Jews’ secret signs guarded an identity everyone already knew

Evidence

Although these cliques had no consistency in themselves and dissolved as soon as no members of other cliques were around, their members used a mysterious sign-language as though they needed something strange by which to recognize each other. Proust reports at length the importance of such signs, especially for newcomers. While, however, the inverts, masters at sign-language, had at least a real secret, the Jews used this language only to create the expected atmosphere of mystery. Their signs mysteriously and ridiculously indicated something universally known: that in the corner of the salon of the Princess So-and-So sat another Jew who was not allowed openly to admit his identity but who without this meaningless quality would never have been able to climb into that corner. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 268

Categorization

• XREF: Previews the paradox the book develops: the Jew as pariah who must simultaneously conceal and cannot conceal an identity society itself has defined.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how does a sign-system guarding a ‘universally known’ secret function — is it paying ritual tribute to the fiction of concealment rather than protecting anything?