Page - 158 - in Entangled Entertainers - Jews and Popular Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna

158 | Entangled Entertainers Jewishness does not in fact consist of a mere handful of attitudes and behaviors. Although Albert Hirsch and his colleagues only focused on individual aspects, such as charity and linguistic patterns, this may have been the result of the dis- course of the time, in which charity was generally considered important and lan- guage nationalisms had an impact on everyday life in the Habsburg capital.25 But Jewishness, one could argue, is much more comprehensive and exhibits many other diff erences. Th us, when non-Jews assume individual traits that previously characterized Jewishness, no equality is established between Jews and non-Jews, only a partial congruence. Th e fi rst point fails to consider that we can understand this congruence of individual aspects as a similarity between the two. Similarity between people or collectives means that there is neither total distinctness nor complete alignment between them. Similarity between Jews and non-Jews does not resolve diff erences between them; it indicates a gradual, rather than a funda- mental, diff erence. Th e term “similarity” refers here to a new “concept from cultural theory” that consciously diverges from the idea of binary opposites, which at least implicitly underpins scholarly work on the notion of diff erence.26 Th e concepts of hybrid- ity, dissolving borders, and alterity—concepts that have received much attention in cultural studies and postcolonial research in recent years—are all characterized by the notion of dichotomous diff erence.27 For my purposes in this study, inclu- sive diff erence—that is, similarity—underscores a relationship between Jews and non-Jews underpinned neither by dichotomous categories nor by total equality between them. Instead, this understanding of similarity focuses on points of con- tact that simultaneously maintain a distinction between the two. Th e second point that resolves the apparent incompatibility between inclu- siveness and diff erence pertains to the potential consequences of any overlap of Jewish and non-Jewish self-understanding. At times, a specifi c Jewish distinction becomes apparent. We can better register this dialectic by using the concept of inclusive diff erence than by making use of the notion of similarity. For this rea- son, I have chosen to retain the term “inclusive diff erence” throughout this study. We see inclusive diff erence vividly portrayed in various stage works that Albert Hirsch penned. Th is kind of diff erence appears in Th e Apostle of Schottenfeld, for example, in a scene in which Mr. Goldmann announces his willingness to donate to a fund to support the victims of the Ringtheater fi re.28 He identifi es with a community that commemorates members who have become victims of harsh cir- cumstances. Th ere seems to be a consensus between non-Jews and Mr. Goldmann on this point. Nevertheless, his understanding of charity underscores his particular sense of identifi cation with fellow Jews. In explaining his reasoning for off ering his fi nancial help, Mr. Goldmann points not to all victims’ need, but only to Jewish ones’. Mr. Goldmann is thereby committed to Jewish community solidarity. A sense of Jewishness that emphasizes the similarity between Jews and non- Jews is also evident in the visit to the church. Th e attendance of Jews at a Chris- This open access edition has been made available under a CC BY 4.0 license thanks to the support of Knowledge Unlatched.