Jewish intellectual assimilation shifted Jews from inter-European traders to national citizens seeking social admittance

Evidence

What had been made possible through the traditional Jewish preference and respect for intellectual occupations resulted in a real break with tradition and the intellectual assimilation and nationalization of important strata of Western and Central European Jewry. Politically, it indicated emancipation of Jews from state protection, growing consciousness of a common destiny with their fellow-citizens, and a considerable loosening of the ties that had made Jews an inter-European element. Socially, the Jewish intellectuals were the first who, as a group, needed and wanted admittance to non-Jewish society. Social discrimination, a small matter to their fathers who had not cared for social intercourse with Gentiles, became a paramount problem for them. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 183

Categorization

• DEFINE: Lays out the mechanism by which Jewish intellectual occupations reversed their prior inter-European status, dissolving them into separate national societies.
• XREF: connects to: Jewishness was transposed from a nation’s religion into a national religion — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 836; Jewish distrust grew with assimilation while Irish distrust faded — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 162