Assimilated German Jews were trapped in a double differentiation from both worlds

Evidence

In order to rationalize an ambiguity which they themselves did not fully understand, they might pretend to “be a man in the street and a Jew at home.” This actually amounted to a feeling of being different from other men in the street because they were Jews, and different from other Jews at home because they were not like “ordinary Jews.” — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 218

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the psychology of the colonized or racialized subject torn between two audiences — echoes the double-consciousness dynamic that W.E.B. Du Bois describes and that later Islamophobia readings of ‘the model minority’ or ‘the good immigrant’ assume. — connects to: Assimilated German Jews returned to tradition in response to nominal equality and rising anti-Semitism — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 207; Jewish racialization varies with historical stability and splits along West-East rather than unified lines — Nasar Meer, Racialization and Religion: Race,…, 39; Wealthy German Jews saw themselves as fully German until forced out in the 1930s (+1 more)
• DEFINE: Captures the mechanism of assimilation as productive of a distinct psychosocial type, not the erasure of difference.