Jews and the Diaspora

In the eighteenth century, jews were confronted with the term religion. The term had also taken on additional meanings in the context of protestantism and the emergent secular state. Religion was now considered an individual, intimate, spiritual and private matter that should have no bearing on a citizen's relationship to the state or life in public. When vews were asked whether religion was compatible with citizenship, it was not an open-minded question. Jews were asked how they could ever be loyal to their new fatherlands given that they identified themselves as a people in the diaspora, a nation, even in the Diasbur. They held it against them that they did not usually intermarry