The Transformation of the Jews is an interpretation of modern Jewish history viewed from the perspective of sociological modernization. After presenting their theoretical stance, the authors provide a model of Jewish communities in pre-modem Europe, and analyze the initial phases of modernization there, discussing social and economic change, political processes, and the emergence of new religious ideologies and institutions. Subsequent sections compare the transformation of Jewish communities in Western and Eastern Europe, examine the formation and current shape of American Jewry, and discuss historical and contemporary trends in Israel. The analysis focuses on structural factors such as population size, marriage choices, residence patterns, occupational concentration, the presence or absence of class conflict, and the nature of communal institutions and political configurations, including both the external constraints placed on organized Jewish life and the development of political competition among Jewish groups. By comparing how these factors played a role in the different settings mentioned, the study seeks to highlight their explanatory power. For example, the migration of Jews to large cities in Western Europe, where there were previously no organized Jewish communities, is juxtaposed to modernization in the urban centres of Eastern Europe in which there was a long-standing tradition of Jewish institutions. The latter might undergo change, but did not have to be created anew and thereby could have a more immediate impact on the new forms of behaviour of individual Jews. Similarly, economic growth in Western Europe allowed the rapid occupational mobility of Jews who entered similar professions, sustaining Jewish cohesion, while the slowness of economic development in the East, coupled with rapid population growth in the nineteenth century, created a Jewish proletariat, in conflict with Jewish employers, and yielded corresponding organizations and ideologies (e.g., the Bund).

A number of themes recur while pursuing the comparative analysis. Jewish ‘cohesion’ is viewed in terms of ‘peaceful interaction’ with other Jews, rather than a mental state. As such, contemporary forms of organizational life and the concentration of Jews in certain neighbourhoods or professions are seen as evidence of continuity, an outlook which does not portray widespread assimilation within Jewish society. Along the same lines, intermarriage is not viewed as necessarily threatening to the perpetuation of Jewish life, for in many modem settings it reached only modest proportions, and occurred among individuals who were marginal to the community.