to the National assembly’s attention that many semi-potent Frenchmen were in condolence with the Jewish communities’ importune for equal citizenship. Due to such opinions, the first three meeting sessions were held to discuss the matter on December

Defined by their past, Jews in the 1st century fought to maintain their core identity. However, there were differences in beliefs causing the formation of a number of dominant sects within

When Hitler and the Nazi party began terrorize Europe, the Nazis would not discriminate the differences in origin among the Jews. All the Jews under their power were all the same. However, this did not stop Sephardic Jews from trying to persuade Nazis that there was a difference. An example of this would be Sam Levy who wrote the Nazi party leadership trying to make a distinction, in the hope that the Sephardic Jews would be spared. In his letter, Levy argued, “in all the countries of the world, including Palestine, where there are Sephardim (Ario-Latins of Mosaic Faith) and Ashkenazim (form Greater Germany, Hungary, Poland and Russia), two strictly separate communities exist” (Cohen and Stein, Document 89, 263). Levy was trying to imply that the Sephardim were different from the Jews that the Nazis were after. Levy even goes further by stating that Sephardic Jews were “Aryans of the Mosaic Belief” (Cohen and Stein, Document 89, 264). However, the Nazis did not care for origin or even linguistic differences. For them, the Jews were all the same and that they needed to be exterminated. This circumstance proves that Sephardic Jews wanted to establish the separate identity to escape being sent to death

From the continental European perspective shared by Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, two groups would have stood out as the most historically marginalized; women and Jews. For much of European history, both Jewish people and women were denied the rights and privileges afforded to even the least privileged Christian men. They could not hold their own lands, were barred from all but a select few professions, and lived with the constant threat of organized violence ready to be turned against them if they ever stepped out of line. In a sense, both woman and Jew are used as an other for their outgroups, male and Gentile respectively, to define themselves apart from. Accordingly de Beauvoir and Sartre manage to illustrate substantial similarities between the two groups in their respective analyses that greatly affect their ultimate treatment, even as through their limited scope and personal biases. Chiefly among these similarities is how both the idea of “woman” and “Jew” are created classes, social constructs made in bad faith. While there will obviously be female humans and Jewish people, the identities of woman and Jew exist only because those who were not female and Jewish have labeled them as such. “If the Jew did not exist,” writes Sartre in Anti-Semite and Jew, “the anti-Semite would invent him.” (8) However, one key difference exists between the two: Jews present a hidden and existential threat to their foes that women never will. Even the most strident opponent

?The Jewish community in Greece has a very colorful and intriguing past, but it is also a history filled with undeserved discriminatory acts and hatred.? The earliest Jews came to Greece either in chains or because of persecution, and soon experienced more hardships and troubles.? And just when Greece had overcome its discrimination and its Jews began to breathe easily, the worst persecution of all befell the community.? The Jewish community in Greece was once large and prominent.? In fact, ?the country once boasted some of the most distinguished and ancient Jewish communities in the world.1 But only a shadow of its once glorious past remains, and Jews are currently facing

By early 20th Century, Germany was a place of confusion. Having ensured its political unity late, Germany was a place that all the positions of money belonged to Jews and class differences were harsh. In German people’s eyes, Jews were trying to expand and control the world, which later caused Jews to be seen as a nation rather than members of a religion (Caplan 30). As this conflict grew, Germans thought more and more about the necessity of eliminating