Silent or Outspoken? Re-Examining French Jewish Responses to the Dreyfus Affair

Abstract

Historians of the Dreyfus Affair have long argued over the response of French Jews to the wrongful arrest of their coreligionist, French army captain Alfred Dreyfus, on charges of treason in 1894. While early historiographies focused on Jewish silence and passivity, more recent works have claimed to reveal a Jewish outspokenness. This article attempts to resolve this dissonance by showing that the Jewish response to the Dreyfus Affair is best understood in two phases: an early phase from 1894–1897 and a late phase from 1898–1906. During the early phase, silence prevailed among French Jews who feared confronting a powerful antisemitism driven largely by the Catholic Church. Bernard Lazare, one of the only French Jewish intellectuals to rise in Dreyfus's defense, revealed the role of antisemitism in the Affair during this period by pointing to its religious underpinnings. During the late phase of the Affair beginning in 1898, as more Frenchmen joined the Dreyfusard cause, French Jews were more comfortable being outspoken in defense of Dreyfus and in opposition to antisemitism. This is clearly documented in articles published in the two largest Jewish periodicals in France, the religiously liberal Les Archives Israélites de France and the religiously conservative L'Univers Israélite. Even though anti-clericalism was not the fundamental rationale for Jewish support for Dreyfus, Jews engaged with the clerical/anti-clerical debate at this time, pushing the community in a more anti-clerical direction and strengthening its faith in republican ideals.