Jewish admission into society hinged on perceived exotic difference, not similarity

Evidence

If Jewishness as exceptionalness was the reason for admitting Jews, then those were preferred who were clearly “a solid troop, homogeneous within itself and utterly dissimilar to the people who watched them go past,” those who had not yet “reached the same stage of assimilation” as their upstart brethren. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 263

Categorization

• XREF: Directly anticipates the ‘exception Jew’ versus group dynamic that Arendt develops in later chapters as the distinction between personal privilege and collective statelessness.