Page - 159 - in Entangled Entertainers - Jews and Popular Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna

From Diff erence to Similarity | 159 tian church service demonstrates, I argue, at least a temporary dissolution of religious boundaries, especially with Jewish churchgoers actively participating in Mass. Isak experiences this overcoming of boundaries at Burgai’s baptism in A Tale from Yesteryear. In her telling of the events, Gertrud emphasizes that Isak even prayed along with everyone else and in doing so was no diff erent from the rest of the Christians present. Th e religious divisions between Isak and the others, however, do not disappear. Rather, these divisions express a sense of dis- tance between them. Although Isak prays with the other baptismal guests, he does so by retreating to a corner in the back of the sacred space.29 Th e common activity of praying thus reveals a similarity between the Jew Isak and the other non-Jewish attendees. It does not indicate equality between them, but rather reveals a Jewish–non-Jewish diff erence. Hirsch had similar personal experiences in reality (outside the diegetic world of his plays). When he was at the church during the consecration of the Volkssänger fl ag and stood next to Karl Lueger, he felt connected to the Viennese Volkssänger community. At the same time, he was aware that he could not celebrate the mayor, since Lueger was an antisemite and he himself was Jewish. Th e visit to the church reminded Hirsch that being Jewish can also mean a lack of belonging.30 “Similarity” is admittedly a vague term.31 Th e vagueness of this term lies less in its theoretical detachment than in its everyday application and the numerous meanings resulting from its usage. Similarity constitutes more of a basic category of experience and classifi cation with which everyone seems to be familiar than an analytical tool.32 Nonetheless, similarity may prove to be a particularly produc- tive concept for the fi eld of Jewish studies. It contradicts all ideas of Jewish for- eignness that have determined social interactions between Jews and non-Jews for centuries. In terms of a Jewish–non-Jewish dichotomy, these prejudicial ideas are still unfortunately widespread today. To some degree, as I demonstrated in chap- ter 1, they even continue to exert an infl uence on current historiographies that rely on the assimilationist narrative. By questioning the dependency on norma- tive cultures and emphasizing the maintenance of diff erence, the concept of sim- ilarity points to the inadequacy of the assimilation and acculturation narrative.33 No other fi gure of argumentation opposes antisemitic thinking like the con- cept of similarity. We may to some degree reasonably argue that throughout his- tory, antisemitic animosity has been all the more rabid and the insistence on an unbridgeable divide between Jews and non-Jews has been all the more ve- hement as the similarities between the two increasingly emerged. In this sense, there seems to be a general connection between similarity and rejection. Only a common foundation makes it possible for one to defame the other, in this case for non-Jews to radically reject Jews and even to deny them the right to exist.34 Little Kohn illustrates this point. On the one hand, Spitzer wants to get rid of Kohn. He endeavors, as he puts it, to “de-Kohn” (entkohnen) himself by eradi- cating any biological traces of Kohn. However, Spitzer is unsuccessful. Leopold This open access edition has been made available under a CC BY 4.0 license thanks to the support of Knowledge Unlatched.