Jewish Destinies: Citizenship, State, and Community in Modern France

336 Pages·2000·4.552 MB·English

by  Pierre Birnbaum, Arthur Goldhammer

JEWI SH
DES T I NI ES
ALSO BY PIERRE BIRNBAUM
Antisemitism in France: A Political History from Léon Blum to the Present
States and Collective Action: The European Experience
The Heights of Power: An Essay on the Power Elite in France
The Jews of the Republic: A Polit ical History of State Jews in France
from Gambetta to Vichy
J E W I S H
D E S T I N I E S
C itizenship, State,
and Community
in Modern France
P I E R R E
B I R N B A U M
Translated by Arthur Goldhammer
(jjl) HILL AND WANG
A division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux
i
New York
Hill and Wang
A division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux
19 Union Square West, New York 10003
Copyright © 1995 by Calmann-Lévy
Translation copyright © 2000 by Arthur Goldhammer
All rights reserved
Distributed in Canada by Douglas & McIntyre Ltd.
Printed in the United States of America
Designed by Abby Kagan
First published in 1995 by Calmann-Lévy, France, as Destins juifs:
De la Révolution française à Carpentras
First published in the United States by Hill and Wang
First edition, 2000
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bimbaum, Pierre.
[Destins juifs. English]
Jewish destinies : citizenship, state, and community in modem
France / Pierre Bimbaum ; translated by Arthur Goldhammer.— 1st
ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8090-6101-5
1. Jews—France—Politics and government. 2. Jews—Emancipation—
France. 3. Antisemitism—France. 4. France—Ethnic relations.
I. Title. j
DS135.F83B5713 2000
305.892'4044—dc21 99-16275
Contents
Preface to the A m e'rican Edition vii
Introduction 3
PART I DIFFERENT ROADS TO EMANCIPATION
1. A Jacobin Regenerator: A bbe Grégoire 11
2. Responding to the Revolution 31
3. From Court Jews to State Jews 45
4. The Love of Learning: Sociologists and
Their Roots 64
PART II THE SCOPE OF THE OPPOSITION
5. The Drumont Paradigm 101
6. The Era of Leagues 116
7. The Hidden Face of the Republican State 141
8. Military Passion Thwarted 154
9. Jews, Italians, and A rabs: Public V iolence
Vio 178
and Private Ce n c e
r
PART III THE UNKNOWN PRESENT
10. On Secularism 191
11. Identity and Public Space 214
12. Carpentras, or the Toppling of Clermont-
Tonnerre 229
Conclusion 252
A fterword: 1999 260
Notes 279
Index 317

f
Preface to the American Edition
The modem history of the Jews of France was shaped by the French
Revolution and its universalist message: from the time of the Revolu­
tion forward, France has conceived of itself as a progressive nation
serving as a beacon to others and rejecting all vestiges of the past.
Implicit in the so-dalled'regeneration of the French nation was the
idea that the Revolution had brought forth a “new man.” Yet, at the
same time, it continued the centralizing thrust of the absolute monar­
chy, crushing the resistance of those who clung to any identity other
than that of citizen. The Revolution’s liberal phase ended with the
victory of the Jacobins, who, led by Maximilien de Robespierre and
Louis de Saint-Just, seized power, overcame the Girondin opposition
exemplified by men like Honoré-Gabriel Riqueti de Mirabeau, and
governed with an iron hand. The Jacobins bitterly fought every effort
to preserve the past: in particular, they led a merciless assault on the
Catholic Church as well as on groups that championed the interests
of a particular province or linguistic minority. As a result, social plu­
ralism suffered a devastating blow, while the prospect of a homoge­
neous society was embraced. The resulting defeat of cultural
vin / Preface
pluralism and liberalism was to have a lasting effect on the destiny of
the Jews.
The French model of Jewish emancipation therefore led to a rup­
ture with the past and to condemnation of the very idea of a “Jewish
community.” In the United States and Great Britain, by contrast, re­
nunciation of identity was not an implicit part of Jewish emancipa­
tion. In these societies, the state playedi a less pervasive role than in
France. Liberalism and pluralism were fundamental principles that
encouraged decentralization along with representation for all social
groups and cultural or “ethnic” communities (whereas the word “eth­
nic” does not exist in the French political vocabulary and is alien to
French political tradition). Local politics and organizations of all
sorts flourish in these countries. Jews are free to participate in Jewish
community life as they see fit and to maintain their own decentralized
religious organizations. Like other groups, they may try to pressure
politicians and influence decisions through campaigns, lobbying, and
other perfectly legitimate activities. In France, however, because of
the Revolution’s opposition to intermediating structures between the
state and its citizens, nothing of the sort exists. But the French model
of emancipation has yielded a compensatory benefit: because of its
insistence on the equality of all citizens, it created an environment in
which Jews as individuals were able to obtain public employment,
serve in government, and rise to positions of prestige and promi­
nence. These opportunities had an unexpected consequence, how­
ever: as Jews became increasingly visible, anti-Semitism in France
attained an extraordinary level of verbal violence. In some ways, one
might argue that France was the country that achieved the most radi­
cal emancipation of the Jews and, in the late nineteenth century, the
most vehement opposition to that emancipation.
In the United States and Great Britain, emancipation did not entail
renunciation of one’s Jewish identity. Jews long kept faith with their
communities and traditions. Where assimilation took place, it was the
result of individual decisions rather than state policy. Most Jews thus
continued to participate in civil society. They joined private organiza­
tions, and many chose careers in the professions or the business
world. They did not go into politics or civil-service jobs. These
Preface / ix
choices were reinforced by the tact that the most prestigious private
universities, such as Harvard, Princeton, and Yale in the United
States and Oxford and Cambridge in Britain, remained closed to Jews
until well into the twentieth century. By contrast, such prestigious
French institutions as the 'Ecole Polytechnique and the Ecole Nor­
male Supérieure accepted qualified Jews from the early nineteenth
century. Similarly, Jews in the United States are still excluded from
some clubs and wealthy residential communities, whereas in Franée
residence is unrestricted and they have little difficulty in rising to au­
thoritative positions in government. On the other hand, anti-Semitism
in the English-speaking countries is mainly social and has generally
not taken the form of anti-Jewish political movements. Jewish life in
these democratic societies has therefore been relatively tranquil.
Jews there have never had to face the dangers that the Jews of France
or the Weimar Republic faced when the republican model collapsed.
Although they may have to contend with many prejudices in their
daily lives and are excluded from certain restricted circles, they have
not had to face the bloody pogroms that devastated the Jewish com­
munities of Poland, Russia, and Romania. Relations between Ameri­
can and British Jews and the societies in which they live have been
different from relations between French Jews and French society: un­
til recently, the public role of American and British Jews has been
limited; they have had relatively little influence on political parties,
and their ideological commitment has been moderate, to say the
least.
Another important difference deserves mention: France has long
been regarded as “the eldest daughter of the Church.” French society
has been fundamentally Catholic, and its values, traditions, holidays,
and rituals have been steeped in Catholicism alone. The emancipa­
tion of the Jews must therefore be seen against the background of the
struggle between state and church. During the absolute monarchy as
well as during the Revolution, the state attempted to exert control
over the Church by appointing its priests, monitoring its budget, and
revamping its operations so as to undermine its prestige. The state
naturally sought to exert similar control over other religions. Under
Napoleon, for example, steps were taken to subject Jews to the con­
x / Preface
trol of “consistories” set up by the government. By the end of the
nineteenth century, however, it was clear that these efforts to control
the Church had failed, and the state opted instead for a radical sepa­
ration of church and state. Religion was to have no presence
whatsover in the public sphere: in politics, the schools, the army, the
courts, and so on. The state also severed its ties to “the synagogue”:
the fundamental principle of secularism implied that organized reli­
gion had no place in either government or the public schools. In the
United States, despite the “wall” that is supposed to separate church
and state, public values are deeply influenced by religion and the
Bible. The American “civil religion” is based on a plurality of reli­
gious identities within a generalized moral consensus upon which
American democracy is widely believed to rest. In many ways, the
United States sees itself as “the new Israel.” The Old Testament is
still a force, and social values bear the stamp of Biblical times. To be
sure, there were bloody conflicts between Protestants and Catholics
in nineteenth-century America, but not, as in France, between
Catholics and Jews. (Readers unfamiliar with French history may
wish to bear in mind that in France the sixteenth-century Wars of Re­
ligion virtually wiped out Protestantism.)
Thus the status of Judaism in the American democracy differs in
virtually every respect from the status of Judaism in the French Re­
public. In America, Judaism has been a part of the cultural land­
scape since the time of the first European settlements. Jews have
existed in France much longer, of course, but before the Revolution
Judaism was seen as an alien presence in a society shaped by victo­
rious Catholicism. Later, with the triumph of the Republic and the
principle of secularism and emancipation on the universalist model,
Judaism was banished from the public sphere along with all other
forms of religious expression, though this sphere still bears the im­
press of its Catholic cultural matrix. In France, then, the fate of the
Jews has been caught'up in a historical conflict between church and
state in which Jews have been mere onlookers. French Jews have pro­
ceeded along a chaotic path, which has yielded both brilliant success
and dismal failure. It is this path that I hope to retrace in the pages
that follow.