German Jews conceived assimilation as a five-generation trade of Jewishness for Europe

Evidence

Thus, today we speak different languages, think different thoughts, live a different kind of Judaism, eat different dishes, measure according to different standards, and we have traded part of our soul with Europe, giving up part of our Jewishness. In not quite five generations it has shaped us, this European fate and its freedom, its new air, its wonderful and artistic values, its integrating and liberating aura. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 424

Thus, today we speak different languages, think different thoughts, live a different kind of Judaism, eat different dishes, measure according to different standards, and we have traded part of our soul with Europe, giving up part of our Jewishness. In not quite five generations it has shaped us, this European fate and its freedom, its new air, its wonderful and artistic values, its integrating and liberating aura. It took the most explicit crisis of all to bring us to our senses: crisis of the heart, crisis of memory, crisis of the face [Antlitz]. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 415

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the general ‘who counts as authentically Jewish vs assimilated’ tension echoed in debates about diaspora identity, e.g. in discussions of Reform vs Orthodox Judaism and modern Jewish self-definition. — connects to: Assimilated German Jews returned to tradition in response to nominal equality and rising anti-Semitism — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 207; Wealthy German Jews saw themselves as fully German until forced out in the 1930s; Judaism socialism and psychoanalysis fused into a shared Frankfurt programme
• SEED: Angle: the remarkably short generational span (five generations) over which a coherent minority culture can fully transform under assimilation pressure — a measurable claim about cultural change.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 424; Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 415