The article comments on Hassidism and urban life. Hassidism was established in the eighteenth century and grew strongly during the nineteenth, while on the other hand the official Jewish community was becoming weaker and weaker under the influence of various factors, especially the ideology of the Haskala, the Enlightenment, the ideals of the French Revolution of 1789, and the growing urbanization of many Jews who were joining the ranks of the proletariat and were being influenced by socialist theories. By the latter part of the nineteenth century, Hassidism had gamed a foothold among the population of medium-sized towns of Eastern Galicia. Most Jews in the U.S. until the late 1960s wished to follow the American way of life and before the Second World War the Eastern European rebbes discouraged their adherents from emigrating to the U.S., which they feared would be particularly harmful for those who were to follow a hassidic life-style. Thus, except for one case, there were no hassidic settlements anywhere in Western Europe none in Paris, in Brussels, in Amsterdam, or in London, for example.