The stranger as a threshold figure

The author argues that Georg Simmel's writings, particularly in his 1908 excursus "The Stranger," recognizes the border between the social type of the stranger and actual Jews, and that any suggestion to the contrary betrays a basic misunderstanding of Simmel's perspectives. He notes that Simmel himself resisted any fixed representation, especially of claims of his Jewishness. At such point, he concludes that Jewish and non-Jewish history can no longer be distinguished.