sentences:  Many Jews of the era had adopted the Hellenistic language and culture, which the Maccabee group considered an abomination.Use of the vernacular is an example of acculturation, one of the key characteristics of Jewish assimilation in the modern era.Jewish assimilation began anew among Ashkenazi Jews on an extensive scale towards the end of the 18th century in Western Europe, especially Germany, as the Haskalah emerged as a culture.