Franco-Judaism: the twilight has not set in yet

In February 2024, Gabriel Abensour opened a debate in K. on the state of contemporary French Judaism, lamenting its lukewarmness and the neglect of its spiritual heritage. After David Haziza and Julien Darmon, it is now Jérémie Haddad’s turn to offer a friendly critique of the diagnosis proposed. Should we really regret a bygone era, when the present is full of signs of the vitality of a French Judaism that knows how to demonstrate its uniqueness in relation to the Anglo-Saxon and Israeli worlds?

 

 

Gabriel Abensour has written a stimulating article in these same columns about contemporary French Judaism. This is, of course, a very useful work: a living community needs this reflective gaze to better understand its deepest essence, the dynamics that shape it, and the paths to take to spark new initiatives for development.

However, the overall tone of the article is one of dismay. The article is profound, well-referenced, and more sophisticated than the summary I am about to give here: I hope you will forgive me for simplifying it for the sake of argument.

Gabriel Abensour’s thesis is as follows: French Judaism has two specific characteristics that today’s Jews seem to have completely forgotten, which has ultimately pushed them into the arms of an external Judaism influenced by Ashkenazi and Israeli ultra-Orthodoxy:

• • First specific feature: 19th-century and early 20th-century French Judaism, which is now completely obsolete and has no heirs.
  • Second specific feature: the mass arrival of Jews from North Africa in the 1960s, which should have led French Jews to draw inspiration from the great figures of Sephardic Judaism.
  • Contemporary French Judaism no longer draws inspiration from these two models and is becoming, somewhat like Robert Musil’s man without qualities, a Judaism that is permeable to all external influences, cut off from its deep roots, incapable of producing new, tasty, and fruitful fruits.

Before continuing, I must express a reservation: it has been difficult for me to write this text, as the outcome of the war initiated by the Hamas massacres on October 7 is not yet known. Its repercussions on the entire Jewish people are already profound, and the shock waves are likely to continue long after the end of hostilities. It will also impact the trajectory of French Judaism, which I am attempting to analyze here.

That said, and although I may share some of Gabriel Abensour’s observations, I believe it is possible to demonstrate that French Judaism is experiencing a surprising vitality, which is based on characteristics that are unique to it, even if they represent a partial break with its history.

A paradox: the regret of French Judaism

In my view, Gabriel Abensour’s thesis is based on a paradox. Gabriel Abensour rightly points out that Franco-Judaism in the 19th and pre-war 20th centuries had ended up drying up the lifeblood of Judaism due to its centralization in the consistory: “My proposition is that, despite the erudition of some of its members, French Judaism has always adopted a conciliatory and unadventurous line at the institutional level, stifling in the bud any movement of thought that was a little more adventurous and likely to go beyond France (…) However, since the emancipation reconfirmed by Napoleon, the Jews of France chose a centralized and institutional Judaism, ideal for public representation but stifling for overly innovative intellectual debate.”

This is perfectly true. And it is also quite notable that the leading French figures who are today recognized as having had an impact on world Jewish thought are generally non-consistorial figures who are very far removed from this model of French Israelites.

Why on earth would anyone want to draw inspiration from one of the two facets of French Judaism, when everything suggests that it is in fact an impoverished, dull, and infertile strain?

Let’s take two famous examples: Emmanuel Lévinas and Manitou.

Lévinas is a pure product of Lithuanian Judaism, glorifying study in all its forms, combined with obvious intellectual rigor. When he arrived in France, he was influenced by German philosophy and the highly atypical personality of Mr. Chouchani. Even within the French university system, he was something of an outsider, having only begun his career as a university professor at the age of 58, when he had already written one of the greatest books of 20th-century philosophy, Totality and Infinity. As everyone knows, his main profession was as director of the École Normale Israélite Orientale^[1]. There is no trace of any connection with this somewhat dry Franco-Jewish culture, which he criticizes, sometimes cryptically, sometimes explicitly, in the illuminating texts of Difficult Freedom.^[2]

Manitou, Léon Ashkénazi, was not a pure product of the French Judaism that had led Captain Dreyfus to be unable to metabolize the antisemitism of which he had been a victim. The son of the Chief Rabbi of Oran, whose bold letter to the first Chief Rabbi of Ashkenazi Israel, Abraham Isaac Kook, was recalled by Gabriel Abensour, he describes himself as the product of traditional Algerian Judaism and his encounter with “his first Ashkenazi teacher,” Jacob Gordin, whose teachings he followed after the war at the École Gilbert Bloch in Orsay^[3], an incongruous<footnote>Incongruous, because the Orsay school aroused a great deal of mistrust among the organised community due to its highly atypical nature (the presence of a boarding school, the presence of boys and girls, the wide variety of teachers who covered subjects ranging from religion to secular topics, etc.) and its departure from the norms of the time.</footnote> institution created to train future leaders of the Jewish community in France, which did not come from the community’s traditional institutions but was founded by Robert Gamzon and the Jewish Scouts of France.

Manitou’s thinking evolved over the course of his life to the point of embracing what could be described as radical Zionism, but his profound influence on French Judaism from the 1950s to the 1980s, and on Judaism in general in Israel since the 2010s, owes little or nothing to the figure of the French Israelite.

This, then, is the paradox I see: why on earth would anyone want to draw inspiration from one of the two facets of French Judaism, when everything suggests that it is in fact an impoverished, dull, and sterile branch that Benny Lévy likened to Sartre’s figure of the Salaud? The Salaud, as a comic figure who hammered home his conviction that all the prophetic promises would be fulfilled thanks to the Enlightenment and revolutionary emancipation.

It would seem that this is also the figure of the French Israelite referred to by Lévinas in his sharp barb in Difficult Freedom: “Nothing is more derisory than the settled Jew, attached to all the vanities of the world, forgetful of difficult teachings and always taking himself for a prophetic conscience.”

Let us opt for a radical proposition, but one that has the merit of clarity: French Jews broke away from this “Franco-Judaism” because they perceived its long-term danger of assimilation (cf. the state of French Judaism before the war, which Robert Gamzon forcefully pointed out needed regeneration), because its sense of post-1789 existential fulfillment was incompatible with the Jews’ condition of exile, which was even more palpable after World War II, but also, probably, because the figure of the North African Jew, who had become the majority, was aware of its ambiguities and wanted to erase the attachment to the “old moth-eaten treaties.”

How can we judge the quality of Judaism?

My second criticism is aimed at Gabriel Abensour’s idea that “Contemporary French Judaism is quantitatively the most important in Europe (…) Yet its qualitative contribution to the Jewish world as a whole is almost non-existent.”

Delphine Horvilleur^[4] is said to be the only French rabbi to have been translated in the last century. This is factually incorrect: Elie Munk, for example, whose immense The Call of the Torah has been translated into English and Hebrew, or Marc-Alain Ouaknin, who has published his Burnt Book in several languages.

This is even less true if we extend these works to Jewish thinkers who never embraced a true rabbinical career. Beyond Lévinas and Manitou, already mentioned, Benno Gross, André Neher, and Edmond Jabès have been translated into English, not to mention other authors less connected to rabbinical Judaism such as Bernard-Henri Lévy, Vladmir Jankelevitch, and even, further back, Edmond Fleg, whose 150th birthday will be celebrated in 2024.

Admittedly, none of them are actually rabbis of the Consistory. But if the criticism is directed at the Consistory institution for not having done any real intellectual work, we return to the first argument, which points to the neutralizing effects of excessive institutional centralization that does not lead to the exploration of new fields of research or interpretation of the world. In other words, the Consistory is not French Judaism.

But there is more: does Judaism inspire Jews around the world solely through its intellectual output? It seems clear to me that contemporary French Judaism has its own strengths compared to Israeli or American Judaism.

The “communal peace” seems to have survived the decentralization and “de-consistorialization” of the Jewish community in France.

First, there is less fragmentation than elsewhere. For historical reasons, the dividing lines that are extremely pronounced in Israel and the US are much less so in France.

Ashkenazi/Sephardic? Beyond jokes about comparative cuisine, this is not an issue within the Jewish community in France, probably because of its Sephardic majority, the successful integration of North African Jews in the 1960s by Jewish institutions, and, of course, the gradual harmonization of Jewish culture among current generations. This culture has now become specifically French Jewish, heir to and melting pot of many influences, but demonstrating a way of being Jewish that is both traditional and unique.

Religious/non-religious? French secularism probably protects us from the mistakes made in Israel due to the mixing of religion and politics. And unlike in the United States, the history of French Judaism probably also protects us from excessive opposition between religious movements on the one hand, and between practicing and non-practicing Jews on the other. Without wishing to overestimate the phenomenon, the innovation, unparalleled elsewhere, of the ”minimum common denominator” that the Jewish Scouts of France established within their movement in 1932, under the impetus of Edmond Fleg and Robert Gamzon, allows Jews of extremely diverse origins to coexist and forge powerful friendships that far transcend any differences in their perceptions of Judaism.

Let us not forget that many of those who rebuilt the post-war Jewish community were exposed from a young age to the diversity of approaches encountered in the Scouts, which would shape their vision of community unity: Manitou, of course, but also Pierrot Kaufman, the founder of what is now the SPCJ, Théo Klein and Jean Kahn, presidents of the CRIF in the 1980s, Chief Rabbi Joseph Sitruk, whose historical importance in the development of French Judaism is well known, Armand Lévy, a lesser-known figure who played an essential role in the development of the FSJU, and Jean-Paul Amoyelle, the founder of Otzar Hatorah in France.

Zionist/Non-Zionist? The mere fact of asking this question, however burning in the United States, is totally incongruous in France. The geographical and emotional proximity to Israel makes the relationship between the French Jewish community (which is indeed predominantly Sephardic) and the Jewish state perfectly fluid and free of misunderstandings. French Jews, even without making aliyah and regardless of their political positions, are not inclined to question the legitimacy of the State of Israel’s existence and the natural defense of that state, as demonstrated by the spontaneous formation of numerous groups in defense of the State of Israel after October 7 and their constructive alignment with existing institutional structures.

In short, the “communal peace ” seems to have survived the decentralization and “de-consistorialization” of the Jewish community in France.

After revisiting the Franco-Judaism of yesterday, let us examine its prospects for the future: is there a positive dynamic animating the French Jewish community? Or have the attacks and peaks in Alyot in 2014/2015 extinguished any hope for a Jewish future in France?

To answer this question, I propose to isolate three phenomena:

• Kosher restaurants

The increase in the number and variety of kosher restaurants in Paris and its suburbs is less anecdotal than it might seem.

This is always the first comment I hear from Jews when I am in London, Chicago, San Francisco, or Rome: “Paris? It’s crazy how many kosher restaurants you have!” But what strikes my interlocutors, beyond the diversity of the offerings, is the extreme integration of these restaurants into the urban fabric. By comparison, if you want to eat kosher in London, you have to go to the London “ghettos” of Golders Green or Hendon, several kilometers north of Buckingham Palace.

The restaurants are subject to market rules, are not subsidized, and can only exist and grow if they find a customer base willing to patronize them. This is therefore a key indicator, both of a return to respect for religious practices and of a typically French Jewish invention of a form of conviviality and harmonious integration within the city.

Success and diversity of Jewish schools

The successful development of Jewish schools is another sign of the vitality of the French Jewish community. According to the most recent figures provided by the FSJU, around 40% of Jewish children of school age attend Jewish schools.

This figure is growing, even though school principals were concerned during the peak of the aliyah in 2014/2015, when several students per class announced that they were leaving France with their families. The period of significant increase in aliyah has calmed down and the number of students enrolled in Jewish schools has started to rise again, even before October 7 added many names to the already long waiting lists. The risk today is not that Jewish schools will decline, but rather that their structures will no longer be able to absorb the demand.

While the number of children enrolled in Jewish schools is a key indicator, their diversity is also striking: the offering covers virtually every aspect of Jewish life in France, including Zionism, an emphasis on the study of texts, culture, and Hebrew language learning, among others.

How can we not think that this development, whatever one may say about the shortcomings of Jewish education in Jewish schools, could not bear the seeds of a potential for a living and authentic Judaism?

The effervescence of new projects

Over the past ten years, the visible transformation of the Jewish community has also been reflected in numerous development projects: the European Center for Judaism in the 17th arrondissement, but also the renovation and expansion of the Aleph Center in Neuilly, the new community center in Levallois, and new synagogues springing up like mushrooms in western Paris, but also in eastern Paris (Charenton, Maisons-Alfort, Saint-Mandé, Vincennes, etc.). This is a very concrete consequence of a geographical upheaval in the settlement of Jews in France. Whereas the map of Jewish communities was essentially the result of a situation that had been imposed on them, namely the settlement of North African populations in public housing in the 1960s, it is now a matter of choice, with a concentration in large centers: Western Paris, of course, but also Val-de-Marne between Créteil and Vincennes, and in the east, towards Pré-Saint-Gervais, Les Lilas, and Romainville. Some communities in the provinces are becoming poorer, as Jewish affiliation often goes hand in hand with a desire to be close to important structures (schools, synagogues, kosher shops, etc.), but others are flourishing, such as Strasbourg, which is seeing its Jewish population grow, attracted both by the specific nature of the concordat and by an ancient tradition of study and harmonious integration of a religious way of life into the city.

Beyond real estate projects, I have personally witnessed and supported the very strong growth in membership of the Jewish Scouts of France, but I have also been able to gauge the intensity of the commitment of the leaders (who are volunteers, it is important to remember), who are much more numerous than 20 years ago, deciding to extend their commitment and become camp leaders, i.e., taking on the most important leadership role within the movement. In my experience, most of those who have held this position go on to become involved in numerous community and community organizations. A simple rule of education finds its most obvious application here: what you learn when you are young does not disappear when you reach adulthood. This is true of piano, tennis, and chess. It is also perfectly true of community involvement, which bodes very well for the future of the community.

All of this brings us back to a fact that is rarely mentioned but deserves special attention: the French Jewish community is a recent community. By this I mean that despite the continuity of the Jewish presence in France since the 1st century, as beautifully illustrated in the recent book Histoire juive de la France (Editor’s translation: Jewish History of France), it should be remembered that the majority of the Jewish population in France is descended from Jews from North Africa who arrived in France in the 1960s, generally in rather precarious economic conditions. So there was initially an urgent need to survive, to escape from a low social status and to integrate into French society. Although the “culture shock” led to rapid assimilation, it must be recognized that the three phenomena mentioned above are symptoms of maturation: a community that is enriched, more stable, and can now afford a peaceful development where professional careers, religious, community, and cultural involvement go hand in hand with a peaceful life in France.

To conclude this section, we must remember Professor Claude Riveline, who recently passed away and who probably embodied better than anyone else this hybridization between the figure of the studious Jew and the archetype of the republican elite.^[5] A committed participant in the Colloque des Intellectuels Juifs en langue française (Conference of French-speaking Jewish Intellectuals) since 1967, the famous conference where Lévinas gave his Talmudic lectures and Manitou his biblical readings, he systematically responded to those who called for its revival: “But there’s one every day now!” This is proof of the considerable proliferation of initiatives, including in the intellectual sphere.

Gabriel Abensour asks: does French Judaism still offer innovative content, as was the case in the past with Emmanuel Lévinas, André Neher, and Manitou?

To answer this question, we must first demystify the golden age of these post-war Jewish thinkers. Not to question the substance of their extremely important contribution, but to revisit the history of their reception in the intellectual field.

First, outside France, and particularly in Israel, awareness of the originality of Manitou and Lévinas’ thinking is very recent: the first translations date from the late 1990s and early 2000s (2001 for Lectures Talmudiques), even though they both died in the mid-1990s.

For a long time, in the eyes of what might be called “enlightened amateurs” living in Israel or the United States, Levinas’ work was considered totally provincial compared to Israeli or Anglo-Saxon authors. Proof of this is the treasure trove that is Israel et Judaïsme: ma part de vérité^[6], a book of interviews published in 1986 between Michael Shashar and the thinker and scientist Yeshayahou Leibowitz. Shashar reviews all the major figures of Israeli Judaism (Rabbi Kook, Rabbi Goren, S.Y. Agnon, Amram Blau, leader of the Neturei Karta, etc.) and the diaspora (Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rav Soloveitchik, etc.).

However, he asks Leibowitz a question: “Among the Jewish philosophers of our time, which ones do you consider important?” It is clear that Michael Shashar did not expect Leibowitz’s answer. He does not follow up on it, moves on to another philosopher (Ezekiel Kaufman) and never touches on the subject again.

Here, however, is Leibowitz’s answer, which once again showed his visionary side, even though in 1986 Lévinas was already a very important philosopher: “In the field of general philosophy, in our generation, Emmanuel Lévinas is the man whose thinking is marked by Judaism. His Four Talmudic Readings are among the best texts written in our generation. I am thinking not only of his writings on Judaism, but also of his general philosophy, which, even when it is not religious, is nourished by Judaism. There is no other Jewish philosopher of our generation whose thought has emerged so clearly from the world of Judaism.”

At that time, Leibowitz was alone in perceiving the greatness of Levinas’s works (we can probably add Shalom Rosenberg, one of Mr. Chouchani’s last students, who had inevitably heard of Levinas’s work, or Moshé Idel). The reception was slow, somewhat chaotic, and suffered from the slow decline of the humanities, whose current output is read less and less. Since the 2000s/2010s, the situation has changed significantly, and this is to be welcomed, but it must nevertheless be noted that the Van Gogh phenomenon, where the genius of a work only bursts forth upon the death of its creator, has struck these great figures of universal Jewish thought.

So today, is there still a form of Jewish school of thought “à la française” that could contribute to the Jewish community in the city?

I will venture to answer yes to this question. My answer will be subjective and debatable, but to simplify the argument, I will focus on a single subject: male-female relations, gender, and sexuality.

There is a French Jewish school of thought that is making an effort to understand what contemporary “gender confusion” means by drawing on the deepest sources of the Jewish tradition.

There is no doubt that this is an issue that is stirring up our contemporaries, a point of contention between the progressive and what we might call the reactionary view.

Is contemporary Judaism making its voice heard on this issue? There are, of course, simple, even simplistic answers, particularly in the Anglo-Saxon world. On the Reform side, it is a contest of imitation: how to find the purest possible bijection between the differentiation between sex and gender, the fight against homophobia, and the deconstruction of the historical role of women with the teachings of the Torah, at the cost, of course, of numerous intellectual contortions or misinterpretations of the texts invoked (when they are invoked…).

On the other side, it is of course easy to invoke a certain social conservatism common to all major religions: how can we not think of the dominant discourse on women in the Orthodox Jewish media, or even the document published by Chief Rabbi Bernheim at the time of marriage for all, which was taken up as an intellectual reference by the Catholic world at the time?

However, on these issues, which the Talmud addresses in a much more complex way, there is a real convergence of thought in the French language. Let us begin with the most widely publicized book of all, Delphine Horvilleur’s En tenue d’Eve (Editor’s translation: In Eve’s Clothes), which, far from resembling the American reformed production, attempts to achieve a harmonious synthesis between the irreducible differentiation between men and women marked by the Torah and the inevitable emergence of women from a subordinate role in society.

This is a book for the general public, published by a major publishing house, and its success can only be welcomed.

But how can we fail to see that innovative and original works are also addressing this subject in French-language Jewish literature, to the point where, in my opinion, it has become one of the central themes in the treatment of this important question: what does Judaism say about sexuality, gender issues, and the relationship between men and women?

Judge for yourself: in recent years, several high-quality works on this question have been published. Beyond their specific content, they share two distinct characteristics that, in my opinion, are specific to France.

Among these works, I would highlight three:

• Féminité d’Israël, être féminin à deux (masculin et féminin) (ET: The Femininity of Israel: Being Female as a Couple (Masculine and Feminine)) by Marc Israël, published by Conférence
• Les deux visages de l’un – Le couple divin dans la Cabbale (ET: The Two Faces of One: The Divine Couple in Kabbalah) by Charles Mopsik, published by Albin Michel
• Le Corps vivant : réflexions talmudiques sur la sexualité contemporaine (ET: The Living Body: Talmudic Reflections on Contemporary Sexuality) by Eric Smilevitch, published by Hermann.

These books are works of French Jewish thought that attempt to explore the meaning of contemporary “gender confusion” using the deepest sources of Jewish tradition. They address what this tradition has to say about issues of masculinity, femininity, sexuality, and the relationship between men, women, and transcendence, but without being a mere archaeological study of fossilized and archaic thought.

I would argue that this is French Jewish thought (if this expression is not a pleonasm and if this category constitutes a combination of two very specific characteristics).

The first is that they do not strictly belong to either of the two broad categories into which contemporary works on Judaism can be classified. To put it briefly: the University or the Yeshiva. Academic production requires a rigorous scientific approach and does not aim to provide spiritual nourishment for its readers. It has also been engaged in excessive specialization for many years now, with the result that in the field of academic Jewish studies, the most interesting contributions in Israel and the United States focus on extremely narrow and restricted geographical, temporal, or textual areas.

The yeshiva is no exception to this trend, and publications from the world of yeshivot are becoming increasingly specialized, which is also a sign that there is a market, albeit limited, for this type of study within Orthodox circles. But what best characterizes the yeshiva is that it is mostly impervious to sources outside the tradition. Of course, this has not always been the case: we are well aware of the importance of Aristotle for Maimonides or, more recently, the inspiration that Rav Eiahou Dessler drew from the teachings of Dale Carnegie in his work on Jewish morality, Mikhtav Meeliahou. But it is becoming less and less common within Orthodox Judaism for concepts forged in the humanities (psychoanalysis, philosophy, social psychology) and referenced as such to be used to comment on a text.

The books mentioned above do not belong to either category. First, they are books that aim to provide us with a “global vision.” I put this expression in quotation marks because, while in professional training with representatives from around the world, one of my fellow students gently mocked the French for always wanting to have this famous ability to embrace a subject holistically, well illustrated by this expression, which I did not realize at the time was a very French reflex. But ultimately, isn’t this “global vision” the glory of the French Tossafists, whose eminent contribution was to attempt to bring overall coherence to the entire Talmudic corpus by identifying and resolving apparent contradictions between treatises?

The authors of the three books mentioned above are highly skilled in both the traditional study of texts and the classical humanities (Marc Israël is a professor of philosophy, Charles Mopsik has never hesitated to quote Durkheim and Mauss in his work on the Kabbalah, and the broad culture of Eric Smilévitch, translator of the Pirkei Avot, Nahmanides’ Disputation of Barcelona, and the little-known Hasdai Crescas, is well established).

Isn’t this “global vision” the glory of the French Tossafists, whose eminent contribution was to attempt to bring overall coherence to the entire Talmudic corpus by identifying and resolving apparent contradictions between treatises?

The second characteristic, which probably stems from the first, is an immense freedom in the way these texts are approached: although they are completely in line with the traditional canons of the Talmudic or Kabbalistic tradition, they do not seem to fear the social constraints of a particular milieu (whether the University or the Yeshiva) and have no problem transgressing the codes relating to each of them. The result is works of great intellectual and methodological rigor, but which open up new horizons through the use of language that is understandable to Western readers.

In a way, far from being the break with tradition evoked by Gabriel Abensour, this is a form of continuity with post-war Jewish thought. For how can we categorize Lévinas’s Lectures talmudiques? Is it an academic work or does it belong to the world of the yeshiva? Was it not initially a confidential work (the colloquiums of French-speaking Jewish intellectuals attracted only a limited audience) and viewed with suspicion by the institutionalized community?

As in the postwar period, these are atypical propositions. There is a flip side to the coin that is still relevant today: this work is difficult to accept. It is not intended to be disseminated through academic channels and has struggled to find its way into institutions. Manitou’s teaching was initially reserved for the small circle of the École d’Orsay, before spreading more widely within Jewish communities and study centers in Israel, and finally achieving tremendous recognition today.

Will the same be true of Corps Vivant? In my view, this book is a masterful achievement of unparalleled density and depth.

I make no secret of my disappointment at the very discreet reception this work has received: a little over 15 minutes on Akadem^[7] and that’s about it. This is probably due to the reduction in the number of people capable of reading such a demanding and innovative book, as well as the author’s great discretion. But it is also due to what Julien Darmon called a lack of class consciousness among the target audience: an educated population waiting for an intelligent, demanding, and authentic approach to Judaism.

I can confirm that this population exists. It remains to be challenged, consolidated, and brought to life.

I took the example of gender, but I could have done the same exercise with the Jewish approach to politics: I could, of course, have cited Benny Levy, the explosive works of Rav Gérard Zyzek^[8], but also Rav Uriel Aviges, who recently addressed these issues in a book of commentaries on Exodus<footnote>Politique et Mystique Juive (ET: Jewish Politics and Mysticism), published by Éditions du Panthéon, which is full of incredible innovations: I don’t think I had ever seen an interpretation of Hanukkah that turned it into a tool for popular pressure on political power, thus allowing us to respond to the many contradictions of this holiday: the oil lamp vs. military victory, the glorification of a corrupt dynasty, the obligation to spread the miracle, etc.</footnote>, the contributions of the founders of the K. Review, Danny Trom and Bruno Karsenti (one of the few philosophers or sociologists to want to restore the theological-political as one of the essential issues of our political structure) or the all too little-known initiative of a research seminar on Jewish politics in exile organized by the Pol’Ethique association, within a Beth Hamidrach, which brings together academics, Talmud masters, sociologists, philosophers, and a former minister to discuss this issue, whose implications continue to challenge us, in a very broad way.

In my view, there is therefore a specifically French contribution to understanding the world in which we live, based on the study of the Jewish tradition.

French Jews no longer have the proud pretension of fulfilling any prophecy.

Of course, my aim here was not to list all the dangers facing French Judaism. They do exist, of course, whether they manifest themselves in the de-Judaization of part of the Jewish population or in the risks posed by the radicalization of political life and the simplistic ideologization of university campuses. In fact, French Jews are aware of their precarious situation: European Judaism is no longer at the center of the Jewish world, the call to gather the exiles is growing ever stronger, and old Europe seems to have abandoned all its former allies. French Jews no longer have the proud pretension of fulfilling any prophecy. “Only this: from time to time, strange twilights interrupt the illuminated history, the light splits into countless small, flickering, ambiguous flames, the solid ground is pulled from under your feet, events begin to spin in a hellish circle around a consciousness that is once again disoriented. And certainties that mock confrontation rise up from a forgotten depths.”

In this “once again disoriented consciousness,” there is something specific to French Judaism: a great vitality of commitment, a visible and concerned youth, a singularity in its approach to Jewish tradition lived in a diversity far less ossified than during the consistorial period, as well as a welcome community unity. How, then, can we think that this is a lost cause? 

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Jérémie Haddad