The Jews and the Nation: Revolution, Emancipation, State Formation, and the Liberal Paradigm in America and France (review)

This book promises to be a comparative history but it is, in the author's own words, "a multilayered meditation on the early national history of France and the United States" (p. 3). More specifically, it applies the "liberal consensus" theory of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America and Louis Hartz's The Liberal Tradition in America to the development of the modern nation-state in America and France from 1775 to 1815. Although the Jews function as the test case for highlighting the differences between the two countries, the book focuses on, and "seeks to illuminate, larger perspectives of revolution, rights, republicanism, and state formation" (p. 28).

Jaher offers a nuanced analysis of both Tocqueville and Hartz, paying attention to their reservations about liberalism and democracy as well as their generally favorable assessment of the robustness of the American commitment both to individuality and to diversity. Jaher does not ignore, however, the similarities between postrevolutionary France and America: both grounded citizenship in ius soli (the law of place of birth, and residence) rather than ius sanguinis (the law of blood, or kinship); both were secular states; both were committed to individual rights—a commitment reflected in the extension of civic equality to Jews. Jaher generally supports Tocqueville's view that the most significant difference between the United States and France is that the latter centralized power in the national government while the former distributed power among the states and created a civil society that fostered voluntary association. America thus allowed for greater diversity and pluralism than did France. Moreover, the French privileged equality over individual freedom. In Jaher's words, "In America, citizens are ultimately individuals; in France, individuals are ultimately citizens" (p. 47).

These ideological distinctions are indeed worthy of discussion. However, as Jaher recognizes, in themselves they do not account for the differences between the experiences of French and American Jewry. That is, he cannot account for the distinct outcomes in Jewish status between France and the United States by referring only to the Tocqueville-Hartz paradigm. Jaher himself mentions the disparity in size between the two Jewish populations, the impact of the fact that, in Hartz's words, America was "born free" (of the legacy of feudalism) and therefore Jews never had an autonomous community there, and the enormous differences in the causes and goals of the two revolutions. He also pays some attention to the role of immigration both in shaping the nature of American society, with its relative respect for diversity and pluralism, and in influencing the situation of American Jews. Even as it accepted newcomers, France did not define itself as a nation of immigrants. Finally, Jaher notes the contrast between the significant symbolic role of Jews as "the other" in Europe and the absence of that role in colonial America and the early republic.

Because so much of this book is devoted to an analysis of theories of nationalism and citizenship, the reader misses the careful historical scrutiny that this type of comparative study requires. Only three of seven chapters deal specifically with the comparative history of French and American Jewry in the time of nation-formation, and the sole American chapter is exceedingly brief. The fact that one of the chapters on France and its Jews is concerned with the Napoleonic period, arguably the nadir of the Franco-Jewish experience in the nineteenth century, also distorts the French Jewish experience. With the exception of the Napoleonic period, Jews enjoyed civic equality in France from the Revolution until the emergence of the Vichy regime during World War II.

Jaher's desire to demonstrate that America has succeeded "above all other countries" (p. 43) in incorporating both individualism and inclusiveness in its political culture leads him to read French and American history selectively. His breathless summation of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Jewish history in France and the...