It took my related finals on Modern Man and Religiosity and on the Problems with Universal Claims of Liberalism in the fall semester 1997 at Georgetown to understand that my rather parochial identification of myself as a Jew might conflict with liberal claims on citizenship, a problem that I had not perceived earlier, and now believe somewhat solvable through Tocqueville and the latest Rawls (Political Liberalism).

I have attempted to document these problems of conflicting claims in the form of quotations all taken from Peter Pulzers EMANCIPATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS - The German-Jewish Dilemma.

There is another page on Jewish critiques of the universal claims of the Enlightenment.
 

"The great noble business of government is so to diminish the principles of exclusion of all societies that they cease to harm the great connection that embraces them all [...] It will have achieved its great aim when the nobleman, the peasant, the scholar, the artisan, the Christian and the Jew is more than all of this, a citizen."
Christian Wilhelm Dohm, Über die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Juden, 1781-83

"Nothing for the Jews as a nation, everything for the Jews as individuals."
Comte de Clermont-Tonnere, Frensh National Assembly, 1789

"Jews want to distinguish themselves from their fellow-citizens in no respect except through their own inherited of freely chosen form of worship... The state has the undeniable right to demand the fulfillment of general civic duties as a condition for granting civic rights; but there is no state in Germany in which Jews would not be ready to accept these duties and burdens."
Gabriel Riesser, Gesammelte Schriften II, around 1850 (Riesser was Jewish)

"Entry into a great nation exacts its price [...]  It is (the Jews) duty (...) to divest themselves to the best of their ability of their peculiarities and to knock down all barriers betweent themselves and and the other German fellow-citizens with a determined hand."
Theodor Mommsen, sterling opponent of antisemitism, around 1870

"In vain the Jews have proved, in theoretical  and practical terms, that except in their worship and a few charitable institutions they have no particular and common concerns, that they belong, with all their hearts and possessions to the people, that they have transplanted themselves to all areas of life, spiritual as well as material, and submerged themselves in all all sectors of public and cultural life. All to no avail; again and again they are repulsed and described in the daily press and even in scholarly works as a special class or caste."
Allgemeine Jüdische Zeitung, 1878

"We are Germans, because it is impossible for us, given what we are, not to be Germans [...] We can only be good Jews today if we are good Germans, but we can be good Germans only if we are good Jews."
Heymann Steinthal, 1925 (Jewish)

"(Prevalent antisemitism around 1890 presented) Jews and their Gentile Liberal well-wishers (...) with a dilemma. Should they give up the hopes they had invested in the Enlightenment project, one that aimed at creating a society in which all those features that divide one group from another, whether through the accident of birth or through religious affiliation, would loose their salience? [...] The great majority of German Jews did not abandon the Enlightenment project: indeed, it survived until 1933 and even beyond. The exceptions were the Orthodox minority, who had never wanted to be merged with a secular society in which the Sabbath was no longer sacred. [...] The (Verein zur Abwehr des Antisemitismus), whose leadership was with the parties of the Liberal Left, stuck to the strict assimilationist line that had been preached by German emancipators from Humboldt to Mommsen... It was deeply suspicious of any Jewish associational life, whether among students or in sports or in any leisure pursuits. Such activities smacked of speratism, which ran counter to its interpretation of the Enlightenment Project."
Peter Pulzer, Emancipation and its Discontents, 1997

"Jews throve visibly - and suffered invisibly."
Fritz Stern (Jewish historian)

"In the days of every German Jews's youth there is a painful moment which he remembers for the whole of his life: when he becomes fully conscious for the first time that he has entered the world as a second-class citizen and that no skill or merit can ever free him from that condition."
Walther Rathenau, 1918 (Jewish)

"Despite their rationalism, Jews had the feeling that there must be something in Judaism that was to be effective for the world and for humanity."
Ludwig Holländer, 1928 (Jewish)

"The drive towards unqualified assimilation (of the Enlightenment Project) had led to losses of identity and self-confidence without adequate compensating gains. A new generation of German Jews, even politically liberal adherents of Reform Judaism, was trying to find a niche in a more pluralistic order - or at least hoping for a more pluralist order in which to find a niche. [...] Finally, what do these 150 years of German-Jewish co-existence teach us about the viablitity of the Enlightenment project for Jewish-Gentile relations: Its failure in Germany was not inevitable; nothing is inevitable. But the ease with which it was overthrown, the indifference with which most Gentile Germans viewed the swiftness and completenness of disemancipation showed that in Germany this project was more vulnerable to external shocks than elsewhere in the advanced world."
Peter Pulzer, Emancipation and its Discontents, 1997