  ==Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews== It's not accurate to say that Jewish people in Europe were not assimilated by choice and discrimination. Sephardic Jews were an integral part of Spain and Portugal before their expulsion; even though they kept their own religion, that does not mean they intended to return to Palestine. Similarly, it's not clear that most Ashkenazi Jews would have left Germany, Russia or Poland without pressure from those populations against them. That's an oversimplification to say they did not assimilate.  In the late 19th c. German Jews were well assimilated.  