the rise and development of the haskalah or jewish enlightenment was different in western europe and eastern europe in the west an attempt was made to strip judaism of its national character and label it merely a religion the motivation behind this was to defend recently acquired political rights and in particular the new idea that jews were citizens of the european states in which they resided in retrospect the giving of political rights to western european jewish residents was contingent on their ceasing to be jews in the traditional sense or in any sense at all the reform movement started in germany was an attempt to give religious imprimatur to these developments including rejecting the re establishment of the holy temple in jerusalem and thus naming synagogues temples in the east the haskalah led to secular jewish nationalism e g chaim zhitlowsky's ideas of which zionism was just the most successful and consequential however even in the east there were assimilationists who wanted to dissociate themselves from their heritage to gain approval of gentiles the jew that is the subject of antisemitism is an artificial construct of the roman catholic church and has no connection to flesh and blood jews it was an attempt by jews to distance themselves from the chimera of christian theology that later morphed into racism invented to attack newly acquired jewish political rights in europe that jews were attempting perhaps understandably to distance themselves from even in america there were references to hebrews instead of jews in an effort to seek approbation from gentiles and distance jews from christian mythology it should be noted that america s i e the united states but not canada s offer of citizenship was genuine and not a quid pro quo so your reference to th century hungary was out of context unexplained un encyclopedic and therefore inappropriate that is why i deleted it talk