British Jewish assimilation was coerced by mainstream society

Evidence

Due to their small numbers during the colonial era—fewer than two thousand—Jews were spared the high level of persecution they endured in Europe. Indeed, George Washington recognized the “children of the Stock of Abraham” when he made his famous statement that the government “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” Until the 1870s, most Jews were highly educated and affluent immigrants from Central Europe. German, French, and English Jews were willing to change their habits of dress, language, dietary practices, and even way of worshipping to comport with Protestant normalcy and thereby were more readily accepted into the American mainstream. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 254 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Those who, like Swann, had an unaccountable flair for society and taste in general were admitted; but more enthusiastically embraced were those who, like Bloch, belonged to “a family of little repute, [and] had to support, as on the floor of the ocean, the incalculable pressure of what was imposed on him not only by the Christians upon the surface but by all the intervening layers of Jewish castes superior to his own, each of them crushing with its contempt the one that was immediately beneath it.” Society’s willingness to receive the utterly alien and, as it thought, utterly vicious, cut short that climb of several generations by which newcomers had “to carve their way through to the open air by raising themselves from Jewish family to Jewish family.” — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 263 (#complicates, via linked claim)

If Jewishness as exceptionalness was the reason for admitting Jews, then those were preferred who were clearly “a solid troop, homogeneous within itself and utterly dissimilar to the people who watched them go past,” those who had not yet “reached the same stage of assimilation” as their upstart brethren. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 263 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Jewishness in contemporary England functions as visible bodily otherness rather than belonging — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 760; Society preferred unfamiliar Jews over assimilated ones as exotic objects — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 263; Jewish admission into society hinged on perceived exotic difference, not similarity — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 263 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Jewish acceptance required assimilating into Protestant mainstream norms #corroborates (0.92) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 254
• Society preferred unfamiliar Jews over assimilated ones as exotic objects #complicates (0.80) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 263
• Jewish admission into society hinged on perceived exotic difference, not similarity #complicates (0.78) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 263
• Jews challenged Europe’s binary classifications from the nineteenth century onward #complicates (0.74)