The pattern is familiar: the first generation retained its accent, its knowledge of Hebrew (sometimes even publishing learned commentaries in the ancestral tongue), keeping accounts and business correspondence in Yiddish or Ladino, and even sometimes keeping its beards. Their lives were coloured by the habits of the last family address: Hamburg, Altona, Amsterdam or Frankfurt. But in the next generation, beards, accents and any vestiges of distinguishing dress had all gone, the patriarchs and matriarchs accepting the assimilation, if not always happily.
