Mendelssohn’s self-awareness of group contempt distinguished him from later assimilated Jews

Evidence

This does not, however, apply to Moses Mendelssohn, who hardly knew the thoughts of Herder, Goethe, Schleiermacher, and other members of the younger generation. Mendelssohn was revered for his uniqueness. His firm adherence to his Jewish religion made it impossible for him to break ultimately with the Jewish people, which his successors did as a matter of course. He felt he was “a member of an oppressed people who must beg for the good will and protection of the governing nation” (see his “Letter to Lavater,” 1770, in Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. VII, Berlin, 1930); that is, he always knew that the extraordinary esteem for his person paralleled an extraordinary contempt for his people. Since he, unlike Jews of following generations, did not share this contempt, he did not consider himself an exception. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2035

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the distinction between an assimilated Jew who internalizes (or ignores) group contempt and one like Mendelssohn who perceives it without self-contempt.
• XREF: The ‘esteem for person paralleling contempt for people’ is a concrete early instance of the individual-exception/general-contempt structure — a mechanism relevant to reading minority inclusion in the Islamophobia field.