Enlightenment humanism exoticized Jews to make them serve as proof of universal humanity

Evidence

This, however, is only one side of the matter. Jews were exhorted to become educated enough not to behave like ordinary Jews, but they were, on the other hand, accepted only because they were Jews, because of their foreign, exotic appeal. In the eighteenth century, this had its source in the new humanism which expressly wanted “new specimens of humanity” (Herder), intercourse with whom would serve as an example of possible intimacy with all types of mankind. To the enlightened Berlin of Mendelssohn’s time, the Jews served as living proof that all men are human. For this generation, friendship with Mendelssohn or Markus Herz was an ever-renewed demonstration of the dignity of man. And because Jews were a despised and oppressed people, they were for it an even purer and more exemplary model of mankind. It was Herder, an outspoken friend of the Jews, who first used the later misused and misquoted phrase, “strange people of Asia driven into our regions.” With these words, he and his fellow-humanists greeted the “new specimens of humanity” for whom the eighteenth century had “searched the earth,” only to find them in their age-old neighbors. Eager to stress the basic unity of mankind, they wanted to show the origins of the Jewish people as more alien, and hence more exotic, than they actually were, so that the demonstration of humanity as a universal principle might be more effective. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 196

Categorization

• XREF: Mechanism of the ‘model minority’ / ‘exotic other’ double-bind — acceptance contingent on remaining foreign. Directly parallel to how tolerated minorities must be exotic enough to be interesting but not threatening. — connects to: Adorno conceived of the Jews as the universal proletariat of the enlightenment process — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1140
• DEFINE: Arendt’s account of how philosophic universalism constructs the Other as exotic specimen stands as a working definition of the ambivalent ‘humanist tolerance’ mechanism.