Zalkind Hourwitz, Juif polonais

Abstract

Zalkind Hourwitz. Zalkind Hourwitz, perhaps more than many of his non-Jewish contemporaries and assuredly far more than his coreligionists, sought through his sardonic attacks on the injustices and foibles of 18th-century France to transform a society to which he never fully belonged and a people from which he never fully estranged himself. This article focuses on some little known biographical details and subsequently explores the events surrounding Hourwitz's entering and winning the Metz competition on the question of making the Jews useful and happy citizens in France, the issues raised in his prize winning essay Apologie des Juifs and his uneasy interactions with the Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews of France.