German-Jewish idealization of eastern Jews reveals their own ideological plight

Evidence

As Steven Aschheim has rightly suggested, “the representation of the Ostjude was designed to give the German Jew a new and different picture of himself,” and he goes on to remark: “Of course, this celebration … tells us more about the ideological predicament and proclivities of these German Jews than it illuminates the realities of ghetto culture.” — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 415

Categorization

• XREF: A near-identical critical move to the reader’s own finding that the modesty-panic and sacrifice articles reveal more about the observers than the observed. — connects to: Assimilated German Jews returned to tradition in response to nominal equality and rising anti-Semitism — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 207