Assimilation stripped Jewish identity of political meaning and converted it into a psychological trait.

Evidence

Jewish origin, without religious and political connotation, became everywhere a psychological quality, was changed into “Jewishness,” and from then on could be considered only in the categories of virtue or vice. If it is true that “Jewishness” could not have been perverted into an interesting vice without a prejudice which considered it a crime, it is also true that such perversion was made possible by those Jews who considered it an innate virtue. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 264

Categorization

• DEFINE: Articulates Arendt’s conversion-mechanism: secularized identity as psychological quality framed only in moral categories of virtue/vice.
• XREF: Connects to the Construction of the Other strand of Module 2 — identity reduced to essence rather than political position relates to Orientalism’s essentialized Other.