Pierre Birnbaum is the specialist on Jewish history, political science, and sociology. He is considered as one of the leading experts on French Jewish society throughout the world. His current position is the visiting professor in Jewish studies at the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies (Columbia University). This paper is concerned with exploration of one of his major works, namely, Jewish Destinies: Citizenship, State, and Community in Modern France.
The author’s work focuses on key facts and personalities of the history of Jews in modern France. To be more exact, Birnbaum investigates how the conflicts that the contemporary Jewish faced were shaped by France’s path through the modern period. The peculiar feature of the book is that in terms of the problem studied the author does not retrace the history of French Jewry, but mostly tracks the history of anti-Semitism. I suppose that the path I have talked above would have become clearer to the reader if the author paid more attention to the description of the French Jews’ history instead of their reactions to anti-Semitism.
France is the state where 89 percent of the people believe that racism is widespread and 70 percent agree that there are “too many arabs.” (Birnbaum 1) Arabs are contemporary targets of racism, but racism in the past was targeted at other groups and Jews in particular. Only the French Revolution made Jews full citizens of France. The common views of historians is that emancipating Jews and allowing them to join the French society as the nation that has rights for own existence the state severed the ties that had once bound the French community together (Birnbaum 1). However, the main point that the author of the book under consideration makes is that “the history of Jews in France-and of the attitudes towards them-is not so linear. Rather […] anti-Semitism has risen and fallen along with other forms of racism and xenophobia, and, […] Jews in France today – no matter what their degree of assimilation – are once again viewed as members of an isolated community.” (Birnbaum 1)
In terms of the problem studied the author seeks to answer the following questions:
- Can members of a minority culture be full and equal citizens of a democratic state?
- Do their community allegiances override their loyalty to the state?
- Who defines the minority community – its members or the state? (Birnbaum 1).
To answer these questions Birnbaum explores the issues like:
- emancipation of French Jews since the Revolution;
- opposition to the French Jews’ citizenship (with the emphasis made on the Dreyfus Affair);
- unclear present of secularism;
- the 1990 incident of cemetery desecration in the ancient Jewish quarter of Carpentras;
- the 1998 poll in terms of the French attitudes toward Jews;
- the wartime Vichy government.
The book consists of three parts: Different Roads for Emancipation, The Scope of the Opposition, and The Unknown Present. The twelve chapters in total are framed by an introduction and conclusion. There is also the preface for American and English readers in which the author speaks of the differences between the constructions of citizenship, state and community in the three countries. The Afterword section focuses on the events in the French-Jewish community since the book was published in French.
The book is a series of essays united by different problems that they tackle. The work starts with an investigation of how the free Franco-Jewish community has developed. Jews found themselves powerful enough to become individual members of the French civil society. But with this power and the freedom acquired they became more obvious targets of anti-Semitism. Most of all I was impressed by the author’s five essays on the Dreyfus affair. The focus of Birnbaum’ research was the anti-Dreyfusards, the way they opposed to the Republic and their open anti-Semitism positions. His section seems to be rather suggestive about recent history. The thing is that the role of the Catholic church in the anti-Dreyfus movements becomes crucial for understanding the post- Second World War attempts of some Catholic priests to defend the enemies of France less baffling.
Exploration of the primary sources (documents, artifacts, letters, etc.) allows the author to define the three main factors that arouse debates on citizenship, state and community in the period of Revolution:
- the right to vote;
- access to the civil service and eventually to the machinery of government;
- the compatibility of communal structures with citizenship and the structures of the nation-state (Birnbaum 19).
On the basis of these three factors the scholar examines the historical debates over the Revolution that finally led to Jewish emancipation. Various proofs that the author suggests show that the price that the Jewish paid for emancipation was cultural integration. The cost for integration was the Jews had to adhere to the paradoxical effect to the centralization of the state and the universal model of citizenship (Birnbaum 19).
Taking into account the deepness of the research the author has conducted I still believe that the way in which he considers the relationship between the French Jews and the larger community (through examination of anti-Semitism) is rather limited and confusing for the reader. The author only states the gap in the existing knowledge on the problem but never suggests one’s own solution as for how to fill in those gaps. Neither his Afterward nor Introduction contains concrete answers to the questions he has asked. The work is indeed thought-provoking but I suppose that the author should have been more concerned with the answers to give than with the questions to ask. The work ends plaintively: “Carpentras ultimately proves that, for Jews at any rate, it is no small feat to negotiate the arduous path between citizenship and community, assimilation and identity” (Birnbaum 251) that contributes to the readers’ overall confusion.
Everything stated above considered I conclude that Jewish Destinies: Citizenship, State, and Community in Modern France by Pierre Birnbaum is rather the book of questions than the book of answers. The dry language that the author uses seems to be an external manifestation of the internal lack of evidence and appropriate consideration of them by the author.
Works Cited
Birnbaum, P. Jewish Destinies: Citizenship, State, and Community in Modern France. Hill and Wang, 2000.
“Pierre Birnbaum.” 2008. Web.