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 Incipit - definition of L. Baeck as ""assimilated Jew"" 

The statement ""Baeck represented the modern assimilated Central European Jew"" is misleading; 
Baeck, undisputed moral and political leader of the German Jewry in Nazi Germany and 
president of the Reichsvertretung der deutschen Juden („Reich’s Deputation of the German 
Jews“), cannot be labeled as an „assimilated jew“.

From a sociological point of view, an authoritative definition that resumes the current 
research stand on the phenomenon of assimilation can be founded in 
J. Milton Yinger: Toward a Theory of Assimilation and Dissimilation. In: Ethnic and Racial 
Studies. Volume 4 Number 3, July 1981, p. 249-264, already quoted in the german-speaking 
Wikipedia article about assimilation (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assimilation_%28Soziologie%29, 16.09.2012). 
Here a quote from Yinger 1981, p. 249  „Assimilation is a process of boundary reduction, 
that can occur when members of two or more societies or of smaller cultural groups meet. 
Seen as a complete process, it is the blending into one of formerly distinguishable 
socio-cultural groups“ 

In the Jewish Virtual Library, „assimilation“ is described with relation to jewish modern 
history as „the sociocultural process in which the sense and consciousness of association 
with one national and cultural group changes to identification with another such group, 
so that the merged individual or group may partially or totally lose its original 
national identity“
(http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0002_0_01522.html, 16.09.2012)

The definition of Baeck as an „assimilated Jew“ represents a misunderstanding of his 
commitment to liberalism and integration and as such should be removed.

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