Forever Unwilling
Bernard Wasserstein, 13 April 2000
No one has yet written a worthwhile history of the Jews in modern Europe. Apart from the problem of the range of sources and languages, there is an intrinsic difficulty which is at the heart of the Jew’s predicament in the modern world: the Jews are and are not a unit. It is not just that they are internally divided – that is true of all groups – but that the modernisation of the Jews has involved an irretrievable jettisoning in part or whole of their Jewishness and a submersion in the cultures and societies of their residence. This process came into operation sooner and on a larger scale in some areas than others: it reached its furthest extent in France, England and some German and Hungarian-speaking regions of Europe. It was slowest in Russia and Russian Poland – though even there it had advanced substantially by the First World War. To write the history of the Jews in modern Europe is, therefore, like writing a biography of the Cheshire Cat: the historian’s impossible task is to catch the substance behind the fading smile.’