The Shaping of Jewish Identity in Nineteenth-Century France (review)

Abstract

122 SHOFAR Fall 1993 Vol. 12, No. 1 stories of murdered Jews. And her narrative ends exactly as it began, the last five pages being an exact repetition of the first five pages. David H. Hirsch Department of English and Judaic Studies Brown University The Shaping ofJewish Identity in Nineteenth-Century France, by Jay R. Berkovitz. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989).308 pp. $34.95. Among the many shifts in consciousness wrought by the process generally called modernization, the emergence of ambiguity with regard to personal and group identity is certainly among the most significant. In the Western world, for roughly the last two centuries (in some places even longer, in others, far less) the secularization of society, the enhanced reach and claims of the modern state, the diminished power of religious authority, numerous economic and demographic changes, inter alia, increasingly challenged the heretofore self-evident nature ofone's identity. While these challenges confronted all residents of Europe, it has long been recognized by historians that, as an often despised and always anomalous minority, Jewish identity was subject to unique pressures from both within and without the Jewish community. Many Jewish educators, scholars, political leaders, and businessmen manifested strong disaffection towards the pre-modern political, economic, educational, and religious patterns that prevailed in the Jewish community. In addition, Christian clerics, bureaucrats, scholars, and even emperors displayed a marked interest in the nature ofJewish identity and whether it was compatible, potentially or actually, with the perceived needs of the emerging modern societies of Europe. Absolutist governments would no longer tolerate the levels of Jewish political autonomy that had previously obtained, thereby removing the fundamental centripetal political force within the Jewish community. With the removal of this political force and the weakening of the plausibility structures of the Jewish religion, Jews were faced with what to some was a great opportunity, to others a monumental calamity: the need to resolve the ambiguity ofwho they were and precisely where their ultimate loyalties resided. Jews encountered these challenges throughout Western and Central Europe in the first half of the nineteenth century. While each Jewish community in Europe was distinguished by specific political and social Book Reviews 123 issues, the French Jewish community in the nineteenth century was unique, in that it was the one European Jewish community to have already been emancipated as the century began, whatever political and social reservations remained de/acto. Thus, theJews ofFrance had unprecedented opportunities and rights; with these came unprecedented obligations, demands, and pressures. The achievement of these rights and obligations would naturally have led to intensive Jewish reflection on the questions of identity and solidarity, even without external prodding. Such reflection would no doubt have taken time. But the French government was in no mood to be patient with its Jews. It needed to know early on whether Jews could be expected to be loyal to the state and committed to their integration within French society. Thus, the inherent tensions in confronting the ambiguity of identity were intensified by the need to immediately allay the doubts of Napoleon and the larger French society. The historiographic treatment of the adjustment of French (and German) Jewry has been deeply influenced by the Orthodox and the Zionist visions of Jewish history. For very different reasons, both the Orthodox and the Zionist views ofJewish normativity and continuity could only conceptualize the re-orientation of French Jewry negatively. French Jewry was charged with craven submission to the values of the larger French society, and with promoting assimilation and the breakdown of Jewish identity. The judgment of Attad Ha'am that French (and German) Jewry experienced "enslavement within freedom" has become classic; this enslavement consisted of the denial of their own distinct identity and the adoption of an alien one in its stead. In this important book, Jay Berkovitz makes clear that such judgments, while not wholly devoid of foundation, are thoroughly without nuance or appreciation of the complexity of the "shaping of Jewish identity" in France. By failing to distinguish between urban, village, and rural settings; by ignoring the sub~le nature ofJewish religious accommodation; by failing to examine the numerous conservative and preservative elements in French Jewish life, the purveyors...