German society defined Jewishness as a bodily essence no assimilation could erase

Evidence

Could one be a German who just happened to be a Jew, just as the narrator desires to be a German with Turkish and Jewish ancestry? The historical answer is clearly no. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 770 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Disraeli came from an entirely assimilated family; his father, an enlightened gentleman, baptized the son because he wanted him to have the opportunities of ordinary mortals. He had few connections with Jewish society and knew nothing of Jewish religion or customs. Jewishness, from the beginning, was a fact of origin which he was at liberty to embellish, unhindered by actual knowledge. The result was that somehow he looked at this fact much in the same way as a Gentile would have looked at it. He realized much more clearly than other Jews that being a Jew could be as much an opportunity as a handicap. … He knew instinctively that everything depended upon the “division between him and mere mortals,” upon an accentuation of his lucky “strangeness.” — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 228 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: No degree of conformity made Jews’ social membership secure in Weimar Germany — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 14; Horkheimer could not determine whether his persecution targeted his politics or his Jewishness.; Jewishness in contemporary England functions as visible bodily otherness rather than belonging — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 760 (+11 more)

Broader Connections

• German Jews could never be Germans who merely happened to be Jews #corroborates (0.93) — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 770
• Assimilated Jews could reconstruct Jewishness as a chosen performance rather than a fixed fate #complicates (0.88) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 228