ABSTRACT
In terms of time and space, this chapter deals with a very small portion of Jewish migrations over the past five centuries. It records the struggle of an immigrant generation to establish itself in a strange land, and examines the dilemmas of their sons over the linked issues of assimilation and retention of Jewish identity. It does this by comparing literary descriptions of events with situations recorded by historians and other social commentators. Whereas nineteenth-century Jews were represented by Jews in Anglo-Jewish novels of the time for a primarily non-Jewish audience, the literature of the twentieth century appears to have little of this mediating role.1
