Contemporary Jewish Writing in Europe: A Guide

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six ‰ Thomas Nolden À la recherche du Judaïsme perdu: Contemporary Jewish Writing in France The process of réjudaïsation, or Jewish revival, reached its zenith in France in 1979 and 1980, profoundly affecting the attitudes among the 600,000 French Jews who presently constitute the largest Jewish community in the Western world after the United States.1 This embrace of Jewish heritage marked the end of a long-standing tradition of Jewish emancipation in France dating back to the French Revolution, when for the first time in modern history Jews became emancipated. Juifs thus became israélites, that is, highly acculturated citizens . During and following the eighties, this assimilationist trajectory was reversed . The notion of Jewish invisibility has given way to self-conscious and self-confident articulations of Jewish particularity. Thus, French Jewish historian Annette Wieviorka could conclude: “Whether one likes it or not, the republican model is behind us. There are no longer Frenchmen of the Jewish faith in our country” (2000, 26). The “New Jewish Question”­—to borrow the title of Shmuel Trigano’s book—reemerged in the national consciousness over the course of the eighties. Journals like Esprit and Histoire presented special issues, such as “The Jews in Modern Times” and “The Jews in France,” and an editorial in the then newly À la recherche du Judaïsme perdu 119 founded journal Combat pour la diaspora proclaimed: “The Diaspora must find its own voice” (1979, 1). In 1980 the French Jewish sociologist Dominique Schnapper presented her important study Juifs et israélites (Jewish Identities in France). In 1979 her colleague Claudine Vegh had published her conversations with children of deportees entitled Je ne lui ai pas dit au revoir (I Never Told Him Goodbye). Lastly, in 1980 journalist Luc Rosenzweig edited his Catalogue pour des juifs de maintenant (Catalogue for Today’s Jews), in which he introduced the notion of a new “cacophony” of Jewish voices: “Those who listen to Jewish voices today are perhaps surprised by the cacophony of contradictory discourses which emerge from this turbulent world” (7). That same year critic Alain Finkielkraut—like Rosenzweig, Trigano, and Schnapper a member of the younger generations of Jews—presented his seminal essay Le Juif imaginaire (The Imaginary Jew, 1980), a self-critical exploration of the fallacies he pinpointed in the identity discourse prevalent among his peers. Simultaneously Rosenzweig made yet another provocative move by calling his new collection of interviews with young Jews La Jeune France juive (Young Jewish France, 1980), a title deliberately reminiscent of Edouard Drumont’s notorious anti-Semitic 1886 pamphlet. The creation of a “néo-diasporisme culturel” (Mandel 1980, 95) during the eighties was accomplished primarily by the children and grandchildren of the generations directly affected by the Shoah and—to be sure—by the children of immigrants from France’s former colonies and territories in North Africa . Their collective attempt to reappropriate and emphasize their judéité (to use Albert Memmi’s term) manifested itself in a renewed interest in religious observance, political activism against anti-Semitism and racism, the definition of new forms of communal discourse, historical research and philosophical inquiries , and, last but not least, in artistic forms—especially in the creation of what has been called “jeune littérature juive” (young Jewish literature), “littérature des générations d’après” (literature of the post-Shoah generations), or “nouvelle littérature juive” (new Jewish literature). In the wake of the process of politicization that had favored social affiliations over cultural, ethnic, and religious ties, this return to Jewish heritage followed impulses that originated within both the Jewish community—especially the influx of Sephardic Jews from the Maghreb—and the French nation at large. Alarmed by patterns of denial and anti-Semitic attacks, uneasy with their parents ’ choice of acculturation, and encouraged by the attitude prevalent among the Jewish immigrants from the Maghreb, the post-Shoah generations responded with assertive criticism. Bombings of Jewish sites in the early eighties as well as the desecration of the Jewish cemetery in Carpentras in May 1990 shook France and challenged the public to reevaluate the dangers to which the Jewish population was exposed some forty-five years after the end of the Vichy regime. One 120 thomas nolden could even argue that the public deconstruction of Vichy France reached its apogee only when the governments of Jacques Chirac and Lionel Jospin finally officially acknowledged the complicity of the French...