Also other: Lucien Wolf, Roman Catholics and the making of Anglo-Jewish identity

In my dissertation Also Other: Lucien Wolf, Roman Catholics, and the Making of Anglo-Jewish Identity I follow the career of noted diplomat, journalist and historian Lucien Wolf (1857--1930), highlighting the particular role analogy played in the construction of his diaspora Jewish identity. Wolf's life and work provide insight into an important nexus of questions concerning diaspora Jewish self-conception. At the beginning of the 20th century a hyphenated Anglo-Jewish identity was not a given but a position that required definition, both in terms of Jewish communal needs, English needs, and, I contend, with an eye on England's religious minority par excellence, Roman Catholics. In several of Lucien Wolf's writings, he drew comparisons between the Jewish and Roman Catholic communities living in England, and in doing so highlighted the necessary role analogy played in his identity formation. To demonstrate Wolf's use of analogical reasoning in Anglo-Jewish identity formation, I examine specific textual instances when the experiences of England's Roman Catholics informed Wolf's construction of a viable Anglo-Jewish identity, i.e. where Wolf's analogical sensibility is evident. Analogical thinking does not focus on someone's conception of `the other' but focuses on the relationship to those identified as 'also other.' This type of analogical reasoning can happen in a diachronic mode (i.e. a minority community looks to the historical experiences of other minority communities in the same political and/or cultural sphere) or in a synchronic mode (i.e. a minority community identifies another group with concurrent shared interests in the same political and/or cultural sphere). My work on Lucien Wolf and analogical reasoning in diaspora identity formation is particularly beneficial to Jewish Studies, Catholic Studies, Religious Studies and English history, and informs the scholarship of diaspora, religious identity construction, and interreligious understanding more broadly.