Emancipation threatened assimilated Jews’ social distinction more than their persecution

Evidence

This indifference to political and civil rights survived Mendelssohn’s innocent relationships with the learned and enlightened men of his time; it was carried later into the salons of those Jewish women who gathered together the most brilliant society Berlin was ever to see. Not until after the Prussian defeat of 1806, when the introduction of Napoleonic legislation into large regions of Germany put the question of Jewish emancipation on the agenda of public discussion, did this indifference change into outright fear. Emancipation would liberate the educated Jews, together with the “backward” Jewish people, and their equality would wipe out that precious distinction, upon which, as they were very well aware, their social status was based. When the emancipation finally came to pass, most assimilated Jews escaped into conversion to Christianity, characteristically finding it bearable and not dangerous to be Jews before emancipation, but not after. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 200

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader scaffolding topic of how legal equality (emancipation) paradoxically endangers a group’s social position — resonates with the Islamophobia field’s interest in how formal inclusion/exclusion politics operate.