Article by Gabriel Abensour

Eric Zemmour, or the Nationalization of Anti-Judaism

It had vanished long ago, and no one missed it. That old strain of Catholic anti-Judaism, presumed buried in history, resurfaces in Éric Zemmour’s latest pamphlet, La messe n’est pas dite (The Mass Is Not Over), now reborn in a secular and nationalist form. Gabriel Abensour places Zemmour’s rhetoric back within this atavistic tradition, while probing the deep paradox of its author: what does a “foreign Jew” hope to achieve by aligning himself with the legacy of France’s identitarian Catholic far right?

Macron and Israel: by the Grace of Nations

Emmanuel Macron’s quip about Israel’s original debt to the international community demonstrates the persistence of an outdated image of Jews and their relationship with nations. Gabriel Abensour reminds us in this text of the history of Zionism, and how this presidential statement seems medieval.

A sense of disarray hangs in the air—reflections on contemporary French Judaism

Gabriel Abensour believes that Franco-Judaism has forgotten its spiritual heritage. Deploring the adoption of an ultra-Orthodoxy that rigidifies practices and minds, and criticizing the lack of audacity of the institutions representing the Jewish community, he calls for a revival of a Judaism that knows both the value of revolutionary universalism and the intellectual richness of Sephardic civilization.

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