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The "New" Synagogue in Starsbourg, France, c.1890. Postcard
The "New" Synagogue in Starsbourg, France, c.1890. Postcard

The Jewish Community of France

France

République française

A country in Western Europe, member of the European Union (EU).

21st Century

Estimated Jewish population in 2018: 450,000 out of 65,000,000 (0.6%). France is the home of the third largest Jewish population in the world and the largest Jewish community in Europe. 

Conseil Représentatif des Institutions Juives de France - Representative Council of Jews of France
Phone: 33 1 42 17 11 11
Fax: 33 1 42 17 11 13
Email: infocrif@crif.org
Website: www.crif.org

Consistoire Central de France – Union des Communautés Juives de France
19, rue St Georges
75009 Paris
France
Phone: 01 49 70 88 00
Fax: 01 42 81 03 66
Website: https://france.consistoire.org/consistoire-central/
e-mail : administration@consistoirecentral.fr

 

HISTORY

The Jews of France

1040 | In Rashi Veritas

Brain drain is not a new phenomenon. Between the eighth and tenth centuries a mass movement began of Jewish merchants from Babylon – then the largest Jewish population center in the world – migrating to Western Europe, where international trade centers began to emerge. These Jews joined a larger and older group of fellow Jews, who had migrated back in 2nd Temple times, through the Mediterranean to Gaul, the land that we know as France.
As befits a goose laying golden eggs, the Jews received special rights and sheltered under the protection of French nobles, who shielded them from the maws of the Catholic Church. The economic prosperity allowed them to establish yeshivas and Torah centers which produced many scholars. One of these, a genius who made his living as a vintner, was born in 1040 in the province of Champagne in France, and bequeathed to posterity a comprehensive commentary on the Torah. Legend has it that the incomparable Rashi script was invented by his daughters, who were scholars themselves, but the truth is that it's the font of a Sephardi cursive script that was used in the Jewish printing presses in 16th century Italy to distinguish it from the biblical text itself. His name was Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki (Rashi), and his monumental work is still the authoritative commentary on Holy Scripture in the rabbinical world.

1240 | Where They Burn Books...

The crusades, which spread from Europe beginning in 1096, ended the idyll of Jewish existence in the lands of Ashkenaz in the early second millennium. Blood libels, persecutions and expulsions were the lot of the Jews for hundreds of years afterward.
One of the low points was reached in the year 1240 and is known as “The Trial of Paris”. At this trial, initiated by King Louis IX and Pope Gregory IX, the defendant was not a person, but a work of literature - The Talmud, to be precise, which according to the Catholic Church holds messages of hatred towards all gentiles and disparagement of Jesus.
One fine day an incited mob gathered in front of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, to watch the condemned criminal – 12,000 hand-written copies of the Talmud – burned at the stake. 600 years later Jewish-German poet Heinrich Heine would comment on this event: “Where they burn books, they will eventually burn people.”

1481 | The Provenance of Provence

When speaking of the Jews of France, one cannot help but pay special attention to a singular group of Jews who lived in what is now the south of France and was called “The Sages of Provence”.
These sages were the advanced placement class of the Jewish world. They created a unique brand of thought and Bible exegesis and also engaged in philosophy and Kabbalah. The teachings of these sages was spread throughout Europe, Spain and North Africa, and their genius was a byword among Jewish intellectuals of Western Europe.
Among the main writers of this group are Hameiri, Rabbi David Kimchi (aka Rada”k), Rabbi Zarhia HaLevi (aka Raza”h), Abraham Ben David (aka Raba”d) and his son, Rabbi Isaac the Blind, and of course the great translator Judah ibn Tibbon, the man who disseminated the thought of Maimonides after translating it from Arabic into Hebrew.
The Jews of Provence as a cultural phenomenon came to an end in the year 1481, when King Louis XI of France annexed Provence to his realm.

1498 | The Odyssey of Expulsions

To the Jews of France, the late Middle Ages were an agonizing ping-pong affair of expulsions and recalls. In 1306 King Phillip IV issued an edict banning the Jews from residence in French territory. 11 years later his son, Louis X, recalled the Jews – provided they wear an identifying patch on their clothes. A mere seven years went by and the Jews were expelled again. This time it was King Charles IV, who claimed that the Jews, in their temerity, failed to pay their full amount of taxes to him.
In 1357, under Jean II and later under Charles V, the Jews returned to France, but once again suffered persecution, restriction of their freedom of occupation to the sole field of money-lending, and finally – abduction of their children.
The odyssey of expulsions ended on September 17th, 1394, when Charles VI succumbed to the pressure of the masses and issues an edict of expulsion for all Jews in his domains. To his credit, it must be noted that he gave the expelled Jews ample time to sell their property and decreed that any Christian who borrowed money from them must repay it. By 1498 there was not a Jew left anywhere in France, save for a smattering of small communities that lived in Avignon and its environs in the south of France, which was then under Papal control.

1791 | No Bread? Eat Challa

The French Revolution, which broke out in 1789, costing many their lives through the services of “Madame Guillotine”, heralded the idea of the liberal democratic state as we know it today. From a tyrannical class-based society France transformed (albeit through much bloodshed), to a democratic regime in which each person can be master of their own fate.
The first to enjoy the fruits of emancipation were the Jews of Alsace-Lorraine, an area conquered by France back in 1630. The Jews of France, then numbering some 40,000 people, were as mentioned above the first in Europe to enjoy the fruits of the revolution, but their release from the burden of being the “other” and “alien” was not easy. At first the leaders of the revolution claimed that the Jews were “a nation within a nation” and as such not eligible for treatment as equal citizens. But in 1791 the General Law Relating to the Jews was issued, granting the Jews full equality, and there was much rejoicing in the Jewish quarter of Paris.

1806 | The Twelve Question Program

It would not be off the mark to characterize the history of Europe's Jews in general and those of France in particular as a series of “almosts”. Almost equality. Almost Emancipation. Almost liberty.
As though the Law Relating to the Jews had not been passed 15 years prior, in 1806 the question of Jewish status was raised once again, this time under Napoleon, the legendary general known for his unlimited ambition.
Napoleon took a creative approach. In 1806 he gathered an assembly of leading Jews and presented them with the “12 Question Test”, designed to assess their loyalty to France. Among other things the Jews were asked how Jewish halacha views mixed marriages, whether a Jew may charge interest from a gentile, how the Jews view France and more.
The answers the Jews gave, declaring France their motherland and non-Jewish Frenchmen their brothers, did not satisfy Napoleon, and a year later he issued the “Shameful Edict”, limiting the Jews' freedoms of occupation and movement, yet forced them to enlist in the army. Shameful indeed.

1860 | All Israel Are Friends

The story of the first global Jewish organization, Alliance Israelite Universelle, established in Paris in 1860, begins with a Jewish 3 year-old from Bologna named Edgardo Levi Mortara, who one day was kidnapped from his parents and taken to the Vatican, where he was “reeducated” in Catholic institutions.
The Mortara affair created great furor throughout liberal circles in Europe and was the main impetus for the founding of “Alliance”, a Jewish cultural organization meant to protect Jewish rights, which was active mainly in education.
During this period, 12 years after the “Spring of Nations” revolution, a wave of nationalism broke out and swept over France. As though through Pavlovian conditioning, the Jews were once again blamed for all the ills that had befallen the land of good taste. 12 years later, one of the main accusations hurled at the Jews was that they had gotten rich lending money to the French government for the disastrous war against the hated enemy of Prussia.

1894 | A Legendary Story

It was a winter he would never forget, and it seems that neither shall we. He was the Paris correspondent for the Austrian newspaper Neue Freie Presse, a handsome man with a thick black beard and burning eyes. He would not forget the toxic hatred, the obvious lie; he would not forget the shouts of “Death to the Jews” and the pleas of the accused, a Jewish-French military officer named Alfred Dreyfus, reprimanding those who were his subordinates but a moment ago, in a cracked voice: “I forbid you to curse me”, to no avail of course. To this day, the ripped-off ranks of Dreyfus appear in the all-Jewish nightmares.
Many historians believe that it was the Dreyfus trial that pushed the “Visionary of the Jewish State,” Binyamin Zeev (Theodore) Herzl, to dedicate his life to establishing a state for the Jews. For if in France, the country that had committed itself more than any to the ideals of equality, liberty, and fraternity, such anti-Semitism raged – what would become of the Jews huddled in the Pale of Settlement in Eastern Europe?
"If you will it", the young journalist thought to himself, "it is no legend".

1914 | Bloom of Life

On July 31st, 1914, Jean Jaures, leader of the Social-Democrat camp in French politics, sat and ate dinner at the famous Cafe du Croissant in the ninth arrondissement of Paris. All around the tempest was raging. The winds of WW1 began to blow, and Jaures, who had done everything in his power to stop the war, but in vain, was bitterly disappointed. This did not last long. During the meal an assassin appeared behind him and put two bullets in his head.
The murder of Jaures made a deep impact on his pupil and friend, Leon Blum, a socialist Jewish intellectual who would make history 22 years later by becoming the first Jewish Prime Minister of France. Blum, an attorney with a well-developed social conscience, who was defined by his biographer as a “man of words”, embodied the spirit of French Jews between the world wars. He was a man of French culture through and through, and at the same time deeply aware of his Jewish identity, an avowed Zionist, and was admired by the leaders of the Hebrew population in mandatory Palestine, who often sought his advice.

1942 | Vichy-ing The Jews Away

During WW2 France showed its ugly side. The Vichy government, a puppet regime under German protection, took part – and according to German testimony, with great zeal – in the deportation of the Jews of France (mostly Jews without French citizenship, including many who had fled from Nazi-controlled areas) to the extermination camps in the east.
One of the events that will live in infamy in French history was the deportation of 12,500 of the Jews of Paris, who were led in the dark of night, in the middle of July 1942, to the Velodrome d'hiver, where many of them died due to the harsh sanitary conditions and a severe shortage of food and water.
True, proud Francophiles will say – and rightly so – that there was a French resistance movement that abhorred the treatment of the Jews. To strengthen their argument for the republic, perhaps they will also offer the story of the nun Mother Maria Skobtsova, a Righteous Among the Nations, who managed to sneak into the velodrome along with her son disguised as waste removal workers, and hid several dozen Jewish children in the trash cans she took out. But these were the exceptions that did not indicate the rule. The numbers show that some 76,000 of the Jews of France (about a quarter of the Jews in the country) were sent to the death camps, of whom only 2,500 or so survived.

2000 | From Rothschild to Levinas

After the fall of the Iron Curtain and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Jews of France became the largest Jewish community in Europe: Some 600,000 Jews, most of whom migrated to France in the 1950s and 1960s from North Africa, as the French colonies there came to an end. The Six Day War represented a sort of messianic moment for the Jews of France as well. Their identification with Israel following the war was expressed in rallies and marches in the streets of Paris, financial support for Israel and the establishment of the “National Coordination Committee”, which united the vast majority of Jewish organizations in France.
In the 1980s the Jewish community in France was a hotbed of intellectual ferment, that included youngsters considered assimilated as well. Jewish radio stations were launched, departments of Jewish studies at universities received funding and resources, and research and publications on Jewish topics flourished. Among the celebrated Jews of France one may find intellectual Bernard Henri Levi, filmmaker Claude Lelouche, philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, thinker Jacques Derida, the famous Rothschild family and more.
But even in the 21st century France is not yet completely rid of anti-Jewish expressions and actions, this time led mostly by Muslim immigrants. These outbreaks, which included rock throwing, vandalism at synagogues and even murderous terror attacks, have led to another wave of aliyah to Israel.

Dan Merzbach (1956-2011), rabbi and architect.

Born in France and brought to Israel by his parents in 1966. After his marriage, Merzbach became a member of the group that established the West Bank settlement of Otniel in 1984. He was trained as an architect and designed a number of public buildings, but he was also a practicing rabbi who established a beit midrash, a religious study hall, near his home and was among the founders of the Otniel Yeshivat Hesder, whose students combine religious study with military service.

Merzbach was killed by mistake when Israel Defense Forces soldiers fired on his car at a makeshift checkpoint when they suspected a possible terrorist attack. The car was being driven by him in the very early morning towards the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron where he had intended to participate in morning prayers. Two other passengers in the car were moderately wounded. The soldier who had fired the lethal shots was himself lightly injured when a passing Palestinian truck hit him as he spoke with one of the injured passengers. In recent years Mertzbach prayed regularly on Friday mornings at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, a 20-minute drive from his home. This time he gave a ride to two women from the community, one of them a widow whose husband was shot and killed by terrorists in the area. Merzbach was a firm believer in the right of Jews to settle in all parts of Eretz Israel and was an effective and devoted educator who attracted many pupils.

Wilhelm Filderman (1882–1963), leader of the Romanian Jews, born in Bucharest, Romania. Filderman studied law in Paris, France. He returned to Romania and after teaching for two years at the Jewish high school in Bucharest, started his law practice in 1912. In 1913 he was elected to the central committee of the Union of Romanian Jews. During World War I Filderman was an officer in the Romanian army. At the Versailles Peace Conference he was chosen to be a member of the Comité des Délégations Juives. He demanded the total emancipation of the Jews and the inclusion of this principle in the peace treaty with Romania.

In 1920 Filderman became the representative of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) in Romania and in 1923 was elected president of the Union of Romanian Jews. Between the two world wars, he fought antisemitism, and worked for the effective realization of full citizenship for the Jews. He published a number of books against antisemitism. He was opposed to a separate Jewish party. In 1927 Filderman was elected a member of the Romanian parliament on the Liberal Party list. From 1931 to 1933 he was the president of the Jewish Community of Bucharest, and in the same period he became president of the Federation of Jewish Communities. When the enlarged Jewish Agency was constituted in 1929, he was elected as a non-Zionist delegate to its founding congress in Zurich.

After 1940, when the anti-Semitic fascist symparthiser Ion Antonescu took over the leadership of the country, Filderman intervened with him as a representative of the Federation, several times obtaining the revocation of serious measures, such as the wearing of the yellow badge, the deportation of Romanian Jews to Nazi death camps in Poland, etc. At the beginning of 1942, when the Federation of Communities was dissolved, Filderman continued to write to authorities to denounce the racial measures. He was a member of the underground Jewish Council, formed of representatives of the principal Jewish trends. When he expressed his opposition to the special tax of four billion lei imposed on the Jews he was sent to Transnistria (March 1943), returning after three months through the intervention of the papal nuncio and the Swiss and Swedish ambassadors. Back in Bucharest, he immediately reported to the Romanian government on the terrible situation of the deportees in Transnistria and asked for their return, which was obtained at the end of the same year.

After the war, he again became president of the Federation of Communities and of the Union of Romanian Jews and representative of the JDC. He was however persecuted by the Communists, In 1948 he secretly left Romania and settled in Paris.

Henry Heiner Cassirer (1911-2004), journalist and writer, the son of art dealer Kurt Hans Cassirer (1883-1975), and his wife Eva Solmitz and grandson of industrialist Max Cassirer (1857-1943), born in Berlin, Germany. He spent his childhood with his aunt Edith, who was married to the reform teacher Paul Geheeb. He attended the Odenwald School near Frankfurt funded by his grandfather Max Cassirer and run by his aunt.

Cassirer fled to London, England, in 1936, studied at the London School of Economics and after graduation worked at the BBC for its services in German. In 1939 it was he who broadcast to Germany that Britain had declared war to the Third Reich. In 1940 he emigrated to the U.S. and worked at CBS. After a program about the UN Charter of Human Rights, he was approached by the UN and in 1948 he became the director of the Department of Education and Broadcasting of the new cultural organization UNESCO in Paris. He became Honorary President of the French organization for the disabled GIHP as he himself was partially paralyzed after a visit to India in 1956.

He considered himself a citizen of the world, and always refused to consider himself a German, or a Jew. He wrote a number of books on communications, broadcasting and education.

Jacob Israelsohn (1856-1924), writer and Semitic scholar, born in Jelgava, Latvia (then part of the Russian Empire). He received a traditional Jewish education but as a youth also learned Russian and German. From 1876 to 1883 he studied Semitics at the University of St Petersburg, Russia, specializing in Jewish-Arabic literature, but he could not be appointed to the faculty since he was a Jew. He therefore worked as a writer, translator and secretary to the Jewish community of St Petersburg and philanthropy assistant to the wealthy Polyakov family of Moscow.

In 1922 he moved to Brussels, Belgium, and then to France where he helped Joseph Derenbourg in his research into Judeo-Arabic material. He also assisted in the preparation of the defence of Menachem Beilis ex-soldier and the father of five children, employed as a superintendent at the Zaitsev brick factory in Kiev who in 1913 amidst an surge of Anti-Semitic feeling was accused of the ritual murder of an Ukrainian child. He persuaded a number of Russian intellectuals to give evidence in the trial.

Israelsohn's publications included a Russian translation and commentary of Josephus' “The Jewish Wars”, an edition of Samuel ben Hophni's commentary on the end of Genesis and of Yahya ibn Bal'am's commentary of Jeremiah.

Israel Levi (1856-1939), scholar and chief rabbi of France, born in Paris. In 1882 he was appointed assistant rabbi and began to teach Jewish history at the Ecole Rabbinique in 1892 and Talmud at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in 1896. In 1880 he became secretary of the new Societe des Etudes Juives. In 1886 he was made editor of the "Revue des Etudes Juives". From 1919 to 1938 he was chief rabbi of the French Consistoire.

Levi was an intellectual who comtributed to many aspects of modern Jewish scholarship and in particular that which concerned the Jews of France. He was a regular contributor to learned journals, especially the "Revue des Etudes Juives", for which he revued almost every new book of Jewish scholarship.

Roger Ikor (1912–1986), writer, winner of the Prix Goncourt in 1955, born in Paris, France, to parents of Lithuanian origin. He studied and and later became professor of literature at the Lycee Condorcet and the Lycée Pasteur in Neuilly, outside Paris. In June 1940, he was taken prisoner of war by the Germans, and was sent to Pomerania. His best known work was "Le Fils d'Avrom" ("The son of Avrom"), which describes the lives of Jewish immigrants to France during the early part of the 20th century. It tells the story of a Jewish family which settled in Paris, and was bound by blood to a non-Jewish French family. Spanning three generations, the story describes the relationship that the family with their new home. Ikor clearly favours Jewish assimilation into the surrounding culture. For this work he was awarded the Prix Goncourt. His stories usually epic tell the workers' uprising of June 1848 (1936), and the history of Saint-Just (1937). He returned to the question of assimilation in his 1968 essay “Peut-on etre juif aujourd'hui?” ("Can one be a Jew today?"), which discusses the question in the light of the establishment of the State of Israel and the reawakening of Jewish consciousness amongst Jewish intellectuals. In this esay he makes certain concessions to the “outdated folklore” of Judaism. A moderate socialist and a liberal writer, his views were closer to the 19th century than the 20th century.

After the death of his son, who committed suicide after joining the Zen macrobiotic cult, he led, until his death, a struggle against the cult phenomenon, and the Center Against Mind Control (CSCM).

Leon Blum (1872-1950), French statesman, born in Paris, France. He studied law in Paris and earned a reputation as a poet and author.

From 1896 to 1919 he served in the government as legal advisor in the Council of State. Drawn to the Socialist Party, he became a deputy in 1919 and was soon one of the party's leaders. In 1921 he founded the Socialist daily, Le Populaire. In the face of a Fascist threat in 1934, he organized a Popular Front of the left and in June 1936 Blum became France's first Jewish prime minister. His government introduced daring reforms including the 40-hour work week, paid vacations and nationalization of war industries and the Bank of France. He was defeated in June 1937 but was again premier for nine months in 1938. In 1938 he founded the pro-Zionist Socialist Committee for Palestine.

When the Germans occupied France in 1940, they had Blum arrested and accused of having supported the war. Brought to trial in 1942, he conducted a brilliant defense which led the Germans to suspend the trial. He was sent to a concentration camp from which he was freed by the American army in 1945. Resuming political life, he was again Prime Minister for a month in 1946.

Rothschild, James Jacob Mayer (1792-1868), banker, founder of the French branch of the Rothschild family, born in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany, the youngest child of Mayer Amschel Rothschild.

Rothschild moved to Paris in 1811 and in 1817 opened de Rothschild Frères. An advisor to two kings of France, he became the most powerful banker in the country and following the Napoleonic Wars, played a major role in financing the construction of railroads, industries, factories, shipping, and mining interests which helped make France an industrial power. Rothschild amassed a fortune that made him one of the richest men in the world. In 1822 James de Rothschild, along with his four brothers, was bestowed the hereditary title of "Freiherr" (Baron) by Emperor Francis I of Austria. That same year he was appointed consul-general of the Austrian Empire, and in 1823 was awarded the French Legion of Honor. King Louis XVIII refused to receive James' wife at court because she was not Christian. As a result Rothschild refused to do business with the king. Following the July 1830 Revolution which saw King Louis-Philippe come to power, James de Rothschild put together a loan package to stabilize the finances of the new government, and in 1834 a second loan. In gratitude for his services to the French nation, Louis-Philippe elevated him to a grand officer of the Legion of Honor.

In addition to his banking business, in 1868 James de Rothschild purchased Château Lafite, one of France's most outstanding vineyards. Located in the Bordeaux region, it is a business that remains in the family to this day. James de Rothschild and his sophisticated Viennese wife were at the center of Parisian culture. They patronized major personalities in the arts, including Gioacchino Rossini, Frédéric Chopin, Honoré de Balzac, Eugène Delacroix, and Heinrich Heine. Beyond his business activities, James de Rothschild made the first significant acquisitions for what became the French family's massive art collections. His art included Vermeer's 1668 work "The Astronomer", which remained in the family until it became the property of the Louvre in the 1970s. He also used his enormous wealth for philanthropic works and became a leader of the French Jewish community. James's contributions to France, along with those of his offspring can be found in many fields, including medicine and the arts.

Sons Alphonse and Gustave took the reins of a vast French business empire, whose industrial interests spread as far afield as Africa and the South Sea Islands.

Jozsef Vago(1877-1947), architect, born in Nagyvarad, Hungary (then part of Austria-Hungary, now Oradea in Romania) and completed his studies at the Polytechnicum in Budapest. As a student, he was awarded a prize for the plan of a synagogue in Budapest.

Until 1911 he worked with his older brother, architect Laszlo Vago. Later Jozsef became the associate of the leading Hungarian architect O. Lechner. Vago prefered the modern style with the clean uncluttered lines then in vogue. Many buildings in the Hungarian capital were designed by him. In 1919 he settled in Switzerland and later relocated to Italy.

He died in Salies-de-Béarn, France.

Moïse (Mojzesz) Kisling (1891-1953), painter, born in Krakow, Poland (then part of Austria-Hungary). He studied at the School of Fine Arts in Krakow, and then moved to France in 1910 settling in Paris.

Kisling resided first in Montmartre and after a few years he moved to Montparnasse where he became a member of an artists' community made up of immigrants from various countries in eastern Europe as well as from USA and Britain.

Kisling volunteered to serve in the French Foreign Legion during WW1. After having been seriously wounded in the Battle of the Somme (1915), he was awarded French citizenship.

A member of the School of Paris, Kisling lived and worked in Montparnasse and was close friends with his neighbors, Amedeo Modigliani and Jules Pascin, and other distinguished artists. Kisling earned the widest acclaim for his surreal nudes and portraits.

Kisling volunteered for army service again in 1940 during World War II, although he was 49. He was discharged from the French army at the time of the surrender Nazi Germany.
Kisling immigrated to the United States. In the USA he exhibited in New York and Washington, DC. Eventually he settled in California living there until 1946, when he returned to France where he died seven years later at Sanary-sur-Mer, near Toulon, on the French Riviera.

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The Jewish Community of France

France

République française

A country in Western Europe, member of the European Union (EU).

21st Century

Estimated Jewish population in 2018: 450,000 out of 65,000,000 (0.6%). France is the home of the third largest Jewish population in the world and the largest Jewish community in Europe. 

Conseil Représentatif des Institutions Juives de France - Representative Council of Jews of France
Phone: 33 1 42 17 11 11
Fax: 33 1 42 17 11 13
Email: infocrif@crif.org
Website: www.crif.org

Consistoire Central de France – Union des Communautés Juives de France
19, rue St Georges
75009 Paris
France
Phone: 01 49 70 88 00
Fax: 01 42 81 03 66
Website: https://france.consistoire.org/consistoire-central/
e-mail : administration@consistoirecentral.fr

 

HISTORY

The Jews of France

1040 | In Rashi Veritas

Brain drain is not a new phenomenon. Between the eighth and tenth centuries a mass movement began of Jewish merchants from Babylon – then the largest Jewish population center in the world – migrating to Western Europe, where international trade centers began to emerge. These Jews joined a larger and older group of fellow Jews, who had migrated back in 2nd Temple times, through the Mediterranean to Gaul, the land that we know as France.
As befits a goose laying golden eggs, the Jews received special rights and sheltered under the protection of French nobles, who shielded them from the maws of the Catholic Church. The economic prosperity allowed them to establish yeshivas and Torah centers which produced many scholars. One of these, a genius who made his living as a vintner, was born in 1040 in the province of Champagne in France, and bequeathed to posterity a comprehensive commentary on the Torah. Legend has it that the incomparable Rashi script was invented by his daughters, who were scholars themselves, but the truth is that it's the font of a Sephardi cursive script that was used in the Jewish printing presses in 16th century Italy to distinguish it from the biblical text itself. His name was Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki (Rashi), and his monumental work is still the authoritative commentary on Holy Scripture in the rabbinical world.

1240 | Where They Burn Books...

The crusades, which spread from Europe beginning in 1096, ended the idyll of Jewish existence in the lands of Ashkenaz in the early second millennium. Blood libels, persecutions and expulsions were the lot of the Jews for hundreds of years afterward.
One of the low points was reached in the year 1240 and is known as “The Trial of Paris”. At this trial, initiated by King Louis IX and Pope Gregory IX, the defendant was not a person, but a work of literature - The Talmud, to be precise, which according to the Catholic Church holds messages of hatred towards all gentiles and disparagement of Jesus.
One fine day an incited mob gathered in front of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, to watch the condemned criminal – 12,000 hand-written copies of the Talmud – burned at the stake. 600 years later Jewish-German poet Heinrich Heine would comment on this event: “Where they burn books, they will eventually burn people.”

1481 | The Provenance of Provence

When speaking of the Jews of France, one cannot help but pay special attention to a singular group of Jews who lived in what is now the south of France and was called “The Sages of Provence”.
These sages were the advanced placement class of the Jewish world. They created a unique brand of thought and Bible exegesis and also engaged in philosophy and Kabbalah. The teachings of these sages was spread throughout Europe, Spain and North Africa, and their genius was a byword among Jewish intellectuals of Western Europe.
Among the main writers of this group are Hameiri, Rabbi David Kimchi (aka Rada”k), Rabbi Zarhia HaLevi (aka Raza”h), Abraham Ben David (aka Raba”d) and his son, Rabbi Isaac the Blind, and of course the great translator Judah ibn Tibbon, the man who disseminated the thought of Maimonides after translating it from Arabic into Hebrew.
The Jews of Provence as a cultural phenomenon came to an end in the year 1481, when King Louis XI of France annexed Provence to his realm.

1498 | The Odyssey of Expulsions

To the Jews of France, the late Middle Ages were an agonizing ping-pong affair of expulsions and recalls. In 1306 King Phillip IV issued an edict banning the Jews from residence in French territory. 11 years later his son, Louis X, recalled the Jews – provided they wear an identifying patch on their clothes. A mere seven years went by and the Jews were expelled again. This time it was King Charles IV, who claimed that the Jews, in their temerity, failed to pay their full amount of taxes to him.
In 1357, under Jean II and later under Charles V, the Jews returned to France, but once again suffered persecution, restriction of their freedom of occupation to the sole field of money-lending, and finally – abduction of their children.
The odyssey of expulsions ended on September 17th, 1394, when Charles VI succumbed to the pressure of the masses and issues an edict of expulsion for all Jews in his domains. To his credit, it must be noted that he gave the expelled Jews ample time to sell their property and decreed that any Christian who borrowed money from them must repay it. By 1498 there was not a Jew left anywhere in France, save for a smattering of small communities that lived in Avignon and its environs in the south of France, which was then under Papal control.

1791 | No Bread? Eat Challa

The French Revolution, which broke out in 1789, costing many their lives through the services of “Madame Guillotine”, heralded the idea of the liberal democratic state as we know it today. From a tyrannical class-based society France transformed (albeit through much bloodshed), to a democratic regime in which each person can be master of their own fate.
The first to enjoy the fruits of emancipation were the Jews of Alsace-Lorraine, an area conquered by France back in 1630. The Jews of France, then numbering some 40,000 people, were as mentioned above the first in Europe to enjoy the fruits of the revolution, but their release from the burden of being the “other” and “alien” was not easy. At first the leaders of the revolution claimed that the Jews were “a nation within a nation” and as such not eligible for treatment as equal citizens. But in 1791 the General Law Relating to the Jews was issued, granting the Jews full equality, and there was much rejoicing in the Jewish quarter of Paris.

1806 | The Twelve Question Program

It would not be off the mark to characterize the history of Europe's Jews in general and those of France in particular as a series of “almosts”. Almost equality. Almost Emancipation. Almost liberty.
As though the Law Relating to the Jews had not been passed 15 years prior, in 1806 the question of Jewish status was raised once again, this time under Napoleon, the legendary general known for his unlimited ambition.
Napoleon took a creative approach. In 1806 he gathered an assembly of leading Jews and presented them with the “12 Question Test”, designed to assess their loyalty to France. Among other things the Jews were asked how Jewish halacha views mixed marriages, whether a Jew may charge interest from a gentile, how the Jews view France and more.
The answers the Jews gave, declaring France their motherland and non-Jewish Frenchmen their brothers, did not satisfy Napoleon, and a year later he issued the “Shameful Edict”, limiting the Jews' freedoms of occupation and movement, yet forced them to enlist in the army. Shameful indeed.

1860 | All Israel Are Friends

The story of the first global Jewish organization, Alliance Israelite Universelle, established in Paris in 1860, begins with a Jewish 3 year-old from Bologna named Edgardo Levi Mortara, who one day was kidnapped from his parents and taken to the Vatican, where he was “reeducated” in Catholic institutions.
The Mortara affair created great furor throughout liberal circles in Europe and was the main impetus for the founding of “Alliance”, a Jewish cultural organization meant to protect Jewish rights, which was active mainly in education.
During this period, 12 years after the “Spring of Nations” revolution, a wave of nationalism broke out and swept over France. As though through Pavlovian conditioning, the Jews were once again blamed for all the ills that had befallen the land of good taste. 12 years later, one of the main accusations hurled at the Jews was that they had gotten rich lending money to the French government for the disastrous war against the hated enemy of Prussia.

1894 | A Legendary Story

It was a winter he would never forget, and it seems that neither shall we. He was the Paris correspondent for the Austrian newspaper Neue Freie Presse, a handsome man with a thick black beard and burning eyes. He would not forget the toxic hatred, the obvious lie; he would not forget the shouts of “Death to the Jews” and the pleas of the accused, a Jewish-French military officer named Alfred Dreyfus, reprimanding those who were his subordinates but a moment ago, in a cracked voice: “I forbid you to curse me”, to no avail of course. To this day, the ripped-off ranks of Dreyfus appear in the all-Jewish nightmares.
Many historians believe that it was the Dreyfus trial that pushed the “Visionary of the Jewish State,” Binyamin Zeev (Theodore) Herzl, to dedicate his life to establishing a state for the Jews. For if in France, the country that had committed itself more than any to the ideals of equality, liberty, and fraternity, such anti-Semitism raged – what would become of the Jews huddled in the Pale of Settlement in Eastern Europe?
"If you will it", the young journalist thought to himself, "it is no legend".

1914 | Bloom of Life

On July 31st, 1914, Jean Jaures, leader of the Social-Democrat camp in French politics, sat and ate dinner at the famous Cafe du Croissant in the ninth arrondissement of Paris. All around the tempest was raging. The winds of WW1 began to blow, and Jaures, who had done everything in his power to stop the war, but in vain, was bitterly disappointed. This did not last long. During the meal an assassin appeared behind him and put two bullets in his head.
The murder of Jaures made a deep impact on his pupil and friend, Leon Blum, a socialist Jewish intellectual who would make history 22 years later by becoming the first Jewish Prime Minister of France. Blum, an attorney with a well-developed social conscience, who was defined by his biographer as a “man of words”, embodied the spirit of French Jews between the world wars. He was a man of French culture through and through, and at the same time deeply aware of his Jewish identity, an avowed Zionist, and was admired by the leaders of the Hebrew population in mandatory Palestine, who often sought his advice.

1942 | Vichy-ing The Jews Away

During WW2 France showed its ugly side. The Vichy government, a puppet regime under German protection, took part – and according to German testimony, with great zeal – in the deportation of the Jews of France (mostly Jews without French citizenship, including many who had fled from Nazi-controlled areas) to the extermination camps in the east.
One of the events that will live in infamy in French history was the deportation of 12,500 of the Jews of Paris, who were led in the dark of night, in the middle of July 1942, to the Velodrome d'hiver, where many of them died due to the harsh sanitary conditions and a severe shortage of food and water.
True, proud Francophiles will say – and rightly so – that there was a French resistance movement that abhorred the treatment of the Jews. To strengthen their argument for the republic, perhaps they will also offer the story of the nun Mother Maria Skobtsova, a Righteous Among the Nations, who managed to sneak into the velodrome along with her son disguised as waste removal workers, and hid several dozen Jewish children in the trash cans she took out. But these were the exceptions that did not indicate the rule. The numbers show that some 76,000 of the Jews of France (about a quarter of the Jews in the country) were sent to the death camps, of whom only 2,500 or so survived.

2000 | From Rothschild to Levinas

After the fall of the Iron Curtain and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Jews of France became the largest Jewish community in Europe: Some 600,000 Jews, most of whom migrated to France in the 1950s and 1960s from North Africa, as the French colonies there came to an end. The Six Day War represented a sort of messianic moment for the Jews of France as well. Their identification with Israel following the war was expressed in rallies and marches in the streets of Paris, financial support for Israel and the establishment of the “National Coordination Committee”, which united the vast majority of Jewish organizations in France.
In the 1980s the Jewish community in France was a hotbed of intellectual ferment, that included youngsters considered assimilated as well. Jewish radio stations were launched, departments of Jewish studies at universities received funding and resources, and research and publications on Jewish topics flourished. Among the celebrated Jews of France one may find intellectual Bernard Henri Levi, filmmaker Claude Lelouche, philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, thinker Jacques Derida, the famous Rothschild family and more.
But even in the 21st century France is not yet completely rid of anti-Jewish expressions and actions, this time led mostly by Muslim immigrants. These outbreaks, which included rock throwing, vandalism at synagogues and even murderous terror attacks, have led to another wave of aliyah to Israel.

Written by researchers of ANU Museum of the Jewish People
Dan Merzbach

Dan Merzbach (1956-2011), rabbi and architect.

Born in France and brought to Israel by his parents in 1966. After his marriage, Merzbach became a member of the group that established the West Bank settlement of Otniel in 1984. He was trained as an architect and designed a number of public buildings, but he was also a practicing rabbi who established a beit midrash, a religious study hall, near his home and was among the founders of the Otniel Yeshivat Hesder, whose students combine religious study with military service.

Merzbach was killed by mistake when Israel Defense Forces soldiers fired on his car at a makeshift checkpoint when they suspected a possible terrorist attack. The car was being driven by him in the very early morning towards the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron where he had intended to participate in morning prayers. Two other passengers in the car were moderately wounded. The soldier who had fired the lethal shots was himself lightly injured when a passing Palestinian truck hit him as he spoke with one of the injured passengers. In recent years Mertzbach prayed regularly on Friday mornings at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, a 20-minute drive from his home. This time he gave a ride to two women from the community, one of them a widow whose husband was shot and killed by terrorists in the area. Merzbach was a firm believer in the right of Jews to settle in all parts of Eretz Israel and was an effective and devoted educator who attracted many pupils.

Wilhelm Filderman

Wilhelm Filderman (1882–1963), leader of the Romanian Jews, born in Bucharest, Romania. Filderman studied law in Paris, France. He returned to Romania and after teaching for two years at the Jewish high school in Bucharest, started his law practice in 1912. In 1913 he was elected to the central committee of the Union of Romanian Jews. During World War I Filderman was an officer in the Romanian army. At the Versailles Peace Conference he was chosen to be a member of the Comité des Délégations Juives. He demanded the total emancipation of the Jews and the inclusion of this principle in the peace treaty with Romania.

In 1920 Filderman became the representative of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) in Romania and in 1923 was elected president of the Union of Romanian Jews. Between the two world wars, he fought antisemitism, and worked for the effective realization of full citizenship for the Jews. He published a number of books against antisemitism. He was opposed to a separate Jewish party. In 1927 Filderman was elected a member of the Romanian parliament on the Liberal Party list. From 1931 to 1933 he was the president of the Jewish Community of Bucharest, and in the same period he became president of the Federation of Jewish Communities. When the enlarged Jewish Agency was constituted in 1929, he was elected as a non-Zionist delegate to its founding congress in Zurich.

After 1940, when the anti-Semitic fascist symparthiser Ion Antonescu took over the leadership of the country, Filderman intervened with him as a representative of the Federation, several times obtaining the revocation of serious measures, such as the wearing of the yellow badge, the deportation of Romanian Jews to Nazi death camps in Poland, etc. At the beginning of 1942, when the Federation of Communities was dissolved, Filderman continued to write to authorities to denounce the racial measures. He was a member of the underground Jewish Council, formed of representatives of the principal Jewish trends. When he expressed his opposition to the special tax of four billion lei imposed on the Jews he was sent to Transnistria (March 1943), returning after three months through the intervention of the papal nuncio and the Swiss and Swedish ambassadors. Back in Bucharest, he immediately reported to the Romanian government on the terrible situation of the deportees in Transnistria and asked for their return, which was obtained at the end of the same year.

After the war, he again became president of the Federation of Communities and of the Union of Romanian Jews and representative of the JDC. He was however persecuted by the Communists, In 1948 he secretly left Romania and settled in Paris.

Henry Heiner Cassirer

Henry Heiner Cassirer (1911-2004), journalist and writer, the son of art dealer Kurt Hans Cassirer (1883-1975), and his wife Eva Solmitz and grandson of industrialist Max Cassirer (1857-1943), born in Berlin, Germany. He spent his childhood with his aunt Edith, who was married to the reform teacher Paul Geheeb. He attended the Odenwald School near Frankfurt funded by his grandfather Max Cassirer and run by his aunt.

Cassirer fled to London, England, in 1936, studied at the London School of Economics and after graduation worked at the BBC for its services in German. In 1939 it was he who broadcast to Germany that Britain had declared war to the Third Reich. In 1940 he emigrated to the U.S. and worked at CBS. After a program about the UN Charter of Human Rights, he was approached by the UN and in 1948 he became the director of the Department of Education and Broadcasting of the new cultural organization UNESCO in Paris. He became Honorary President of the French organization for the disabled GIHP as he himself was partially paralyzed after a visit to India in 1956.

He considered himself a citizen of the world, and always refused to consider himself a German, or a Jew. He wrote a number of books on communications, broadcasting and education.

Jacob Israelsohn

Jacob Israelsohn (1856-1924), writer and Semitic scholar, born in Jelgava, Latvia (then part of the Russian Empire). He received a traditional Jewish education but as a youth also learned Russian and German. From 1876 to 1883 he studied Semitics at the University of St Petersburg, Russia, specializing in Jewish-Arabic literature, but he could not be appointed to the faculty since he was a Jew. He therefore worked as a writer, translator and secretary to the Jewish community of St Petersburg and philanthropy assistant to the wealthy Polyakov family of Moscow.

In 1922 he moved to Brussels, Belgium, and then to France where he helped Joseph Derenbourg in his research into Judeo-Arabic material. He also assisted in the preparation of the defence of Menachem Beilis ex-soldier and the father of five children, employed as a superintendent at the Zaitsev brick factory in Kiev who in 1913 amidst an surge of Anti-Semitic feeling was accused of the ritual murder of an Ukrainian child. He persuaded a number of Russian intellectuals to give evidence in the trial.

Israelsohn's publications included a Russian translation and commentary of Josephus' “The Jewish Wars”, an edition of Samuel ben Hophni's commentary on the end of Genesis and of Yahya ibn Bal'am's commentary of Jeremiah.

Israel Levi

Israel Levi (1856-1939), scholar and chief rabbi of France, born in Paris. In 1882 he was appointed assistant rabbi and began to teach Jewish history at the Ecole Rabbinique in 1892 and Talmud at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in 1896. In 1880 he became secretary of the new Societe des Etudes Juives. In 1886 he was made editor of the "Revue des Etudes Juives". From 1919 to 1938 he was chief rabbi of the French Consistoire.

Levi was an intellectual who comtributed to many aspects of modern Jewish scholarship and in particular that which concerned the Jews of France. He was a regular contributor to learned journals, especially the "Revue des Etudes Juives", for which he revued almost every new book of Jewish scholarship.

Roger Ikor

Roger Ikor (1912–1986), writer, winner of the Prix Goncourt in 1955, born in Paris, France, to parents of Lithuanian origin. He studied and and later became professor of literature at the Lycee Condorcet and the Lycée Pasteur in Neuilly, outside Paris. In June 1940, he was taken prisoner of war by the Germans, and was sent to Pomerania. His best known work was "Le Fils d'Avrom" ("The son of Avrom"), which describes the lives of Jewish immigrants to France during the early part of the 20th century. It tells the story of a Jewish family which settled in Paris, and was bound by blood to a non-Jewish French family. Spanning three generations, the story describes the relationship that the family with their new home. Ikor clearly favours Jewish assimilation into the surrounding culture. For this work he was awarded the Prix Goncourt. His stories usually epic tell the workers' uprising of June 1848 (1936), and the history of Saint-Just (1937). He returned to the question of assimilation in his 1968 essay “Peut-on etre juif aujourd'hui?” ("Can one be a Jew today?"), which discusses the question in the light of the establishment of the State of Israel and the reawakening of Jewish consciousness amongst Jewish intellectuals. In this esay he makes certain concessions to the “outdated folklore” of Judaism. A moderate socialist and a liberal writer, his views were closer to the 19th century than the 20th century.

After the death of his son, who committed suicide after joining the Zen macrobiotic cult, he led, until his death, a struggle against the cult phenomenon, and the Center Against Mind Control (CSCM).

Leon Blum

Leon Blum (1872-1950), French statesman, born in Paris, France. He studied law in Paris and earned a reputation as a poet and author.

From 1896 to 1919 he served in the government as legal advisor in the Council of State. Drawn to the Socialist Party, he became a deputy in 1919 and was soon one of the party's leaders. In 1921 he founded the Socialist daily, Le Populaire. In the face of a Fascist threat in 1934, he organized a Popular Front of the left and in June 1936 Blum became France's first Jewish prime minister. His government introduced daring reforms including the 40-hour work week, paid vacations and nationalization of war industries and the Bank of France. He was defeated in June 1937 but was again premier for nine months in 1938. In 1938 he founded the pro-Zionist Socialist Committee for Palestine.

When the Germans occupied France in 1940, they had Blum arrested and accused of having supported the war. Brought to trial in 1942, he conducted a brilliant defense which led the Germans to suspend the trial. He was sent to a concentration camp from which he was freed by the American army in 1945. Resuming political life, he was again Prime Minister for a month in 1946.

James Jacob Mayer Rothschild

Rothschild, James Jacob Mayer (1792-1868), banker, founder of the French branch of the Rothschild family, born in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany, the youngest child of Mayer Amschel Rothschild.

Rothschild moved to Paris in 1811 and in 1817 opened de Rothschild Frères. An advisor to two kings of France, he became the most powerful banker in the country and following the Napoleonic Wars, played a major role in financing the construction of railroads, industries, factories, shipping, and mining interests which helped make France an industrial power. Rothschild amassed a fortune that made him one of the richest men in the world. In 1822 James de Rothschild, along with his four brothers, was bestowed the hereditary title of "Freiherr" (Baron) by Emperor Francis I of Austria. That same year he was appointed consul-general of the Austrian Empire, and in 1823 was awarded the French Legion of Honor. King Louis XVIII refused to receive James' wife at court because she was not Christian. As a result Rothschild refused to do business with the king. Following the July 1830 Revolution which saw King Louis-Philippe come to power, James de Rothschild put together a loan package to stabilize the finances of the new government, and in 1834 a second loan. In gratitude for his services to the French nation, Louis-Philippe elevated him to a grand officer of the Legion of Honor.

In addition to his banking business, in 1868 James de Rothschild purchased Château Lafite, one of France's most outstanding vineyards. Located in the Bordeaux region, it is a business that remains in the family to this day. James de Rothschild and his sophisticated Viennese wife were at the center of Parisian culture. They patronized major personalities in the arts, including Gioacchino Rossini, Frédéric Chopin, Honoré de Balzac, Eugène Delacroix, and Heinrich Heine. Beyond his business activities, James de Rothschild made the first significant acquisitions for what became the French family's massive art collections. His art included Vermeer's 1668 work "The Astronomer", which remained in the family until it became the property of the Louvre in the 1970s. He also used his enormous wealth for philanthropic works and became a leader of the French Jewish community. James's contributions to France, along with those of his offspring can be found in many fields, including medicine and the arts.

Sons Alphonse and Gustave took the reins of a vast French business empire, whose industrial interests spread as far afield as Africa and the South Sea Islands.

Jozsef Vago

Jozsef Vago(1877-1947), architect, born in Nagyvarad, Hungary (then part of Austria-Hungary, now Oradea in Romania) and completed his studies at the Polytechnicum in Budapest. As a student, he was awarded a prize for the plan of a synagogue in Budapest.

Until 1911 he worked with his older brother, architect Laszlo Vago. Later Jozsef became the associate of the leading Hungarian architect O. Lechner. Vago prefered the modern style with the clean uncluttered lines then in vogue. Many buildings in the Hungarian capital were designed by him. In 1919 he settled in Switzerland and later relocated to Italy.

He died in Salies-de-Béarn, France.

Moïse (Mojzesz) Kisling

Moïse (Mojzesz) Kisling (1891-1953), painter, born in Krakow, Poland (then part of Austria-Hungary). He studied at the School of Fine Arts in Krakow, and then moved to France in 1910 settling in Paris.

Kisling resided first in Montmartre and after a few years he moved to Montparnasse where he became a member of an artists' community made up of immigrants from various countries in eastern Europe as well as from USA and Britain.

Kisling volunteered to serve in the French Foreign Legion during WW1. After having been seriously wounded in the Battle of the Somme (1915), he was awarded French citizenship.

A member of the School of Paris, Kisling lived and worked in Montparnasse and was close friends with his neighbors, Amedeo Modigliani and Jules Pascin, and other distinguished artists. Kisling earned the widest acclaim for his surreal nudes and portraits.

Kisling volunteered for army service again in 1940 during World War II, although he was 49. He was discharged from the French army at the time of the surrender Nazi Germany.
Kisling immigrated to the United States. In the USA he exhibited in New York and Washington, DC. Eventually he settled in California living there until 1946, when he returned to France where he died seven years later at Sanary-sur-Mer, near Toulon, on the French Riviera.