Even "European Jews" is, historically, a very nebulous category. Apart from the obvious division between Ashkenazim and Shepardim, as well as minor communities like the Romaniotes, the Italian rite, the Caucasian communities, etc., specific ethnic divisions often contained considerable diversity within themselves, and, at least outside of the Russian Empire, your average European Jew probably had more in common with his Gentile neighbours so far as non-religious matters were concerned than with a foreign Jew. It's only with the Nazi persecutions, when Jews across Europe were submitted to a systematic violence that paid absolutely no heed to their diversity, do most European Jews start to see themselves as a discrete people, and that more because the trauma of the Holocaust makes it (quite understandably) very difficult for them to ever trust European Gentiles again, than because of any positive rediscovery of latent nationhood.
). It had definitely something to do with Catholicism, and it almost certainly played a role in the civil service discrimination. In fact, the idea Belgian of identity is now losing credibility due to secularization. The Flemish-Walloon dispute would never trouble Belgian politics if the two were somehow united by their Catholic identity - which is now a shambles.
