ABSTRACT
Jewish acculturation, integration, and emancipation advanced—or in some cases lagged—roughly in step with the fundamental changes occurring in the surrounding societies as they left behind the traditional ways of the old regime. In England, acculturation and integration were well advanced before the 1770s, the decade usually designated as the turning point in the modernization of German Jewry. The fundamental reason for the failure of German-Jewish patterns to be duplicated in England was the radically different political and social circumstances in which English Jews lived. In comparison to Central Europe there was little violent antipathy to Jews in England, although substantial prejudice and insensitivity still colored daily relations. The emancipation experience of Anglo-Jewry reflected the liberal character of state and society in England, just as its patterns of acculturation and integration derived from social and political conditions there and not currents of thought emanating from Central Europe.
