Jewish survival depended on voluntary self-separation, not on Gentile persecution.

Evidence

This factual constellation gave rise to an optical illusion under which both Jewish and non-Jewish historians have suffered ever since. Historiography “has until now dealt more with the Christian dissociation from the Jews than with the reverse,” thus obliterating the otherwise more important fact that Jewish dissociation from the Gentile world, and more specifically from the Christian environment, has been of greater relevance for Jewish history than the reverse, for the obvious reason that the very survival of the people as an identifiable entity depended upon such voluntary separation and not, as was currently assumed, upon the hostility of Christians and non-Jews. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 18

Categorization

• XREF: Reverses the common victimhood framing; connects to how the field reconstructs who initiates dissociation — relevant for understanding later constructions of the Other as passive object. — connects to: Christian self-identity was constitutively dependent on ongoing Jewish estrangement — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 130; State benevolence toward Jews deliberately preserved their felt separateness; Pre-modern caste structure made Jewish separation a normal rather than exceptional status — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 126 (+3 more)
• DEFINE: Arendt’s ‘optical illusion’ concept — historiography misreading the direction of dissociation — is a reusable analytical device for the module.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 18

Broader Connections

• Christian self-identity was constitutively dependent on ongoing Jewish estrangement #complicates (0.85) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 130
• Pre-modern caste structure made Jewish separation a normal rather than exceptional status #corroborates (0.82) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 126
• State benevolence toward Jews deliberately preserved their felt separateness #complicates (0.80)
• A stable state’s need for them kept Jews a separate protected group #corroborates (0.80)
• Modernity’s legal equality made Jewish separation a problem to be manufactured #corroborates (0.78) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 169
• Secular Jewish conceit separated them from nations more than religious law did #corroborates (0.75)