Jewish salon society was deliberately built on the fringe of respectable society

Evidence

Her original, unspoiled, and unconventional intelligence, combined with an absorbing interest in people and a truly passionate nature, made her the most brilliant and the most interesting of these Jewish women. The modest but famous soirées in Rahel’s “garret” brought together “enlightened” aristocrats, middle-class intellectuals, and actors—that is, all those who, like the Jews, did not belong to respectable society. Thus Rahel’s salon, by definition and intentionally, was established on the fringe of society, and did not share any of its conventions or prejudices. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 201

Categorization

• XREF: This is the proto-case of Arendt’s later argument about pariah society and how the excluded constitute their own alternative social sphere. — connects to: Turn-of-century Jewish society women could be frank about sex and ideas — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 116