From 1791 to the present day: French Jews, a Republican passion

The Jews, “ Happy as God in France ”?^[1] In this lecture, given at the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF) symposium “ The Jews in the Republic”^[2], historian Pierre Birnbaum looks back at the history of Jewish emancipation in France, and the dangers it faces today.

 

 

The Metz Competition of 1787 posed the question: “Are there ways of making Jews more useful and happier? Even before the revolutionary upheaval in search of the New Man, Father Grégoire first formulated the idea of the need for radical “regeneration” of the Jews, which would become the leitmotif of the Jacobins barely two years later. In his eyes, this radical regeneration aimed first and foremost to reshape the personality of the Jews from top to bottom, freeing them from their archaic beliefs. In the second manuscript he submitted to the competition, the term “regeneration” is a key feature of his text: it alone will overcome the “Jewish obstinacy” so often denounced. It’s no longer a question of simply “reforming” the Jews, but of fundamentally altering their nature so that they quickly abandon their rituals, beliefs, “Talmudic reveries”, respect for Kosher and the use of Yiddish, the patois that “masks deceit”, a measure that foreshadows his Rapport, drawn up a little later, at the height of Jacobinism, to “annihilate the patois” in order to culturally unify the nation in the name of the Enlightenment alone.

In 1789, utopian thinking swept aside all obstacles: revolutionaries embraced the mythology of the new man who would break all shackles, imposing a public space open to all, the abolition of privileges and the lifting of restrictions imposed by traditions and cultural codes. The advent of the Republic was marked by the resounding entry into the nation of the Jews, who had been excluded since the dawn of time. Suddenly, in the heat of the revolution, everything turned upside down.

For the better, with the integration of Jews into the nation, their access to citizenship, their rapid and exceptional ascent to the heights of the State and, later, the legendary “Happy as God in France”, it was the dream for Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. For the worse, some would say, with the renunciation of community and legal structures, the confinement of religion to the private sphere, assimilation to the nation, and the abandonment of a specifically Jewish history.
Does French-style emancipation, pursued in the name of universalist Enlightenment, imply for all, beyond integration into the nation, full assimilation to its standards alone? Beyond its universalist logic, does the French Republic accept the preservation of memories, but also of particular collective consciences?
It was on December 23 and 24, 1789, that the major debate took place concerning the place of the “Jewish question” within the nation. In a confrontation that marked modern Jewish history, the most extreme opponents, such as the Prince de Broglie, Father Maury and La Fare, the Bishop of Nancy, considered the Jews to be a foreign people, a “foreign tribe” that needed to be protected, but which would remain forever alien to the French nation, whose values it did not share, especially as it eternally turned its gaze towards Jerusalem.

The indispensable integration of the Jews did not require them to abandon their beliefs and rituals. They did not need to be regenerated to enter the republican pact.

It was Comte de Clermont-Tonnerre’s speech on this occasion that shaped the long history of Jews in France, so much so that it is still used today to refute Anglo-Saxon multiculturalist perspectives. This is where it all comes down. The only thing that has been remembered is his famous phrase: “the Jews must be denied everything as a nation, and granted everything as individuals… It is repugnant that there should be in the State a Society of non-citizens and a Nation within the Nation”. This observation is in line with the revolutionary universalist logic that rejects any intermediary body and intends to build a public space of citizens. This integrationist logic is in no way assimilationist, since Clermont-Tonnerre stresses that “the Law of the State cannot reach the Religion of the individual”, and even humorously exclaims: “Is there a Law that obliges me to marry your daughter? Is there a Law that obliges me to eat hare and eat it with you?… These are not crimes that the Law can touch”. As far as he was concerned – and historians have hardly noticed this – the indispensable integration of the Jews did not require them to abandon their beliefs and rituals. They do not need to be regenerated to enter the republican pact. In practice, the Republic learns to accommodate differences as long as they respect its values.

It was only as the Assembly was about to part on September 27, that, on the initiative of deputy Adrien Du Port, it “revoked all adjournments, reservations and exceptions inserted in the previous decrees with regard to Jewish individuals who will take the civic oath, which will be recognized as a renunciation of all privileges and exceptions previously introduced in their favor”. Once King Louis XVI had signed, the Jews took the oath and made this exceptional entry into political modernity, which has no equivalent, not even in the United States where, despite the Constitution of 1787, restrictions imposed by individual states sometimes curtailed Jewish rights well into the nineteenth century. In France, they were able to quickly run for various elective offices, compete for civil service jobs, metamorphose into state Jews, to the point of embodying the glory of the Republic, praying in synagogues for its influence and well-being. If, like all their fellow citizens, Jews who became citizens abandoned their collective personality and were supposed to break the ties that bound them to their co-religionists abroad, if the notion of the Jewish people was implicitly called into question, they gained full access, in one swoop, and for the first time in modern history. The question of kosher food and pigs was already troubling many revolutionaries, more so than in the United States at the same time, who were concerned about a common table for all citizens. If they are no longer considered as a “nation”, i.e. as a separate body, Jews have every opportunity to form a private sub-society respectful of their beliefs, if they so wish, and they will do so. Without saying so, the Republic opened itself up to respect for others, for Jews, but also for citizens with different dialects, most of which the Republic’s teachers respected, turning their backs on the Grégoire Report^[3].

The Republic was more conciliatory than is often portrayed, but the July Monarchy and the Second Empire remained faithful to this vision of integration, which was so favorable to Jews as they climbed the social hierarchy.

Throughout the following centuries, Jews were able to maintain common bonds of sociability, forms of small virtual societies that did not encroach on their citizenship; Jews in the private sphere, they were citizens in the public sphere. The creation of the Alliance Israélite Universelle^[4] in 1860 and its role in the public arena did not contradict this logic. It did, however, strengthen ties with Jews throughout the world, establishing solidarity between them. But this solidarity is recognized by the Republic insofar as the Alliance’s emancipatory message is embedded in the universalist values of the Republic, which it helps to spread beyond its borders, as if French-style citizenship were projected through the Alliance’s teachers into so many countries, linking Jews even more closely to the emancipatory message of the Republic.

Within the nation, from generation to generation, throughout the nineteenth century, endogamy remained the norm, with many Jews attending synagogue, very few converting and very few committing suicide, unlike their co-religionists in the Austro-Hungarian Empire who were not fully integrated into the public sphere. And unlike German Jews, who were excluded from the great symbolic functions of the state until the late Weimar Republic. And unlike their Anglo-Saxon co-religionists, who were frequently rejected by the ruling class and had only limited access to the great universities of Oxford, Harvard, Yale and Princeton, French Jews benefited from the republican meritocracy, with no obstacles other than their degree of competence.

Almost all French Jews adhered to political liberalism; few joined the extremes before the contemporary era, and Franco-Judaism was attached to Enlightenment values without adhering to their radicalism. The marriage between the Jews and the Republic augured happy times ahead, which only the emperor Napoleon and his infamous decree of 1806, or Vichy, betrayed by calling into question their citizenship while abolishing the Republic. In the meantime, the Dreyfus Affair gave rise to widespread antisemitism, but Jews continued their normal activities, including within the State and the senior civil service: despite the hatred spreading against a Republic that had supposedly become Jewish, no Jews were killed during these years, and the republican State fulfilled its function of protecting its citizens. The republican Dreyfusard camp raised its voice, rejecting the fundamentalist, antisemitic counter-revolution, and Dreyfus was finally exonerated in 1906. The Republic had almost been swept away and the Jews rejected, the alert had been serious, but the happy conclusion spread throughout the world the message of a triumphant Republic protecting its Jews. And, in 1914, Jews passionately joined the army, and even Maurice Barrès recognized that the spiritual families of France were to be found on the battlefields of the First World War, united in defense of the republican nation. Captain Dreyfus himself donned his uniform and joined the fight.

It was Vichy that broke the republican contract, even if the State itself had become the instrument of fundamentalist and antisemitic counter-revolution, losing its own emancipatory logic. In this sense, Vichy remains an ambiguous moment, for the Republic and its values of “liberty, equality and fraternity” no longer hold sway. Likewise, the French State has been taken over by a number of extremist individuals from all walks of life, who are taking up residence in its institutions and implementing the reactionary logic that excludes Jews. The fact remains, however, incomprehensible: many formerly republican civil servants served the antisemitic legislation drawn up within the framework of the State Council, put their knowledge at the service of antisemitic hatred, deliberated without qualms, at the State Council or in other institutions, on measures hostile to the Jews, and pledged their allegiance to Pétain. This raises doubts about the solidity of the attachment to the values of the Republic that these same servants of the State would continue to serve, for the most part, under the Fourth and sometimes even the Fifth Republics. Few of the servants of the republican state in the service of Vichy were Righteous. They came mainly from civil society, rural areas and Catholic circles. Doubts about the truth have taken hold for a long time, and the memory of the dark years remains vivid, from one generation to the next. The Bousquet and Papon cases are reminders of this.^[5] How can the Republic, our Republic, justify these connivances, this permanence of functions, without being prejudiced? A serious question that casts doubt.

Almost all French Jews adhered to political liberalism; few joined the extremes before the contemporary era, and Franco-Judaism was attached to Enlightenment values without adhering to their radicalism.

As a result, in a French society whose values had been shaken up by the end of the war, institutions such as the CRIF, in its original charter, set out to become “the interpreter of Judaism in France before the public authorities”. This charter was revised in 1977: in confidence, I was part of a small group of four people brought together on several occasions by Claude Kelman at his home, a small group that hesitated and debated over the drafting of CRIF’s role in French logic. Hence this convoluted phrase that defines the CRIF’s place in a negative light: “Without claiming any political authority, without subsisting on the responsibility of each of its members, the Jewish community refuses to act as a partisan pressure group”. Understand who can. Despite these cautions, the institution maintains a dialogue with the State, acting as a spokesperson for French Jews, and has established itself over the last few years, far from the prudence set out in its revised charter, by transforming the model of classic Franco-Judaism. It bears witness to a kind of asserted communitarianism that is changing the public space of citizens alone, a communitarianism that certainly makes its voice heard during major crises, but which enters the political game with the risk of arousing many fantasies against it.

Nowadays, the Franco-French wars of yesteryear have dissipated, fundamentalist Catholic refusal no longer threatens: the time of Barrès has disappeared, as has that of Maurras and Action Française^[6], although it still survives in the bangs of the  far-right party National Rally or among various identitarian groups who loudly demonstrated during Day of Anger, in January 2014, when cries of “France to the French, Death to the Jews” could once again be heard in the streets of Paris.

In all the surveys carried out by the French National Consultative Commission on Human Rights, French Jews enjoy a favorable image, with prejudice affecting only a small number of our fellow citizens. Our integration into the nation has proven to be solid, as recently demonstrated by the presence of prominent Jews, from the former Prime Minister to the President of the French National Assembly and the President of the French Audit Office, as well as many other public servants.

The fact remains that for the first time since 1791, apart from Vichy and Algeria, Jews are being killed in France, while antisemitic attacks and threats are at an all-time high. What’s even more disturbing is that the killers are almost always French citizens of the Muslim faith, socialized to the values of the Republic, but who turn their backs on it. From Ilan Halimi to Ozara Thora or the Hyper cacher, from Sarah Halimi to Mireille Knoll, traditional antisemitism with its obsession with Jewish money, now mingled with virulent anti-Zionism, is undermining the integration of French Jews, designated as an enemy community. At the same time, the Jewish community’s progressive Israelization, their legitimate concern for Israel shared to varying degrees by all, family ties, cultural proximity and a sizeable Aliyah are undermining traditional Franco-Jewishness centered on the republican nation alone. Communitarization, whether real or imagined, essentializes individuals, and also risks reducing the place of Jews to that of one community among others, with all the risks of political clientelism that are currently emerging with regard to the populations of the neighborhoods.

Let’s dream. As always, it is up to the State to defend all its citizens even more than it does, to refuse any amalgam, to ensure the separation of Church and State, even if it means moving towards a more open secularism, to defend the public schools that so many young Jews are deserting, while the University itself is sometimes under pressure. The strong French State and its demanding citizenship have contributed so much to Jewish happiness in France, to the marriage between Jews and the Republic. Their decline opens the door to an uncertain future that cannot be resolved by importing the Anglo-Saxon multiculturalist model, which has caused so many clashes and misunderstandings, including in the United States. When the traditional vertical alliance, both protective and disillusioning, loses its effectiveness in the eyes of many, it’s hard to see what horizontal alliance could survive in a France in total disarray. Should we therefore – but how? – return to the message of 1789, to rebuild a common republican citizenship, to make the loyalties of all compatible with the idea of a reconciled nation? This is hardly the way forward.

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Pierre Birnbaum