Inventing the Israelite: Jewish Fiction in Nineteenth-Century France (review)

Inventing the Israelite examines a variety of Jewish authors in France during the 1830s and 1840s, a period that might best be described as a golden age for post-emancipation Jews in France. Past them were the hurdles of loyalty tests and infamous laws of the Napoleonic era, which, even despite its seemingly wavering tolerance, saw the establishment of a well-organized and fairly autonomous consistorial system of synagogues. The financial scandals and the Dreyfus Affair that, in part, defined the Third Republic were yet to roil France. Along with the popularization of the pseudo-science of racial theories, facilitated by a growing literacy rate, these later events would contribute to an explosion of anti-Semitism in French letters and the press. As portrayed in the literature that Samuels examines, the 1830s and 1840s marked a period of becoming and self-definition for French Jews. By delving into a coterie of authors who mostly have been neglected, Samuels reveals both the inner turmoil and optimism spawned by emancipation. For example, in his chapter on Ben Levi, the pseudonym for Godchaux Weil, who happened to be Marcel Proust’s granduncle, Samuels convincingly argues how one of Ben Levi’s stories illustrates the new sociological phenomenon of nonobservant Jews. That this new generation of Jews “by birth” was free to decide how Jewish they wanted to be was largely responsible for the evolution of modern strains of Judaism in France. Such movements predictably led to a reaction by more conservative representatives of the community who also found expression in a literature of their own. Akin to this was a literature distinguished by nostalgia for the pre-emancipation life of the village or ghetto (to this end, Samuels discusses Alexandre Weill, Daniel Stauben, and David Schornstein). Samuels also underscores how the French context differed from the German one. Significantly, the room left to French Jews to decide on how to define their identity was especially large when compared to their German coreligionists for whom, to paraphrase Heine, the only entry ticket into the German political or artistic establishment was baptism.

In France, conversions were rare as evidenced by the sensationalized nature of the exceptional ones that did take place. Samuels treats the works of one writer, Eugénie Foa, who converted under the tutelage of the controversial Théodore Ratisbonne. Samuels also cites the lesser-known rabbi, David Drach, and his conversion in 1824, in his discussion on Ben Levi in chapter 2. (For an informative discussion on how the Théodore Ratisbonne was viewed by Catholics and Jews alike, see Antoine Compagnon’s Connaissez-vous Brunetière?) Born Jewish, Ratisbonne joined the priesthood and founded the order of Notre Dame de Sion whose mission was to guide Jews back to the logical path of Christianity. Samuels shows how Foa’s writing mirrored her own religious evolution. In one of this writer’s earlier novels, Le Kidouschim, which Samuel’s fine sleuthing has unearthed at the BNF, the varying degrees of observance among characters are played out in a carriage ride with a suitor, a mother, and a daughter. The suitor, something of a kosher Mr. Darcy, is preoccupied with returning home before sundown on a Friday night. A rather antipathetic character, the mother is less interested in these petty observances than she is in the suitor’s wealth. In the end, the suitor’s piety will reflect his character as superior to his rivals’.

In Foa’s successive works, however, Samuels shows how rigid adherence to Judaic tradition undermines adapting to modern demands. The question of mixed marriage presented a particularly salient issue. While the French rabbinate was adamantly opposed to such unions, they did occur on occasion. Samuels demonstrates that in one of her later stories, it is paradoxically the liberal nature of Judaism that draws one of Foa’s female characters closer to her non-Jewish love interest and results in her expulsion from her father’s home. Though these unions were...