preserved and enhanced the survival of the Jewish culture.
Those governments unwilling even to tolerate Jews who were segregated in ghettos expelled them. At one time or another, all Jews were expelled from England (1290), France (1306 and 1394), Austria (1420), and Spain (1492). There were local expulsions throughout Europe including those in Germany. Some expulsion policies were reversed when governments realized that the Jews served a useful purpose.
It was not until the Enlightenment (see Chapter 5) that Jews had the opportunity to participate in modern society free from persecution. The fundamentalist acceptance of Jewish law underwent a severe challenge, and the result was the development of reformist movements which eventually culminated in the establishment of Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist movements.
Jewish culture developed for 2,000 years in pre-World War II Europe. Jews of both Western and Eastern Europe created a culture of religious practice, arts and music, language (principally Yiddish), and education. It was an entire culture which the Nazis sought to make extinct.
There were distinct differences in the cultures of Jews who settled in the “East” and “West” in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Generally, Jews who settled in Western Europe (France, Holland, Germany, Austria, and Italy, for example) were more assimilated than their “eastern” counterparts of the Soviet Union, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Rumania, and Hungary. They were more likely to speak the language of their host nation, less likely to be religiously observant, more likely to intermarry, more likely to be urban settlers, more likely to be middle-class, more likely to be formally educated, and more likely to affiliate