Peter,
I was going through the archives, trying to see if my notoriously unreliable short-term memory had omitted anything of significance. I came across this, and wanted to ask you a question about it.

Peter Staudenmaier (February 23rd, 2004 to the list):
Sorry to have caused confusion. I will try to restate what I think is relevant about the concept of assimilation and its role in Rudolf Steiner's views on Jews, Judaism, and Jewishness.
Assimilation is most certainly not antisemitic in and of itself. In the Germany of Steiner's day, most Jews were firmly in favor of assimilation, and they definitely weren't antisemites; in fact the most prominent organization of pro-assimilationist Jews, the Centralverein, was also a major opponent of antisemitic agitation. There were other tendencies within German Jewry that were much more ambivalent toward assimilation, including many Orthodox Jews and many Zionists, but these were minority viewpoints at the time.

Daniel:
Summary: Assimilationist Jews are (mostly) not anti-Semitic.

Peter Staudenmaier:
Within the non-Jewish population (which is to say, the vast majority of Germans), there were many supporters and defenders of Jewish rights; these people are sometimes called philosemites (though that term, particularly in Germany, carries a quite a few complicated connotations). In my view, Steiner belonged to this stream around the turn of the century, when he published a series of articles denouncing organized antisemitism. Along with these philosemites, there were of course also many antisemites, who appeared in a great variety of ideological types, from religious antisemites to cultural antisemites to political antisemites to economic antisemites to racial antisemites and more. To complicate matters further, the range of general attitudes toward assimilation among non-Jewish Germans was spread more or less evenly across this ideological spectrum: some antisemites were in favor of assimilation, as they understood it, and others were opposed. Moreover, many philosemites also shared an emphatically pro-assimilationist perspective.

Daniel:
Non-Jewish defenders of Jewish rights are philosemites. They could also simultaneously be anit-Semites. Steiner was an anti-Semetic philosemite.

TPeter Staudenmaier:
he trouble is that for the most part, Jews and non-Jews meant very different things by the term 'assimilation'. For Jews, especially assimilationist Jews, it generally meant fuller integration into mainstream German society while retaining their Jewish identity. For many non-Jews, in contrast, assimilation meant the abandonment of Jewish identity as such. This is how Steiner understood the concept, for example. This fundamental difference greatly exacerbated the existing social conflicts surrounding the so-called "Jewish question" in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.I hope this won't muddle things even further, but it's important to keep in mind that racism and antisemitism are two different things. Although they do often coincide, there are certainly racists who are not antisemites and antisemites who are not racists. This is relevant to the contested notion of assimilation because most racial antisemites -- those who viewed Jews as racially distinct from 'German' or 'Aryans' -- opposed assimilation. However, there are instances of antisemites who favored assimilation and who also held a more or less racial conception of Jewishness; in my view, some of Steiner's mature views on Jews (after his turn to Theosophy) fall into this category.

Daniel:
Steiner was an anti-Semetic philosemite because his view of assimilation involved the loss of separate Jewish identity.

Peter Staudenmaier:
In summary: assimilation itself is neither necessarily antisemitic nor necessarily racist; it is, instead, a significant distinguishing issue in the complex debates over the status of Jews within German culture and society in Steiner's day. The difference between Jewish and gentile understandings of 'assimilation' is a mainstay of the abundant historical research on German-Jewish history; when I get back to the computer later today I will try to post a selection of quotes from various works that will hopefully give a fuller picture of this multifaceted question.

Daniel:
In the end, whether your view of assimilation is anti-Semetic or not depends entirely on whether or not your version of assimilation results in a loss of separate Jewish identity.

Daniel:
So summing the whole thing up again:
Assimilationist Jews are (mostly) not anti-Semitic. Non-Jewish defenders of Jewish rights are philosemites. They could also simultaneously be anit-Semites. Steiner was an anti-Semetic philosemite. Steiner was an anti-Semetic philosemite because his view of assimilation involved the loss of separate Jewish identity. In the end, whether your view of assimilation is anti-Semetic or not depends entirely on whether or not your version of assimilation results in a loss of separate Jewish identity.

Is this correct?

Daniel