Although widely used in both scholarly writing and public life, the term assimilation, without modification or qualification, lacks critical rigor. Conceptually, it can encompass—and is often confused and conflated with—four analytically distinct changes in Jewish behavior and status in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: acculturation (the acquisition of the cultural and social habits of the dominant non-Jewish group), integration (the entry of Jews into non-Jewish social circles and spheres of activity), emancipation (the acquisition of rights and privileges enjoyed by non-Jewish citizens/subjects of similar socioeconomic rank), and secularization (the rejection of religious beliefs and the obligations and practices that flow from these beliefs). In Eastern Europe, as in Western Europe, these processes, while obviously influencing each other, operated in the end independently of each other. Thus, in most East European states, Jewish acculturation and secularization were well in advance of legal emancipation and social integration.
