Ablaze with excitement, effervescent with creativity-late nineteenth-century Vienna was the ideal site for this analysis of the ways in which a sizable and significant group of Jews was assimilated into European society.

After leaving homes in the Austrian and Hungarian provinces and migrating to the Austrian capital, the Jews underwent a variety of profound changes. The Jews of Vienna shows how they successfully transformed old, identifiably Jewish patterns of behavior into modern urban variations, without abandoning their ethnic identity in the process. Marsha L. Rozenblit describes the Jews' migration to Vienna, the occupational changes they experienced in the city, where and how they lived, the various means they used to achieve social integration, and the vibrant network of Jewish organizations they established.

As they evolved new patterns of urban Jewish life, the Viennese immigrants also created ideologies which defined the place of the Jew in European society. Rozenblit shows how this urbanization led to social change while simultaneously providing the necessary demographic foundation for continued Jewish identity in modern Europe.