The Haskalah combined with the Jewish Emancipation movement under way in Central and Western Europe to create an opportunity for Jews to enter secular society . At the same time , pogroms in Eastern Europe provoked a surge of migration , in large part to the United States , where some 2 million Jewish immigrants resettled between 1880 and 1920 . By 1931 , shortly before The Holocaust , 92 % of the World 's Jewish population was Ashkenazi in origin . Secularism originated in Europe as series of movements that militated for a new , heretofore unheard-of concept called " secular Judaism " . For these reasons , much of what is thought of by English-speakers and , to a lesser extent , by non-English-speaking Europeans as " secular Jewish culture " is , in essence , the Jewish cultural movement that evolved in Central and Eastern Europe , and subsequently brought to North America by immigrants . During the 1940s , the Holocaust uprooted and destroyed most of the Jewish communities living in much of Europe . This , in combination with the creation of the State of Israel and the consequent Jewish exodus from Arab lands , resulted in a further geographic shift
The Holocaust
The Holocaust
Jewish culture