DIE GESCHICHTE DES EUROPÄISCHEN JUDENTUMS DER NEUZEIT ALS MIGRATIONSGESCHICHTE.

The article describes the history of Jews in Europe from the end of the Middle Ages until the aftermath of the Second World War as a sequence of migrational processes. It thereby demonstrates how the migration paradigm can contribute to a comprehensive understanding of European Jewish history during the given period by better explaining the various types of settlement, as well as other central phenomena of Jewish existence, such as inclusion/exclusion, assimilation/acculturation, and anti-Semitism. The article tries to assess the significance of the "religious factor" within the complex interdependencies between so-called "push" and "pull" factors that determined the individual migrations. In most cases, religious motives played only a minor role, while economic factors tended to dominate, particularly in regard to the functions Jews, as members of a minority, were permitted to carry out in the context of non-Jewish majority societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]