JONATHAN JUDAKEN. Jean-Paul Sartre and the Jewish Question: Anti-antisemitism and the Politics of the French Intellectual. (Texts and Contexts.) Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 2006. Pp. xi, 390. $45.00

Abstract

Jonathan Judaken begins by saying that the “scandal” of his book is his thesis that whenever Jean-Paul Sartre “fundamentally rethought the underlying principles that defined his politics and his role as a public intellectual, [he] did so by reflecting on ‘the Jewish question.’” A few sentences later, Judaken moderates this thesis, saying that even though “intermittent” over time and “peripheral” in bulk in Sartre's writings, the Jewish question proves to be “a fecund site to interrogate and reevaluate his oeuvre” (p. 3). I do not think Judaken proves the first claim. But he is so convincing in defending the latter contention as to make the stretch pardonable. In Judaken's capable hands, the Jewish question provides an interesting enough optic to think about Sartre that there is no need to displace other “fecund sites” from which to read his work (including his shifting relationship to any number of intellectual doctrines, major figures, or groups of people).