The AJC research forced Frankfurt theorists to admit externally-imposed Jewish identity

Evidence

Understandably, Horkheimer was both attracted to and daunted by the topic. In an intensive study of anti-Semitism and Judaism, it would be extremely difficult to maintain their self-image as a small group of theoreticians living in `splendid isolation’, as strangers standing above the cultures concerned, who saw their connection with Judaism as lying solely in their affinity with certain motifs of its thought. That self-image would have to give way to a more sober one: the admission that they belonged to a Jewish minority, whose Jewish identity had been forced upon it from outside, ignoring internal differences and disregarding its various degrees of assimilation and willingness to assimilate. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1506

Categorization

• XREF: This forced-admission-of-identity theme echoes ch7’s account of assimilated German Jews returning to tradition under nominal equality and rising anti-Semitism.