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French and Jewish: Culture and the Politics of Identity in Early Twentieth Century France, by Nadia Malinovich. Portland: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization. 2008. 280 pp.
Nadia Malinovich takes on some big questions that have interested French Jewish historians for at least a generation. Did Jewish particularism become as important to Franco-Judaism in the 1920s as was the universalist ethic that had dominated French Jewish identity since the nineteenth century. And was this new particularist identity shared by native French Jewish intellectuals as well as immigrant writers and artists? Was French-Jewish identity substantively different than German-Jewish identity by the late 1920s? Malinovich answers affirmatively to all these questions. I am more skeptical.
Malinovich’s French and Jewish focuses on Jewish literary and artistic “ideology” from the Dreyfus Affair to 1932. She restricts herself to this time period because she argues that the ideology of French Jewish intellectuals shifted significantly after World War I when antisemitism in France decreased. She stops her analysis in 1932, presumably, when anti-Semitism began to rage again in France. Malinovich distinguishes herself from other historians of French Jews who, she maintains, find a continuing synthesis between French and Jewish values from the French Revolution to 1940. Malinovich sees an “awakening” or “renaissance” of Jewish life and identity in the 1920s that amounts to a “unique period” that recognizes a Jewish ethno-cultural self definition alongside a belief in French universalism.
Malinovich sets the stage for her argument by discussing the origins of “Franco-Judaism” in the nineteenth century. In the first part of the century, French Jews saw themselves primarily as loyal Frenchmen who practiced Judaism as their private faith. Judaism was portrayed as a prophetic, rational religion that offered “light upon the nations.” Most Jews saw the Third Republic as a final victory for universal principles and legal equality, perfectly in consonance with Judaism even if the actual life of French Jews reflected a more particularist ethnic solidarity. The Dreyfus Affair brought a tension in Jewish identity, but even while many Jewish writers and intellectuals awakened to their Jewish roots, their pro-Dreyfus arguments were still couched in humanitarian, universalist terms.
The period stretching from just after the Dreyfus Affair through World War I was one of transition for Malinovich. Although very different from one another, the rise of French Zionism, Reform Judaism, and a revived traditionalism “all agreed on wanting to create a vibrant, modern Jewish culture.” Malinovich argues that in part because of East European immigration into France and in part because of racial antisemitism, the Jewish ideologies that arose in the pre-war period increasingly portrayed Jews in ethnic terms, while not abandoning the universalist, integrationist arguments. For Zionism, the nationalist or ethnic perspective of Jewish peoplehood is obvious, but even the new Reform movement and a renewed orthodoxy argued that the French Republic was particularly equipped to understand and appreciate minorities. This near multicultural perspective might be wishful thinking but, according to Malinovich, it was propagated by these new Jewish movements. During the first World War these movements were consolidated as new youth groups, magazines, and educational and literary societies increasingly challenged the relegation of Jewish identity to the private sphere.
The concluding four chapters deal with the main argument of the book. Here, Malinovich traces the definitive shift to a distinctive Jewish cultural identity in the 1920s made possible by the decrease in antisemitism. These chapters, among the most original in terms of research, demonstrate that Jewish writers and intellectuals felt comfortable in writing about Jews and exploring Jewish identity. Still, as Malinovich observes, this emphasis of Jewish themes was a source of both optimism and anxiety, reflecting the continued tension and anxiety of Jews in France.
Malinovich concludes her book with a chapter summarizing the “reshaping of Franco-Judaism, 1920–1932.” She argues that during this period French Jewish identity had completed its shift from an identity based primarily on the private practice of religion to one that gave equal weight to Jewish particularism and integration into the larger French society. As Malinovich puts it, “in the twenties the center of gravity shifts so that a commitment to universalism and belonging to France does not entail a lessening of one’s attachment to Judaism,” whether seen in religious or ethnic terms.
This brief summary cannot do justice to Malinovich’s rich discussion of Zionist, religious, and other cultural formulations, but I will have to leave the detail to interested readers. One sub-theme, however, is worth noting here. Malinovich frequently compares France and Germany, arguing that in France Jews were more accepted by the French public and more truly integrated into mainstream French society and culture. Since antisemitism was in decline in France, unlike Germany, French Jews never rejected the nineteenth century ideal of integration. For example, in her chapter on “Media and the Arts,” Malinovich indicates that German Jews realized that German-Jewish integration into Germany was “chimerical.” In France, on the contrary, emphasis on distinctiveness was a recognition of the freedom and safety to affirm their Jewish identity
Malinovich isn’t the first person to suggest a shift in French Jewish identity after World War I. Thirty years ago, Paula Hyman in From Dreyfus to Vichy: The Remaking of French Jewry, 1906–1939 argued something similar. The rise of French Zionism, immigration from Eastern Europe, the spread of Jewish youth groups, and especially the increased mixing of second generation immigrants and native Jews suggested to Hyman that a significant shift in French Jewish identity was taking place. But Hyman was less convinced that this shift in identity and coming together of native and immigrant Jews would be consolidated. Increased antisemitism at the end of the Third Republic and then Vichy antisemitic policies preempted a realignment of French Jewry and French Jewish identity. As it happened, most long-standing native Jews during Vichy emphasized their integration into France while immigrant Jews seemed to understand that Jewish integration into France was a chimera.
This raises two questions for me for which I don’t think Malinovich has convincing answers. How secure were French Jews in their integration into French society during and after World War I? Was there really a shift in French Jewish identity that characterized both native and immigrant Jews? Personally, I am not yet certain of the answers to these questions. I would argue that native Jewish organizations, as opposed to immigrant Jews, still preferred to emphasize how Judaism and Jewish culture fit in with or contributed to French society and culture. Malinovich seems to suggest an almost multicultural ethic within French culture, or at least the belief that French Jewish intellectuals thought that this was true. Given France’s continuing problems with multiculturalism—witness France’s treatment of Muslim women’s head covering—I doubt that France could have considered multiculturalism as an option in the 1920s. If, however, Malinovich wants to say that Jewish intellectuals were calling for greater recognition of sub-cultures, but that France may not have been prepared for that, then I wish she made this case more directly. Finally, Malinovich cites many immigrant writers as evidence for a shift in French-Jewish identity. Therefore, a reader is permitted to wonder whether the shift in Jewish identity permeated French Jewish society or was more true of immigrants and their children than native Jews.
Sanford Gutman
Department of History
State University of New York at Cortland
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