Jewish social position derived from state relationship rather than class, leaving them socially void.

Evidence

In contrast to all other groups, the Jews were defined and their position determined by the body politic. Since, however, this body politic had no other social reality, they were, socially speaking, in the void. Their social inequality was quite different from the inequality of the class system; it was again mainly the result of their relationship to the state, so that, in society, the very fact of being born a Jew would either mean that one was overprivileged—under special protection of the government—or underprivileged, lacking certain rights and opportunities which were withheld from the Jews in order to prevent their assimilation. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 92

Categorization

• DEFINE: Arendt’s core distinction: state-defined group status versus class-defined status, a mechanism she later generalizes to all ‘new’ groups in statelessness.
• XREF: This ‘social void’ of a group defined by the political rather than the social anticipates Arendt’s later account of the refugee as a purely political category. — connects to: No degree of conformity made Jews’ social membership secure in Weimar Germany — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 14