Christian self-identity was constitutively dependent on ongoing Jewish estrangement

Evidence

The self-identity of Christianity was, in fact, estrangement of the Jews. It was born of the rejection by the Jews. It drew its continuous vitality from the rejection of the Jews. Christianity could theorize its own existence only as an on-going opposition to the Jews. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 130

Categorization

• XREF: Constitutive-other mechanism (identity built on opposition to a co-terminal Other) transfers to Islamophobia’s positioning of Muslims relative to Western/Christian selfhood. — connects to: Jewish survival depended on voluntary self-separation, not on Gentile persecution. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 18; Jews and Muslims occupied a shared proximity-distancing position in Christian self-definition; Identity is constructed through opposition to a continuously reinterpreted other (+5 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The structural insight that an identity can be vicariously, symbiotically dependent on the very Other it rejects — the Other’s persistence is required for the self’s continuity.

Related

• Jewish survival depended on voluntary self-separation, not on Gentile persecution. (similarity 0.83)
• Medieval Christians used Jewish identity as a template to define themselves by exclusion (similarity 0.80)
• Christian identity both needs and exterminates its Jewish model (similarity 0.79)
• Jews and Muslims occupied a shared proximity-distancing position in Christian self-definition (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Identity is constituted through exclusion of what it is not #expands (0.90)
• Jews and Muslims occupied a shared proximity-distancing position in Christian self-definition #expands (0.85)
• Identity is constructed through opposition to a continuously reinterpreted other #expands (0.82)
• State benevolence toward Jews deliberately preserved their felt separateness #exemplifies (0.80)