The Origins of Totalitarianism (Penguin Modern Classics)

by Hannah Arendt

Slowly, and with misgivings, they were forced away from the more rigorous demands of Jewish law – they never left religious traditions altogether – yet demanded all the more orthodoxy from the Jewish masses.fn17 The dissolution of Jewish communal autonomy made them that much more eager not only to protect Jewish communities against the authorities, but also to rule over them with the help of the state, so that the phrase denoting the ‘double dependence’ of poor Jews on ‘both the government and their wealthy brethren’ only reflected reality.fn18 The Jewish notables (as they were called in the nineteenth century) ruled the Jewish communities, but they did not belong to them socially or even geographically.