European Jews questioned Christian dichotomies primarily because those categories blocked assimilation

Evidence

Jews found themselves in a Europe constructed upon a series of evolving dichotomies: Christendom and Islam, Europe and Asia, West and East, Aryan and Semite. The Jews posed a challenge to these dichotomies on practically every level. At first, their role was passive, as others debated their proper classification. By the nineteenth century, Jews had entered the debate, questioning not just their classification, but the very validity of the dichotomies. Such dichotomies were regarded as obstacles to assimilation, which remained the dominant project of central and western European Jewry from the French Revolution to the Holocaust. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 634

Categorization

• XREF: Analyzing how colonized/subaltern groups internalize or reject the epistemic categories imposed on them connects to postcolonial theory and the author’s broader interest in how the ‘oriental’ subject positions against the orientalist gaze.