The Jews of France : Lessons From History

 

Not so long ago it was said that French Jews, who make up less than 1% of the population, were "everywhere". Now there are signs that they are disappearing althogether from the French landscape, prompting the State's highest officials to declare that, "without Jews, France will no longer be France".

 

Since it is the task of the historian to attempt to clarify the past, I will first recall the long history of the Jewish presence in France. Many will be surprised to learn that there were already Iudaei, that is to say Judaeans (whose name has been distorted into "Jews") in Roman Gaul. We know for certain that in the year 6 CE, Augustus exiled a son of King Herod to a city named Vienna(south of Lyons) at the request of his Judaean subjects, who hated the son as much as they hated the father. Another of Herod’s sons was exiled to Lugdunum (Lyons) some thirty years later. We know nothing more about them after they were transplanted from Jerusalem or Galilee, which was outside of Judaea, then the cradle of the Jews. But even then there was such a large diaspora, fueled in part by conversions to Judaism, that some ancient historians estimate that Jews constituted up to one in ten of the population of the Roman Empire.

 

Archaeological remains from the Middle Ages have been found in Provence and Languedoc with Jewish symbols, such as the menorah, bilingual or trilingual stelae (Latin/Greek/Hebrew), and a ritual bath (miqveh). The Faculty of Medicine in Montpellier displays, among others, the names of local Jewish physicians who were active in the twelfth century. Headstones inscribed in Hebrew, found in Paris near the ruins of Cluny at the corner of Boulevard Saint Michel, are a reminder that Jews were already living there at that time.

 

In most parts of France you will find a «rue des Juifs» ("Jewish street") or a "Villejuif" which testifies to a well-established Jewish presence in the Carolingian period which was later obliterated. Medieval rabbinic sources are familiar with about 1,600 such place names of a kingdom of France, whose border were still fluctuating. These names were recorded in a scholarly volume of over six hundred pages entitled «Gallia Judaica» which was recently re-published. The most famous Jew of the Middle Ages is undoubtedly the Champagne winemaker of the tenth century, Rabbi Shlomo Itzhaqi, known by the acronym Rashi, who remains the most authoritative commentator on the Bible and the Talmud. In the late nineteenth century, philologists discovered a number of medieval French words which Rashi transcribed in Hebrew characters in his marginal notes. Through Rashi and other medieval rabbis - of Coucy, Orleans or Ramerupt in Lorraine - all the Jewish communities of the world have acquired a link with France.

 

The time of the Crusades was to end that flowering of rabbinical schools for which archaeological traces have been found in the heart of Rouen. After the second expulsion from the kingdom of France in 1394, then from Provence in the early sixteenth century, Jews remained only in peripheral areas: Metz became French in 1501, Alsace became part of France by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, the Venaissin County, an enclave offered to the Pope in 1244, Bordeaux and Bayonne. It was only on the eve of the French Revolution in 1789, after two centuries, that exiles from the Iberian Peninsula openly expressed their Jewishness.

 

The Revolution bestowed full citizenship on about 40,000 Jews. But the achievements of the Revolution entered the hearts of other Jewish communities which were still oppressed:  "Happy like God in France," proclaims a Yiddish saying. A historian of Judaism emphasizes: "In emancipating its Jewish citizens on September 27, 1791, by a vote of the Constituent Assembly, France emancipated at the same time, at least symbolically and in hope, Jews around the world."

 

When he began to re-organise France after the Revolution, Napoleon did not overlook the Jews. An assembly of 112 Jewish leaders from all parts of the empire was convened in Paris in July 1806 to "discuss ways to improve the Jewish nation" (the formula may sound a bit strange). Count Molé, a state counsellor and future prime minister, sounded a note of caution in his opening speech: "His Majesty,” said Molé, “wants you to be French; it is for you to accept such a title and make yourself worthy of it."

 

The Emperor, who was not himself free from prejudices, wanted to ensure that the Jews were willing to integrate into French society. All the answers given by the Assembly of Notables pointed in the same direction:

• Yes, the Jews regarded other French people as brothers 

• Yes, they were ready to defend the country, despite the difficulties that military service posed to their religious observances.

• Several questions concerned the Jewish personal status:

• On the question polygamy, it was easy to answer that it had been abolished within European Jewish communities since the year 1000 CE.

• Performing civil marriage and civil divorce before the religious ritual was not considered a problem.

• A more difficult question was asked about Jewish attitudes to inter-marriage. The answer was that the couple would contract a civil marriage and that the Jewish partner would not incur any penalty from his fellow Jews.

 

Satisfied with the answers, the emperor wanted to convert them into law by having them endorsed by a religious authority. Thus in 1807 he summoned what he called a « Sanhedrin » - a reference to Antiquity – 2/3 of whose members were rabbis. The rulings of the Assembly of Notables of 1806 should be translated into decisions by the weight "of a more imposing and more religious assembly" the emperor said; it should be placed next to the Talmud in order to acquire the greatest possible authority in the eyes of Jews in all countries and all the centuries". This attempt to compete with the Talmud might seem somewhat extravagant, but, as the rabbis noted, the Talmud itself could seem to support it. Indeed, in the third century, a famous Babylonian rabbi, Samuel, had formulated the fundamental dictum that has guided the behaviour of the Jews throughout the centuries in the Diaspora: Dina demalkhuta dina. "The law is the law of the country."

 

It was decided to bless France and the French people in synagogue prayers. Anyone who now attends a Saturday morning service will hear that blessing in French, still formulated in typical nineteenth century style. And if the prayers are mostly said in Hebrew, the sermon is delivered in French.

 

Napoleon, who had brought Catholicism under the protection of the State by the Concordat of 1801, did the same for Protestants and Jews who did not practice “the religion of the majority of the French people", and conferred the same advantages on them. The rabbis were paid and religious buildings were subsidised. This arrangement remained in effect until 1905 and is still in force in Alsace and Lorraine, which were part of Germany from 1870 to 1918.

 

In 1808, Napoleon also established a Jewish hierarchy which has remained almost unchanged until today, with a chief Rabbi, a main « consistoire » in Paris, as well as local « consistoires » in cities with at least 2,000 Jews. The rabbis were asked to dress more or less like catholic priests, but that practice has now fallen into disuse. 

 

The 1905 law which separated Church and State did not change this. In accordance with Article 2 of the Act (which provides that "the Republic does not recognise, pay or subsidise any cult"), the Israelite « consistoires » ceased to be public institutions and became religious associations established by law. Like Protestant churches, the Jewish establishment embraced this new order which removed the state from interference in the religious sphere, while guaranteeing the freedom of worship. Paradoxically, things were more difficult with the Catholic Church until the adoption in 1923 of a specific regime of diocesan associations created after the resumption of relations between the Vatican and the French state in 1921.

 

Taking advantage of the 1905 law, a new trend of non-consistorial Judaism appeared in France, created in 1907 on the model of German Reform Judaism. The forms of worship were inspired by Protestantism and the movement has recently split into various branches, two of which are headed by women rabbis. Strict gender equality is indeed required in the modernist movements. For more than a quarter of a century an egalitarian Conservative movement has also emerged and is seeking to find a middle way between tradition and modernity.

 

As the State is not supposed to subsidize any religious group, most communities – apart from the concordat regions of Alsace-Lorraine – now rely exclusively on annual dues, donations by congregations, and, for the Consistory alone, the tax on kosher meat. No external funding is expected, apart from funds to organise the military chaplaincy and to maintain synagogues that were built before 1905.

 

About forty years ago, small ultra-orthodox groups appeared in France. "Men in Black", recognisable by their dress, are paradoxically drawn mainly from among the Jews of North African origin, who adopted the lifestyle of Polish villages. Most live on charity and outside any official institution.

 

Existing alongside the « consistoires » is a more recent Jewish organization, known as the CRIF. This has become the subject of many fantasies as it is often accused of acting as a "lobby", an American concept that is hard to accept in France. One must remember that this organisation was born in the underground in July 1943, as the "General Committee for Jewish Defence" and aimed to rescue Jewish refugees in occupied France. Re-organised in 1944 as the “Representative Council of French Jews" (hence the acronym CRIF), it has served as an umbrella group for various associations of all political and religious trends. It later became the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (without changing its acronym) and today it unites most of the sixty major cultural and social Jewish associations in France. Most French Jews accept that the CRIF expresses the voice of the majority of Jewish citizens committed to secularism, concerned about the resurgence of anti-Semitism , BDS and systematic hostility to Israel. This makes it a valid interlocutor for the authorities.

 

Every minority is in a delicate position. This is what the persecution of Eastern Christians in the Middle East brutally reminds us today, and the commemoration of the persecutions of the Armenians yesterday. In this regard, Judaism has a long experience that makes it particularly sensitive to the first notes heralding future storms.

 

Despite Jewish integration into the general society, which can be considered a model of its type, fear has been re-kindled and antisemitism is again today the major concern of French Jews. We are now witnessing the resurgence of a protean phenomenon and are able to follow the changes through the ages to its present forms.

 

If the Jewish presence was not perpetuated continuously on French soil since ancient times and the Middle Ages, it is because of hostile demonstrations - often deadly - which intensified from the time of the Crusades. Those who could not undertake the journey to Jerusalem had a defenceless population at hand whom they considered to be guilty of no less than the crime of "deicide" - the murder of Jesus. It was commonly believed that the act of killing a Jew would provide forgiveness for all sins and spare the killers from purgatory. Uncontrolled gangs attacked the synagogues and massacred entire families of Jews. "Infidels" perished in Blois in 1171, Troyes in 1288, Strasbourg in 1349.

 

New charges arose: that the Jews were taking the blood of Christian children for making the Passover matzah; that they desecrated the host nation; that they spread the plague by poisoning water wells. The Jews were blamed for every collective misfortune, every military defeat. Their "pernicious" books were denounced and burned at the stake. Thus in 1241, Louis IX, who was later declared a saint, publicly burned the volumes of the Talmud in Paris.

 

Excluded from working the land and from the craft guilds, Jews were restricted to trading as pedlars and money-lending, an occupation that had been forbidden to Christians by the third Lateran Council of 1179. Indebtedness provided another motive for hating Jews and, periodically, led to attacks on Jewish neighbourhoods. Expulsions allowed the kings to ease their own economic difficulties - and indeed enhance their finances - as expulsions were accompanied by the confiscation of property. In France, this was the case under Philip the Fair in 1306 (who also plundered the Templars' riches) and under Charles VI in 1394.

 

Only one door remained open to Jews who did not want to go into exile: conversion to Catholicism, with increased risks of enhanced punishment if they were found to be secretly practising Judaism. After the Lateran Council of 1215, it was decreed that Jews must wear a wheel-shaped identity badge, similar to the distinctive signs that were then in force in Muslim countries.

 

The famous historian Jules Isaac pointed out after the Second World War  that modern anti-Semitism, from which he had suffered cruelly (he lost his wife and daughter in the Shoah), had for generations emerged from the churches. His accusation reached Pope John XXIII, and in 1965 the declaration Nostra Aetate put an end to the "teaching of contempt" in the Catholic Church. Since then, Judeo-Christian friendship groups, established on Jules Isaac's 1948 initiative, have multiplied. They include, of course, many Protestants who had already  expressed solidarity with persecuted French Jews during the war. Religious dialogue is now well underway. This trend was intensified by Papal statements, such as that of John Paul II to German bishops: "Whoever meets Jesus Christ meets Judaism", and a repentance statement by French bishops, which were met with heartfelt appreciation among Jews.

 

The teaching of contempt was not, if we search for the accuracy of words, "anti-Semitism". Because it was mainly theological in character, it seems more accurate to call it "anti-Judaism". Conversion was supposed to lift the stain of the original sin. It is only in the nineteenth century that the notion of race appeared. One of its effects was, in 1879, the emergence of the word "Antisemitismus" in Germany which seemed to lend scientific racial support to deeply rooted religious prejudices.

 

The newly emancipated Jews in France preferred to be called "Israelites", which they considered to be more noble because it was related to their biblical past. They would soon find out, as did their co-religionists in other countries, that they were "Semites", which had never before occurred to them. Indeed, in the year 1781, a German philologist had timidly proposed the term "Semitic" for a group of related languages of the Near East, some dead, some still spoken. At the same time, a connection was made between most European languages and Sanskrit, the sacred language of India. The German linguist Bopp in 1816 called this group "Indo-European", but many of his German colleagues preferred to use « Indo-Germanisch » to underscore the link of Germany with India, to the detriment of traditional biblical heritage.

 

The term "Semites" was invented to distinguish it from «Indo-Europeans». As Jews were the only "Semites" in Europe, the term was reserved for them. The Jews who had initially welcomed the new scientific classifications with interest discovered to their cost that they were a "race" because their ancestors spoke Hebrew. Despite their many achievements so soon after the opening of the ghettos, they were being regarded as a lower "race"; lower than the Indo-European race, especially in its German interpretation.

 

Meanwhile, the economic success of the European Jews awoke old themes of the Jewish usurer, who was now regarded as a "capitalist", while revolutionary Jews were regarded as “communists”. All this raised questions about the loyalty of the new citizens, branded by the sign of Judas. In the late 19th century, many people in France found it only natural to accuse the Jewish officer Alfred Dreyfus of treason, wrongly accusing him of supplying French military secrets to the Germans.

 

The Vichy regime, which was established in France during World War Two, represented the synthesis of all the hatred accumulated in the previous century against this non-Christian foreign element which claimed to be French. In line with Nazi the occupier’s requirements, Vichy adopted a "Statute of the Jews", which was openly discriminatory and paved the way for the deportation of French Jews to concentration camps.

 

The Jews who survived WW2 paid a high price for continuing to proclaim their Jewishness even if they did not practice the religion of their forefathers. Of the 300 000 Jews who lived in France before WW2, 75 000 perished in the Shoah. Old prejudices did not disappear overnight, but after the war the Vichy regime did disappear, the French Republic returned, and Jews were assured that they should not fear discrimination. 

 

Therefore, at the end of the colonial era, the majority of North African Jews chose to resettle in France. In 1870, the Jews of Algeria had been collectively granted French citizenship, later Tunisian and Moroccan Jews obtained it individually. Most of all, French culture offered by the schools in North Africa had, for the most part, become their only culture and promised them a successful integration into the metropolis. And indeed they were not treated less well than others. As a result, the French Jewish community became the largest Western European community, with about 500 000 people.

 

Terrorist attacks of the early ’80s were a rude awakening. The bombing of the liberal synagogue in rue Copernic, and the desecration of the Carpentras cemetery were initially blamed on the extreme right. They, therefore, aroused large demonstrations in solidarity with the Jews. Soon the truth about rue Copernic emerged, and the assumptions were confirmed in the attack on the Goldenberg restaurant in rue des Rosiers: the perpetrators were from the Middle East. Having failed to land blows on Israel, they chose to attack Jewish targets in Paris. In an unfortunate phrase that has been repeated thousands of times since then, the French press declared that the Middle East conflict had been imported into our country. Where is the «conflict» when just one side is subject to violent attacks without retaliation? 

 

During the intifadas, the images shown on TV fostered hatred among those who identified themselves with the Palestinians. A friend who is a Catholic priest living in Israel wrote that, «  People give their sympathy to the side where victims are more numerous: is this ethics or arithmetics»? The internet made things worse, mixing old European anti-Semitism with new theories about an international conspiracy and supported by truncated texts from the Quran. For the majority of people, however, the questions were how Semitic Arabs could be anti-Semitic and how Arabs, victims of racism themselves, could be racists. It took time for the authorities to comprehend the situation.

 

The alarm was raised by a group of high school teachers in a book published in 2002 entitled « The Lost Territories of the Republic ». In it, they list dreadful manifestations of anti-Semitism that were making it impossible for Jewish pupils to stay in public schools which had more Arabs than Jews. It did not receive much publicity then.

 

The following year, though, the government commissioned Jean-Christophe Rufin, a French human rights activist, to assess the gravity of the situation in France. He found that 

• Racism and anti-Semitism were a threat to French democracy.

• Anti-Semitic acts were not only carried out by the extreme right and youths of North African descent, but also by "disaffected individuals" whose anti-Semitic obsessions prompted their attacks against Jews and Jewish institutions.

• Radical anti-Zionists who question Israel's right to exist were dangerous.

 

He wrote: "The upsurge in anti-Semitic acts in recent years is an indisputable fact. Threats and violence against French Jews are obvious. They are new and extremely worrying. Any attempt to ‘relativise’ this fact or to compare it with violent or discriminatory acts against other communities is totally inadmissible. The sudden worsening of threats against Jews in France causes concern and fear… We must recognise the existence and severity of the phenomenon and find answers to combat it."

 

More than ten years on, not a word needs to be changed about the situation Rufin described. Indeed, those outrages were but the prelude to a campaign in which synagogues and cemeteries were vandalised, and threats, intimidation and physical violence became the norm. Many complaints were lodged, many were not. What recourse, after all, is there against incivilities like spitting or being aggressively jostled?

 

In 2004, the Inspector General of Education in France, Jean-Pierre Obin, was commissioned to study the "Signs and Manifestations of Religious Affiliation in Schools ». His report contains a paragraph on anti-Semitism in schools which only confirms the testimonies gathered two years earlier in « The Lost Territories of the Republic ». He noted, firstly, the trivialization of anti-Semitic insults, sometimes from an early age, and also the targeting of Jews or those suspected of being Jews by fellow pupils, generally of North African origin. "The evidence we have collected,” he wrote, “shows that events in the Middle East, as well as a chapter of the Quran, are frequently cited by students to justify their aggression. These justifications range from the persecution to the extermination of Jews. Glorification of Nazism and Hitler is not exceptional: it appears, along with swastikas, in much graffiti. Such sentiments are even overtly expressed to teachers, professors and educational staff ...”

 

He concludes by describing an "astonishing and cruel reality"… "In France, Jewish children - and they are the only ones in this case - cannot nowadays be enrolled in any school." This was only one aspect of a broader problem regarding serious violations of secularism. The embarrassing report was quietly shelved.

 

The reality, however, is that in some neighbourhoods young Jews are no longer able to safely attend public school. The only remedy to the daily harassment they suffer from their peers, say the school headmasters, is for the Jewish students to move into the private sector. In a Parisian high school, two students who had been identified as persecutors of a Jewish student were quickly reinstated while their victim was advised to leave the school. This is, in fact, just one example. Jewish schools now have long waiting lists. 

 

After the killing of three children and a rabbi at the Jewish school, Otsar Hatora, in Toulouse, it became obvious that merely attending a Jewish school was not enough protection for Jewish children. Today, heavily armed soldiers protect the schools, just as they protect synagogues and other potential targets. Questions arise about the future.

 

There are other problems in some public schools, even those that have been deserted by Jewish students: It has become impossible for teachers to talk about the Dreyfus affair or about the Holocaust in some classes, as if a competition is developing among other minorities who are demanding the mantle of martyrdom.

 

Irritation caused by recalling the Holocaust has created an alliance between the new Muslim citizens and the older, indigenous French citizens among the older generation. In a memorable article entitled "The Holocaust that does not pass," Giroud [?] denounced not only those who deny the evidence of the Holocaust but also those, more numerous, who seek to transform the face of the victim-Jew into the executioner to "remove their recurring guilt feeling, and so express the small kernel of antisemitism that everyone finds in his cradle." The popularity of a vile known comedian is today proof. Laughter at anti-Jewish hatred, rebranded as "anti-Zionism", finds a bizarre alliance of the extreme right, extreme left and Third World radical Islamism.

 

History teaches us that ideas do not always remain just ideas. Some end up killing. The new anti-Semitism killed in France and Europe. It soon emerged as a component of a universal hatred, fed by frustration and fanaticism. Since January 2015 we have been in shock. The alarm signal already sounded in a deafening manner. The November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris demonstrated that the target was not only Jews but the liberal democratic world of the West.

 

A few lessons emerge from this long overview and one must beware of misleading simplifications and parallels.

• Jews are the oldest minority on French soil. Despite a chaotic history marked by persecution and expulsions, they have made a significant contribution to the host society and might even be considered a globally successful model of integration.

• Small, non-violent minorities are always vulnerable at times of insecurity and uncertainty. As such, they are generally the first to be alerted to looming threats against the whole of society. Today in France, the Jews are that front-line minority. But they are no longer alone.