Ministers of a foreign power

Ezra and Nechemia were officials in the Persian court. The entire rabbinic regime was designed by men who identified themselves as ministers of a foreign power.  So much of Jewish identity is bound up in non-Jewish centers of power – Avraham, Yosef, Moshe, Ezra, etc. These figures were not just Jews with powerful positions in foreign cultures; they were leaders and founders of Jewish communities and institutions while they held positions in foreign courts. 

Jews are, in their very essence, ethnically and politically impure.