Early Jewish emancipation was granted as privileged status, not universal right

Evidence

The greatest privilege was equality. When the Münzjuden of Frederick of Prussia or the court Jews of the Austrian Emperor received through “general privileges” and “patents” the same status which half a century later all Prussian Jews received under the name of emancipation and equal rights; when, at the end of the eighteenth century and at the height of their wealth, the Berlin Jews managed to prevent an influx from the Eastern provinces because they did not care to share their “equality” with poorer brethren whom they did not recognize as equals; when, at the time of the French National Assembly, the Bordeaux and Avignon Jews protested violently against the French government’s granting equality to Jews of the Eastern provinces—it became clear that at least the Jews were not thinking in terms of equal rights but of privileges and special liberties. And it is really not surprising that privileged Jews, intimately linked to the businesses of their governments and quite aware of the nature and conditions of their status, were reluctant to accept for all Jews this gift of a freedom which they themselves possessed as the price for services, which they knew had been calculated as such and therefore could hardly become a right for all. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 99

Categorization

• XREF: This connects directly to the scaffolding on ‘equality as privilege vs right’ — the distinction between granted special status and universal rights recurs throughout critical-theory and Islamophobia literatures on conditional inclusion.