Information on the thesis

This thesis discussed the major processes of assimilation in Galician Jewry
during the second half of the XIXth – early XXth century. I have chosen to use the
term  “assimilation”  in  the  title  of  my  work.  This  term  underwent  dynamic
dewelopment in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, first used in a positive
sense by Jews as well as by Christians to describe the social and cultural integration
process into the majority society. In the late nineteenth century the term aquired
negative connotation. But there is no another term to describe those Jews who called
themselwes ‘assimilationists’.
This  paper  attempts  through  the  analyses  of  legal  acts,  official  reports,
documents  of  personal  origin,  press,  publicistic  papers,  visual  sources  show  the
actions and declarations of “assimilating” Jews who gave up on their roots and their
intimate Jewish Identity for the sake of the profits of integration.
The process of change in the legal  status of the Jews  in  Austria-Hungary
began  at  the  second  half  of  the  XIXth  century.  New  circumstances  create  an
opportunity  for  some  Jews  to  improve  their  social  and  economic  behavior  and
transform  them  into  “worthy”  members  of  society.  Cultural  changes  like
assimilation in language, dress, names, customs, which had been initiated by the Jewish Enlightenment,
some secular educated Galician Jews considered as necessary
step  to  integration  with  the  society.  The  initiative  for  religious  reforms,  which
appeared first in certain Galician Jewish communities already in the 1840s, mostly
due to influence from German and Viennese Jews, became more advanced in the
1880s and 1890s. Transformation of some aspects of Jewish life in Galicia is clearly
shown  by  the  example  of  the  burial  reforms  and  refrom  rite  sermon  in  the
synagogues.
One of the central issues in modern Jewish history is the degree to which
Jews  have  “assimilated”,  that  is,  abandoned  the  world  of  the  traditional  Jewish
community  in  order  to  become  integrated  members  of  non-Jewish  culture  and
society. The Jewish community in Galicia was a typically Eastern community where
Jews  spoke  Yiddish  and  preserved  the  Orthodox  way  of  life  long  after  the  First
World  War.  In  the  second  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  cultural  transformation
along with social and political changes challenged the traditional Jewish way of life
and the different responses to it divided Galician Jewry ideologically. When Galician
provincial administration passed quickly from German to Polish control, the ruling
Poles engaged in an intensive Polonization campaign. Thought caught in the struggle
between the Polish and Ukrainian national movements the Jews had to conduct their
political and cultural lives without lost their economic position.
In my dissertation I focused particularly on the limits of assimilation and how
it was modified over time. I try to show how partially assimilated Jews reshape their
identity  under  the  new  circumstances.  Cultural  adaptation  included  visual
transformation,  linguistic  and  behavior  assimilation  couldn’t  guaranteed  full
acceptation and assimilation always remained incomplete. Full integration into non-
Jewish society was newer possible even for those, who devoutly wished it, even for
the baptized. But living in closer daily contact with non-Jews Galician Jews through
acquisition  of  surrounding  culture  and  some  objects  of  collective  identification
formed a group “between” tradition Jews and Gentile society.
In many ways, this research project can challenge received wisdom about
Jews, Poles and Ukrainians, about national cultures of stateless nations as affected
by the process of modernization, about strategies and choices adopted by colonial,
diasporic,  and  other  minority  communities  in  imperial  and  imperial  periphery
contexts.  Also  it  contributed  to  the  elucidation  of  basic  concepts  in  Jewish
historiography  like  “assimilation”  “acculturation”,  “integration”;  it  developed
illuminating concepts such as “cultural code” and yielded plenty of empirical studies
in social history and Gentile-Jewish relations.

Key words: Jewish population, Galicia in the second half of XIXth – early
XXth  century,  assimilation  processes,  equality,  social  integration,  borrowing
elements of culture, secularization.