Editor's Introduction: Jewish Studies in France

Abstract

is now firmly 'on the map' of Jewish studies, wrote a contributor to a recent volume on Jewish studies the world over. 1 This issue of Shofar testifies to the vigor of research in France on Jewish subjects, as each article here takes an overview of an aspect of this multifaceted field. Alessandro Guetta's contribution speaks of the nineteenth-century French Jewish thinkers, who combined concerns from the Wissenschaft des judentums with the universalistic ideology of the French revolution to produce stirring defenses of Jewish spirituality. Charles Mopsik's article shows how the preoccupations of these thinkers and earlier scholars bear upon the interest the Kabbalah has generated in the course of this century. Sylvie Anne Goldberg, in turn, examines how the· Wissenschaft des judentums and the Polish-Russian Jewish historical school (whose finest representatives were Simon Dubnow and the YIVO historians) set parameters still relevant for present-day Jewish historiog-