Rethinking antisemitism in nineteenth-century France

"Rethinking Antisemitism in Nineteenth-Century France is a history of the stories the French told about the Jews in their midst during the early nineteenth century. Using a novel cultural analysis that brings together pamphlets, newspaper articles, novels, and works of art, Julie Kalman focuses on the period that historians have explored the least, encompassing the years 1815-1848. Kalman shows that there were significant discussions surrounding France's Jewish population taking place during this period and argues that these discussions are central to our understanding of the history of the Jew's place in France. These stories also allow us to reflect on core questions of French history during this period, a time when the French were questioning the fundamental nature of their own identity"--Provided by publisher. ; Examines the evolution of the image of the Jew in French culture from the Restoration of 1815 to the revolution of 1848. The Restoration did not and could not return the Jews of France to the same status they had before the Great Revolution, but neither the monarchies nor the Church wanted to embrace them as co-citizens with the Catholic French. The new epoch introduced a secularization of the image of the Jew. In the eyes of the Church, the Jew stood for all that was unacceptable in the new epoch. For conservatives, the Jew was a man of money, a representative of all that went against the nation, and was thus unfit for admission into the French nation. For liberals and socialists, the Jew served as the ultimate example of the virtues of the new era which was able to absorb the Jew into the nation; however, they espoused the same stereotypes of Jews as the conservatives. Romantic artists and writers saw Jews as an "Oriental" people, barely distinguishable from Muslims, and thus un-French. Anti-capitalist writers identified the Jews, metonymically "Rothschild", with capitalism. Toward the end of this period, the myth of overwhelming Jewish power began to emerge. During crises and political upheavals, the image of the Jew was resorted to to explain the events. Sometimes public opinion even cast doubts on the sincerity of Jewish converts, as in the case of Simon Deutz, who in 1832 denounced the Duchess of Berry to Orleanist authorities. During this entire period, people of letters used the Jews to explain away frustration with a world that would not conform to their ideals. (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism - The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)